Blog Archives
Down from the Mountain
Having just come back from an amazing weekend with our youth group it is an easy thing to get down. After all we experienced coming back down to reality is a little depressing. Most of us in the ministry recognize this as a mountaintop experience and understand the brutality of the realization that we have to exist in the real world where it seems we are in a losing battle at times.
We need to understand though that this is not unique to our time or our place. In fact we are provided with a number of instances of this very problem in the Scriptures.
Moses- Ex 32
After being on the Mount with the Lord. Moses had to return to reality and the reality was that the people of Israel were already turning their hearts away from the God that had delivered them. Can you imagine how Moses must have felt? Here he was meeting with the Lord of Lords and his people that he had sacrificed so much for were worshiping a golden calf! Talk about depressing! So then Moses has to go into leader mode and rebuke the people. Not what I would want to be doing after meeting with God.
As a minister I can relate. It seems that the moment i walk in the door after coming back from a trip I am confronted with the fact that there are people even in my own church that are more concerned with worldly matters and there own self satisfaction than the movement of God.
Elijah- 1 Kings 19
In 1 Kings 18 Elijah has this amazing victory over the evil prophets of Baal. God worked a miracle beyond anyone’s belief and Elijah was left standing as His victorious prophet. Fast forward to chapter 19 and Jezebel has threatened his life. Elijah must have been wondering why God would give him such a victory only to allow him to be killed by the same evil that he had been trying to overthrow.
Sound familiar? I think we all know of someone that has come home from a mountaintop experience to be confronted with a life crisis. Whether it be an issue with work or home, personal, material or emotional we all know of someone that has had to face a crisis.
Jesus- Lk 9:41
Yes!! Even Jesus had to face this problem. Jesus goes up and is transfigured and discusses what His death will mean. I imagine that this was an exciting conversation. To be talking about the salvation of the people He had created surely got Christ pumped. But as He came down off the mountain the first thing He was confronted with was a complaint about His disciples. His response clearly shows His concern.
Don’t you just love to have to deal with complaint’s? They are bad enough when you are not coming off a mountaintop experience but having to be dragged down when you are focused on things much higher and nobler is quite rude.
The point is the world is going to be ready to destroy our optimism and excitement but we cannot let that divert us from the course that we must take. The closeness with God always reveals to us what we need to do so we need to do it!! Now go do it…..NOW!!
Acquire the Fire 2010
It is Monday morning and along with the typical spiritual hang-over I am also trying to sort out all the thoughts in my head from our trip to Acquire the Fire. Let me run down some thoughts that are circulating off the top of my head.
- We tripled our attendance from this time last year. Last year we took five people, three adults and two youth. This year we took 14!! That broke down to 4 adults two college students and 8 youth.
- We don’t argue with the instructions on a hair dryer. If it says don’t use underwater cause it might kill us we don’t say that we can do whatever we want and they can’t tell us how to live. But when God tells us to stay away from sin we get upset.
- “Sin is like chocolate covered feces” The speaker actually had shirts with this on it. The point being that we can dress sin up and on the outside it looks smells feels and if we get just a taste it doesn’t seem so bad but if we bite off a mouthful we are in for a rude surprise.
- I have a new hero Nick Vujicic …. Words cannot explain how awesome this man is for hios story go to www.lifewithoutlimbs.com.
- We have bought into the Lies that this world has told us and if we continue to believe them we will never be who God called us to be.
- Thousand Foot Krutch is awesome…. I love intense rock and they put on a great concert.
- I am a sucker for a “daddy and his daughter story” and they had not one but too heart wrenching stories this weekend. I couldn’t keep my eyes dry.
- If you want to see Human depravity and the evil of the heart demonstrated take two toddlers and one toy and lock them in an empty room and wait…..the evil WILL come!
- We stand at the gates of Hell redirecting traffic…that is our job. When you stand at the gates of Hell it will get hot!!
- I have a new band to love www.unhinderedworship.com go check them out….NOW!!
- There is something special about seeing your youth group standing side by side tears streaming down their faces arms lifted to Jesus in praise and worship complete forgetting about who else is around them.
- I can’t wait to go next year!! I hope we triple again!! We had to rent a van this year wouldn’t be awesome to have to rent THREE!!




