Immovable Mountains

“So, what if the mountain doesn’t move?” I’m sure you’ve heard the popular and quite powerful message that you can have the faith even as small as a mustard seed and be able to “move mountains.” And if you think about it, that is one of the most encouraging and inspiring messages of faith in the whole of Scripture! After all, the mustard seed is the smallest seed – and what Jesus was saying was that you can have just a tiny speck of faith, shaky, barely felt, but there – an itty bitty faith in God’s ability to change your circumstances and bring you out victoriously, and speak to your problem and boom! The mountain will move!

Say, you have a crisis – you were laid off at work, your rent is overdue, and you just received a letter from the electric company that your electricity will be cut off if your bill is not paid by noon that Friday. Talk about a mountain of trouble! Despite the cataclysmic essence of these circumstances, you still barely hold on to the Lord’s promises that, if you believe in Him and His ability to deliver you, even if your faith that isn’t very strong because you are overwhelmed by your situation, nevertheless, you can still speak to that mountain, “God, I trust you in this issue! I can’t meet my financial needs, but I speak in faith that You will deliver me, somehow. Help me to trust in you…” and suddenly, an answer comes! You get a phone call from a friend, who felt the Lord leading them to give you a certain amount of money, which happens to be the exact amount of your rent. Then, the electric company calls, apologizing for the notice they sent you, finding that you had a credit on your account, so you won’t be billed for the next 2 months! And then, the phone rings a third time, and it’s a human resources agent from a local business office, who just received your resume and a positive referral and would like to interview you for a possible job! BOOM! The mountain moves!

This is how quickly God can work! He can take your little seed of faith in His “bigness,” and use it on your mountain of troubles, completely transforming the most perplexing situation into a citadel of triumph! Suddenly!

But, as we all well know…though this kind of turnaround is not impossible and does occur from time to time…it doesn’t always work that way, does it? Sometimes, even with the faith of a mustard tree, which is the largest tree there is, the mountain still DOES NOT MOVE. You pray fervently and confidently, “God, I trust in You! You can deliver me from this mess! I speak to this situation and say that You will be glorified in my crisis! You have all power and authority and I release it onto my circumstances.”…but…they still cut off your lights; you go weeks without work, you find yourself getting deeper and deeper in debt, trying to stay in your home and paying rent with loans…what then? How do you reconcile Christ’s promise and inspirational principle on faith and declaration when your life experience seems to prove the reverse?

This second scenario seems to happen quite a bit; oh, we love to hear the stories and testimonies of the first, and we shout and “hallelujah” the sermons and teachings on the promise of deliverance… “All you need is faith! It’s faith that moves mountains”…but sometimes, our deliverance doesn’t come, at least, not the way we’d have hoped it would. We begin to question ourselves, “Is it because I don’t have enough faith? Did I not declare it ‘right’? Is there hidden sin in my heart? Why is this still happening to me? Why does the mountain not move?” Though we do need to seek our hearts and check our spirits for doubt, sin, and unbelief, we must also recognize that sometimes, the mountain doesn’t move, not because of lack of faith, but because of God’s greater purposes.

“O LORD, by Your favor, You have made my mountain to stand strong…” (Ps. 30:7)

What in the world is the psalmist saying here?! God’s favor makes the mountain to stand strong?! Yes. Out of His love for us, God will KEEP the mountain right where it is, let you persevere through the storm and crisis, let you face the “worst case scenario”… why? Because He loves you! This is not always what we like to hear. We want to hear of ways to “get out” of our crisis, escape our ailments, be rescued away from all our fears…but God and life don’t always work that way. But what is more perplexing about this verse is the fact that God won’t let your mountain move because of His favor (i.e. His overabundant LOVE) for you!

“If God loved me, then why would He let this happen to me?” Martha and Mary asked the same question. They sent for Jesus when their brother, and His dear friend, was sick. And guess what? Jesus didn’t come. He stayed right where He was and let their mountain remain; and to add insult to injury, the Bible says He did this because He “loved” them (ref. Jn. 11: 5-6). Excuse me? He loved this family, so He let them suffer and confront their worst fears? How is that love?!

Thankfully, Jesus explains, “This sickness (mountain) is…for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.” (Jn. 11:4) In other words, the mountain Martha, Mary, and Lazarus faced was going to remain because Christ was going to glorify Himself through their mountain, and then allow them to participate in His triumph!

We all know the story – Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. But have you ever read the following verses and the next chapter after this great occurrence? Time and again, the Scriptures state that because of Lazarus people were coming from all over the region to see this resurrected man and the One, who raised him, and consequently, a “multitude” believed in Christ’s divinity! They weren’t just coming to see Jesus! They wanted to see LAZARUS! Lazarus became the celebrated vessel of Christ’s glory!

