No matter who you are or how you live you are a product of your environment. We live day to day in the very setting that God wants us in, that He put us in for His purpose. That environment is full of ups and downs and it is up to us to understand each of them for what they are.
If you really get down to it, we measure our mountaintop experiences based on the valleys in our lives. How we live when we are in the valleys determines how and what we do on the mountaintop. Jesus specifically addressed these issues in Mark chapter 9.
You see JEsus started out with a few of the disciples up on a mountain doing some direct teaching. They were experiencing those times when we feel like we are on top of the world. Work is going well, home life is going great, our devotions and quiet times are full of meaning and nothing can seem to phase us as we face our day to day lives. Well, JEsus had to do just as good of a job of bringing them down as He did of getting them up there. In verse 22 them struggling in the valley, "If you can ddo anything have compassion on us and help us."
Skepticism is the worst enemy of our faith. You see, if we stay on the mountaintop all the time we have no need of faith and we have no need of skepticism. But, there are those times when we doubt or are a little skeptical of how God is going to take care of us in the midst of our valleys. We need perspective, He has it, JEsus sees the big picture and all we can see is what is directly in front of us. Skepticism leads to even greater faith and eventually those skeptical thoughts leave us and never return, but it takes a lot of valleys for us to reach that point. So, we need to go through the valleys, understanding that Jesus is there and wants us there to grow our faith. We also need to find those who are maybe older and certainly wiser in the things of God to give us perspective. I would explain it like this:
One day when Alexa was just able to rider her bike without training wheels we went for a walk. P.J. was not mobile yet so I had to pull her behind me in a wagon. Well, we rode and walked and got a pretty good ways from home. Then, we turned and realized that the skies were getting darker behind us and we better start back home. We got a few blocks from home when we could start hearing the thunder crackling in the distance and P.J. was not happy at all about that. Then, it started to rain a little then harder and harder. I wasn't concerned because I could see the house and my only concern was for them getting too wet. Alexa was having a ball riding her bike and she was fine as she could see the house now and she wasn't real concerned about the storm, she had seen them before. But for P.J. this was the darkest, scariest storm she had ever been in, so it was the end of her world seemingly in her mind so she was scared to death, crying and screaming. I had to pick her up and cary her patting her back all the way, and telling her it was alright. You see 2 of us saw it as just another storm, P.J. saw it as the end of everything. Perspective is important in dealing iwth the storms, or valleys in life and if nothing else understand that no matter how intense it is there because Jesus wants you to grow in your faith and He is leading you by the hand right through it, because He can see your way out of it and back onto your mountain.
Have a great day and thanks for reading!
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