October 1, 2009 THE SPHERE OF EXALTATION

Mark 9:2 - …Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone.

Only days before, Jesus had revealed to His disciples the plan for His death and subsequent resurrection. He laid out for them the true cost of discipleship and what they stood to gain – and lose – if they chose to follow Him. It is only after all of this that He takes Peter, James and John up to a high mountain where His full glory is revealed to them.

Chambers opens by saying:
We have all had times on the mount, when we have seen things from God’s standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, something is wrong. It is a great thing to be on the mount with God, but a man only gets there in order that afterwards he may get down among the devil-possessed and lift them up.
Spiritually speaking, I think many of us work for the mount as our ultimate goal, not as a springboard to the times in the valley. We think that once we “arrive” we should set up a shelter and get comfortable for the long haul, but that isn’t what Jesus did with the disciples the day of the transfiguration and that isn’t what He calls us to do today. Christ is revealed to us in spectacular ways in those times, and we are to use that revelation as an inspiration for our work in the very ordinary circumstances of life. We need to recognize the “descent” as a normal part of it, and recognize that we can’t make use of our experience on the mount until we come down from it.

My wedding day was truly, next to the day my son was born, the happiest day of my life. I distinctly remember the feeling of walking down that aisle towards my husband-to-be as the most joyful moment I’d had in my life up to that point – and I took every step with the intention of remembering those moments and the feelings I had. Thirteen years later, I do, almost as if it were yesterday. But as wonderful as those moments were for me, they weren’t what makes my marriage what it is. The strength of our marriage comes from the work and effort we put in every day, and though I cherish the memory of the day Dave and I became husband and wife, we couldn’t stay there in the church forever – we had to move on into real life and live as a married couple. A lot of people have extravagant weddings and a lousy marriage afterwards. They put all of their energy into their moment on the mountain and nothing into their time in the valley of daily life.

I don’t think our faith is all that different – we focus so much on either attaining or retaining that extraordinary spiritual experience with God, that we fail to recognize why we really have those in the first place. We can - and should be – affected by our “moments on the mount” but we shouldn’t just live for those moments. We need to be able to descend from the heights of Spiritual experience to live it in the valley of day-to-day life. If we are always focused behind us, on that great moment we had with God back in ’02, or focused ahead on recreating that moment again, we will entirely miss what God is trying to do with us in our everyday existence. It is our faith lived out in the small stuff of our daily routine that allows those around us to see the extraordinary grace of God through an ordinary life.