Heart Tracks - The Valley

"Jesus led them up the high mountain, apart by themselves." Mark 9:2....."The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend.....it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God." Oswald Chambers

When Jesus took Peter, James, and John to the mountaintop to be witnesses of His transfiguration, beholding His glory, they were not only awestruck, but surely must have felt that this was the height of all their spiritual experience. They must have felt that after beholding this, nothing was impossible. What glory was beheld on the mountaintop, glory that they wanted to remain before. Yet it was not where they were to stay. Jesus led them back down into the valley below, and they went directly from the mountaintop to the valley. From the height, to the depth. Waiting for them was a father with a demon possessed son. The other disciples could do nothing for the boy. Neither could the three who'd just been at the summit with God. All the wonder of the reality of the mountaintop disappeared in the reality of the valley. Jesus rebuked their lack of faith, and then set the boy free. The glory of God seen in Him on the mountaintop was present in Him in the valley. That valley could not affect it. Why do our valleys so often steal His glory for us?

Chambers said something to the effect that in the disagreeable places in life, we are to manifest His glory. We're to manifest the fruit of His life, of His Spirit. What we can "see" from the mountaintop cannot be seen in the valley. Not by our natural eyes, but He means that we should with our spiritual ones. The three who were with Him forgot what they saw on the mountaintop, and were rendered powerless because of it. How often do we do the same? When we leave the beauty of the spiritual mountaintop, and "descend" into the pressure filled realities of our valleys, what is it that we manifest? Fallen flesh or His resurrection life?

Chambers said that the spiritual mountaintop is not meant to teach us something, but to make us something. It's in the valley that He does the making. It's in the valley that the "grapes" of our lives are "crushed" that He might make those lives His sweet wine. What is being produced in our valleys? What is flowing out of our lives? Where, today, might we be experiencing the loving rebuke of Jesus?

Too often I have left the beauty of my times of prayer and focus on Him, only to lose sight of all of it in the valley. The pressure of the descent took my eyes and my heart away from Him and onto the difficulties, the needs, the realities, and what was manifested in and through my life was my lack of Him, not His presence. Through His resurrection, He gives us the power to live in the atmosphere of the Kingdom even when we walk and live in the atmosphere of the valley. In the toxic air of the valley, we can breathe in and breathe out the pure air of the Kingdom. Do we? Do you?

No matter how lofty your most recent mountaintop time with Him was, you will have to descend once more into the valley. What will happen there? What and who will you manifest there? The grapes will surely be squeezed. What will be produced? We beheld His glory on the mountaintop. Will we show forth His glory in the valley?

Blessings,
Pastor O