Life in the Valley

As part of my post-Bible College devotional life, I check My Utmost for His Highest every day. While I was going to CBC, I felt like the chapels spoke so personally to me that I must be going through a really important time in my life. Now that I don't have chapel to go to every day, I'm finding that meeting us where we are is something God must do all the time? All I know is, God has been using this online daily devotional to speak DEEP truths into my life and shape my character even more frequently than when I was at CBC.

A few months ago, I was upset about something that had to do with someone. I was upset for all the right reasons, but I was responding in all the wrong ways. That day I checked My Utmost and right there was a scripture telling me to "reconcile disputes with your brother RIGHT WAY."

That was it for me. Right that moment I called and told that person what I had been frustrated about.

Recently, MUfHH has been talking about "valley experiences," citing the time after the transfiguration when the disciples failed to cast out a demon (Matthew 17:14-23). Here is a selection from today's post:

Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.

Here's the point: It's easy to believe in Jesus when he's right in front of your face, glowing, and talking to the most famous men of God in history, BUT how many people have that kind of faith in the valley, when there's no glowing savior to be seen? The mountaintop experience doesn't require an extraordinary amount of faith. It's in the valley that our "faith" is tested and REAL faith built.

Growing up in youth group we were always told that spiritual highs and lows are bad. We should always be on the mountaintop. Now I'm learning that if you stay on the mountaintop, you will harm the growth of your faith (and possibly destroy it).

It's in the everyday or sometimes painfully dark events in our lives that God is building our faith.

Translated to Christian culture: Spending all our time in a church BUILDING is not necessarily BUILDING our faith.