The View from the Mountain Top

                                       Have you ever forgotten what life is all about?

I came to know God at a Young Life camp on the top of a mountain in Colorado in 1980.  Yes, mine was the proverbial “mountain top experience” of meeting Jesus and being transformed.  I had this epiphany that if God deeply loved me, then nothing else could compare to simply knowing God.  Wow, that sounds cliche, but if Jesus be God and He died for me, I would go anywhere He called and do anything He asked.  I was “all in.”  My road map was marked, my compass calibrated; for me, it was “Jesus Only, None but He.”  I just wanted to know Jesus. 

I returned to that same camp in Colorado after my freshman year in college, this time serving as a camp counselor.  Our week of bliss included rappelling down cliffs, white-water rafting and mountain climbing.  On the last day of the camp we were guided up a mountain, being instructed to walk the last fifty yards backwards, lest we sneak a peek at the view that literally took your breath away.  It was amazing.  From the mountain top, we gazed at yet another mountain, magnificent and majestic, shrouded in mist yet so close that it seemed we could almost stretch out and touch it.  It was, well...surreal.  After a while, we began our descent, passing by a rough wooden cross just off the beaten path, with the words of Psalm 46:10 written on the crossbar, “Be still and know that I am God.” Then it hit me.  

I began to weep.  I’m not talking about wiping a tear or two from my eyes, I’m saying it was the kind of blubbering boo hoo that happens when you feel wrecked by something.  I realized something had changed in me.

Slowly, imperceptibly, something tragic had happened, something truly horrific.

In the busyness of life, I lost sight of what mattered most.  I lost sight of Jesus.

Since my mountain top conversion, life had become exceedingly busy.  Part of that was due to my own failure to study as a freshmen, leading my parents to tighten down the screws on my academics.  Part of that, though, was that I was busy doing stuff...for Jesus.  But in my busyness, I felt like I had traded  knowing Jesus for serving Jesus.  I felt like I had lost my best friend.

I still loved God...He just didn’t take my breath away.

So here’s MY challenge. I’d love to live on the mountain top where seeing Jesus is easy, where nothing competes for my heart.  But that’s not where I live.  I live in the valley, full of noise, busyness and the chaos of life.  I’m exhausted.  Everything is clamoring for my attention, demanding my time and energy.  In the valley, I simply get...distracted.

I stumbled upon a helpful hint, one time, for my spiritual “A.D.D.”

The apostle Paul was awaiting his execution under Nero, and he wrote to his protege and friend, Timothy, (2 Timothy 2:8) this simple advice...

“Remember Jesus.” 

It’s as if we sit at the desk of life, with piles of bills to wade through, endless “to do” tasks awaiting us, our minds cluttered and distracted.  Then the Voice of God whispers, “Come away from all this.  Ascend the mountain, if but for a little while to remember Me and who you are, in relation to Me.  I’m inviting YOU up the mountain.”

Honestly, this is my greatest strength, my secret, really...and my biggest struggle.  What I need perhaps more than any other thing is to focus my eyes on a suffering Savior until this image is brought into crystal clear focus.  It is to consciously, intentionally, and slowly, bring to my mind what life is all about.  

It is to recalibrate my heart from doing to knowing. 

So let the Voice of God again be heard in our souls.

“Come away from all this.  Ascend the mountain, if but for a little while to remember Me and who you are, in relation to Me.  I’m inviting YOU up the mountain.”

***

Blog writing ®John Hever. Unless otherwise stated, photos are not the original creative works of John Hever. To access the website of h2o church, go to www.h2ochurch.org.

The Simplicity of Love

“Do you love Me?”

Can you imagine Jesus asking you today what He asked Peter, His disciple, 2000 years ago?  Even worse, He asked him, “Do you love Me more than these?” In other words, do you love Me more than what you love most, which, for Peter, was fishing.  Not only that, but holy smokes, John 21 records that Jesus asked Peter this three times (!), leading him to his embarrassed confession, (revealed only in the Greek language), “You know that...I am fond of you.”  

Now, this is not about shame or us feeling guilty that we don’t do more for God.  In this confrontation, Jesus is enticing Peter to put first things first, to love Him more than the “stuff” of life.  Enticing.

The Apostle Paul knew loving Jesus is hard because of the stuff of life...“lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11.3).  

Just love Jesus.  It seems so embarrassingly simple.

Do you realize what we get, that most people don’t get?  We get the chance to simply sit at Jesus’ feet.  We get to look with childlike wonder at a God who calls Himself, “Father.”  (If you’re a parent, go gaze at your child while he or she sleeps and let that sink in a little).  We get to have a lump in our throat as we gaze upon Jesus crucified with the astonishment that “God so loved the world...” That God so loved...me. 

I get to love Jesus.

The Martha & Mary story illustrates this (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus told Martha that this is the “one thing” that really matters.  It’s the one priority in life that simply cannot be neglected. I think this “one thing” was something more than the duty and obligation to merely read the Bible.  The clutter of life didn’t matter to Mary; she couldn’t take her eyes off Jesus.

Because here’s the thing about people in love.  They don’t do things because they’re supposed to.  They don’t write poems, buy roses, or write mushy love songs out of “ought.”  They gaze into their beloved’s eyes because they want to.  And to those who are in love, nothing else in life really matters all that much.

So why do we get this so twisted around?

Should do less, to gaze more?  Could it be that what He wants from me, today, is simply to enjoy Him?

Simple devotion to Jesus is the secret to living a bold witness before a lost and dark world.  It’s what our world needs from us.  But simple devotion to Jesus is what we need more than anything else; it is the one thing. It is what our souls were made for.  It’s what we have been wired for.

G.K. Chesterton put it this way:

 “Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

There is something attractive and powerful about a person in love, a person so caught up in the relationship that nothing else really matters. 

Simple...

              Pure....

                         Devotion.

***

Blog writing ®John Hever. Unless otherwise stated, photos are not the original creative works of John Hever. To access the website of h2o church, go to www.h2ochurch.org.