Had Jesus moved the mountain beforehand, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus would have missed out on being Christ’s most effective evangelistic tool in the final days of His earthly ministry! Oh, there would have been “shouts” and “hallelujahs” over his healing, but the extent of his ministry would have ended that day and been limited to a small group of witnesses. God didn’t want this family, whom He dearly loved, to be limited in their influence – He wanted them to experience a grander scope of His glory, be powerful tools of ministry that even had the religious authorities trembling (ref. Jn. 12:19)…it was His FAVOR that propelled them into this new dimension of triumph and effectiveness!

But what had to come first? An immovable mountain that WOULD NOT budge, even with all the faith they could muster…and, yes, they had to go through their worst fears.

If you are in a crisis, and you have been praying, asking, pleading with God to move the mountain of adversity, and your mountain still isn’t moving, take heart. It’s not that God doesn’t hear you; He does. It’s not that you don’t have enough faith; you do. Maybe this mountain is not supposed to be moved like you’d like; perhaps this mountain is not necessarily an obstacle against you, but a gift of God’s favor for you! What if this mountain is actually saying how much God loves you, and reveals His insatiable desire for you to experience a side of His glory, that will catapult you into a realm of ministerial influence that you couldn’t have possibly imagined? What if He plans to share a triumph with you that is so incredible and glorious that many people will believe in Him all because they saw you?! This mountain isn’t an indictment on your faith; it’s a sign of your preciousness to the Father!

Don’t despair. Your mountain may remain for a little while, but your certain victory will make all the tears, all the perplexity, and all the heartache you endured in your crisis more than worth the while.

The Worst of Times are the Best of Times

One of the things I have learned in this process of illness is that many times, the best of times are actually in the worst of times, though circumstances and emotions claim otherwise. The worst of times, both emotionally and circumstantially, I have come to discover, are the seasons in which the grace for doing what you’ve been doing begins to lift, and you reach this unbearable point of breaking, screaming, “I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!” It is your lowest point emotionally/spiritually/mentally/even physically…but it is one of your best moments as well.

What do I mean by “the grace.” God gives us the grace to persevere and/or do whatever it is He has required us to do whether that be performing one’s daily activities, fulfilling one’s responsibilities, or going through a trial of some kind, with a strength and tenacity that we don’t understand and could never claim as our own.. Grace is His strength and mercy that empowers us to continue to accomplish tasks, bear fruit, and maintain a positive outlook and/or our faith in His goodness, which, to an observer (and even ourselves), appears ridiculous and impossible.

That’s why, many times, you will find people doing these great feats, enduring incredible adversity, yet functioning; not just surviving, but actually somehow living, and with gladness. So you marvel, “Wow! How in the world can you do all that? How can you raise 6 boys and suffer from chronic fatigue and hormonal imbalances? How can you continue to smile and be joyful following a painful divorce and the sudden death of your son? How in the world can you run a nonprofit ministry that continues to grow, be an active leader in you church, and serve and love on countless needing people throughout the REGION, and yet still be a caretaker of a critically ill child at home?” Quite frankly, they can’t! Not on their own. They are only able to beat incredible odds because they are walking in the grace the Lord has given them.

But there comes a point when the grace begins to wane. You don’t know when this point will be until, all of the sudden, your ability to cope and do what you’ve been doing dissipates. You find yourself becoming increasingly weary of the process. Now, this is not to say that you won’t have ups and downs emotionally throughout the process with the grace. We are emotional beings, and we will grow weary in the battle from time to time, but the Lord is faithful to give us His sufficient grace that lifts us out of our “hole” and places us on our feet again to continue fighting the good fight and running the race. I’m not talking about these vacillating moments of weariness throughout the ordeal. I’m talking about a progressive, wearing sense, that starts as a quiet whisper in your spirit, an ever so small flicker of a thought, but gradually, the whisper becomes louder, more and more noticeable..from whisper, to mutter, from mutter, to statement, from statement to directive, from directive to a shout. That feeling of, “…I….can’t…do…this…” It is these times that I am referring to…these are best/worst of times.

The grace is waning; it suddenly occurs to you that what you’ve been doing, you just can’t do much longer…you’re tired, you’re feeling this closing in claustrophobic sensation, a sinking, trapped imprisonment crouching in, where all you want to do is curl up in a fetal position and hide from life, hide from the circumstance or problem, stop everything and bury yourself in the ground.

