Down the Mountain

This weekend my wife and I were incredibly blessed by being able to attend this year’s Linger Conference. Shane and Shane, Bethany Dillon, and several other talented lead worshipers stirred our affections for Christ through music and spoken word. Matt Chandler, JR Vassar, and several other pastors and phenomenal communicators preached the gospel from the Psalms lighting a fire that had all but diminished in my life over the past couple years of whirlwind changes, albeit very good changes.

I sat in my truck on Saturday as we ran an errand in between services and listened to Shane and Shane’s Bring Your Nothing album and found myself saying “God, I just want to rest in this. I want to sit in this and stay here where your presence feels so tangible and thick.”

I felt God answer me with “Don, you’re missing the point.”

We had already talked about this some during a panel discussion on Friday, this desire to keep the mountain top experience from fading back into normalcy. So, I wasn’t really surprised to hear God tell me this, but I was rather annoyed at how quickly I forgot what I had just heard the day before.

Mountain top experiences aren’t meant to sustain us indefinitely. They are meant to quicken us, to remind us of that which we have forgotten or teach us something new, and send us back out into normal life. Spiritual highs and Theological epiphanies are meant to give us a taste of the future to come when Christ comes and restores creation and brings about the New Earth filled with His glory and divine presence.

Mountain top experiences are designed to bring us closer to God, to give us a glimpse of his glory in ways that we may not see it every day. The purpose of this is two-fold: First, to stir our affections for Christ in perhaps deeper ways so that we would be more inclined and desire to make time to linger with God as we go about our daily lives. Second, that we would walk back down the mountain and reflect and radiate the glory of our great God and King.

This may mean finding ways to love and live with a family of Christians and graciously navigating the effects of living with sinners who love Jesus. It may mean walking down into a valley filled with idolatrous people who have turned their back on God and calling them to repent and come home.

Leading both by example of lingering with God in prayer and the study of his word.

As someone who hasn’t made the time to linger with God in quite some time, let me encourage and challenge you to make this a priority for God’s glory and your joy in Him.