September 10

“At times God will graciously provide you a mountaintop experience.  These times come in many settings:  during your time alone with Him....by reading a Christian book, or at a prayer meeting.  You may wish you could spend the rest of your life basking in the glow of your encounter with God.  But, remember, these mountaintop encounters are God’s way of preparing you for the battles that await you.”  H. Blackaby, Experiencing God Day-by-Day, 9/7

I’m beginning to see my mountaintop experiences as a place that God leads me to and then asks me to jump off.  Each time I find myself up there I experience a strange phenomenon that happens to me when I find myself in high places.  I have no fear of heights, per se, but if I’m on a bridge or a high balcony and am holding something like my purse or a camera, I have the urge to toss what I’m holding over the side!  When God leads me up His mountain I experience this same sensation.  I want to toss my fears, my anger, my whatever over the side.  But that’s not what He wants.  He wants ME to toss myself over the side--all of me--not just the things I’m holding onto--and He will catch me in His Everlasting Arms.  Perhaps that’s why I find myself up there so often and why when I come back down I do so in defeat--there seems to be no victory awaiting me because I’ve come down the same way I went up--on my own two feet.  God has said the victory has been won; yet I continue to experience failure.  I realize now that’s because I’ve been in the wrong battle.  I’ve been fighting for the wrong cause.  I need to join God’s army and then obey His command to jump.

“The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.  And he thrust out the enemy before you, and said, Destroy.”  Deuteronomy 33:27