What makes matters worse…you know you can’t. You can’t run away from an illness that is ransacking your body; you can’t just pull the plug on your mother/fatherhood responsibilities. You can’t stop working at that job that is providing for your family…you can’t stop, but oh! You desire it. You wish it would all disappear, vanish, be done, pinch me and wake me up from this nightmare. If only life could be solved with a wish to a magic genie and poof! The trial is gone!

Dear reader, this is the point when it seems there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, and actually, the end of the tunnel is closer than you can imagine. The grace is lifting because the Lord is getting ready to reposition you from doing what you’ve been doing. His all sufficient grace was to get you through the valley, but not to leave you in the valley. His grace was like the manna in the desert, miraculous provision to get you through the wilderness, but the manna ceases once you cross into the Promise Land (ref. Josh. 5:12). The Lord is “weaning” you off the grace He’s been providing because you are about to make a transition to a new place in your circumstance, in which you won’t need that grace anymore.

Now, I can’t tell you when that transition will be or what it will look like: sometimes it means making changes in your schedule to operate in the level of grace the Lord is providing. Other times, it might be that you make some other changes, such as switching to a different doctor, or becoming more involved in church activities. It could also possibly mean that the Lord is about to do a miracle in your life, and deliver you completely. We don’t know what the change will be, but rest assured, a change is coming and will be sooner than you think.

Know this: while you are in the transitional period, the tears will continue fall and increase in number, your tension will keep rising, you will feel as though your emotions will burst and shatter, and you will start to believe that you have never in your life been in so much agony as at this moment in time. But don’t lose heart! This worst time in the season is your best time in the season…because it means you are at the nearest point to the end of the season than you've ever been before! A breakthrough is right around that corner; and once His grace ceases, you will have emerged victorious.

The Joy of Tribulation

Hello friends! I have had a very interesting time the last several weeks, and I wanted to share a little bit of the process, which the Lord has so graciously invited me to be apart of.

Some of you may or may not know, but about 3 weeks ago, I relapsed, meaning I had an adrenal/Addisonian crisis, which has sent my body spiraling downward into a hole. It's been a roller coaster of crisis intervention, medicine, narcotics for pain, etc., but the Lord sustained me and kept me from having to go back into the hospital! As of this week, I think I'm having a little bit of a turn around, but it's a slow arduous process.

At any rate, what the enemy would have meant for harm, the LORD has been turning around for good! I have been AMAZED at the Lord's sweet tenderness in these low places of suffering and tribulation! And this is the insight that I want to share with you, because what the Lord does for one of His afflicted ones, He does for ALL of us!

Many of us know this familiar passage:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (Jms. 1:2-4)

Now, the initial interpretation of this passage is exactly what it's talking about -we can consider it pure joy when we face hardships because the Lord is fashioning His character in us, He is completing His work in us, and He is preparing and equipping us for the calls that He has placed on our lives, so that we will be "full and complete, lacking nothing." Lacking nothing! Think about that! No lack, no need, no desire unfulfilled. In essence, the tribulation will expedite the process of you coming to a place of COMPLETE and TOTAL fulfillment in Christ, in your heart, and in your life! What an INCREDIBLE promise.

But there's another joy, which is not specifically stated in this passage that I believe anyone, who has ever faced the deepest valleys and sought the face of God in them, has come to understand, experience, and appreciate...it is the joy of God's Presence in the suffering! To me, this is really what James was talking about! We can count it all joy when we face trials of all kinds, not only because of the character that He is fashioning in us, but more so because of the joy it is to be with Him in His presence in the process! He is near the broken-hearted, and the afflicted He does not despise, but listens and answers their cries! (ref. Ps. 51:17; Ps. 22:24)! For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, there is life, there is love, joy, peace, and all His other fruits as described in Galatians 5.

It is not that we have to go through hard times to appreciate His presence; in fact, He makes Himself available to us at all times, giving us complete access to His throne because of Christ (ref. Heb. 4:16). However, there is something extra special, an extra tenderness and kindness that manifests from Him for those, who are suffering...an intimate embrace awaits the broken hearted, the wounded and the afflicted, the weary and distressed. He is our Healer, our Keeper, our Comforter, but you cannot receive comfort if there is nothing to be comforted, cannot be "kept" if there is nothing to keep, and there is no need for healing if there is nothing to heal.

Oh for the joy of being with Him in the process of the pain! Like a mother, who holds, rocks, and soothes her child, who scraped his knee; like a mother hen, who gathers her chicks beneath her feathers, this place of vulnerability and strength under God's wings and in His arms is such a precious gift for us to cherish. My prayer is that you can find this same place with Him during the worst of times, because it is in these darkest and coldest of moments that the light of the Morning Star shines all the more brightly, and His warmth invades and surrounds your heart more prominently.

To Him be the glory and honor and power forever!