A Call To The Remnant

The title of this piece is ” The valley is the gateway to the mountaintop.” How can one be in a valley and take a few steps and be on the mountaintop? In this post the valley is trials and tribulations and the mountaintop is the manifest presence of God. Can I tell you that you are never nearer God than when life comes against you and threatens to overwhelm you. And so, if there is indeed a gateway that leads from the valley to the mountaintop then what is the key that opens the gate? Can I suggest that it is attitude?

What is your attitude when you face the trials of life? Can you truthfully say that your attitude is one of thankfulness? Now I am not talking about thanking God for the very trial that afflicts you, although I do believe that the mature saint who has walked through many fires and passed through many waters can reach a point where he has learned to be content no matter what situation he finds himself in. No, I am talking about being able to thank God for who He is and what He has done for you. Is this the thrust of your life? Can you “enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” (Psalm 100:4) When you do this you are taking your eyes of your circumstances and lifting them to God. Your circumstances is the valley, when you see God you are on the mountaintop.

The saint who has learned to look at his or her life through the eyes of the Spirit, who can see beyond the scope of his current trials, who can see the majesty and the glory of God, who can see eternity stretch out before him, he is the saint who will find God in the midst of his calamity. I want you to think about Paul and Silas in Acts 16. They had been sharing the Gospel and seeing people saved. They were about God’s business and so perfectly innocent, yet they find themselves receiving 39 stripes or lashes, which often times killed a man, and then being flung into prison. Now, the jailer put them in the deepest part of the dungeon and had their feet put in stocks. Can I suggest that there was much room for self-pity and no apparent cause for rejoicing. Yet we see that they, at midnight no less, began to pray and sing praises unto God.

Perhaps you find yourself in a very dark place, a deep valley or a dark dungeon of circumstances from which you can see no way out? Can I suggest to you dear saint that you are but a hairs-breath away from the glorious presence of God. David says to God in psalm 139, where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I were to fly to the heavens you are there, if I were to find myself in a bed in hell, there you would be. If I were to take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost ends of the earth, there you would be. And we could add that if one were to find themselves in a deep dungeon, shackled and bleeding and in complete darkness, there you would be in the midst. This is what Paul and Silas found as they decided, by an act of their will and according to the attitude that guided them, to pray and sing praises unto God.

We see that when they did this, they were a witness to all the other prisoners, the prisoners could hear them and must have marveled. Can I suggest that when we display this kind of attitude in the midst of our trials then the unsaved and the unlearned marvel as well. It is one thing to pray and sing praises to God when all is well with us, yet it is something other-worldly to pray and sing the praises of God when we are surrounded by darkness and find ourselves without any natural hope. The supernatural is unleashed by the un-natural act of praising God and giving thanks despite our circumstances. To many times the Christian church has chased after the miraculous so that they can prove to a dying world that there is a supernatural God in heaven. Yet how many opportunities have been missed to ” bring God down,” in the midst of our calamities?

Satan says to God about Job that he only worships him because of the blessing that God has bestowed upon him. Satan accuses and says that if these blessings were removed, if he was given entrance through the hedge that God had around Job, that Job would simply curse God and die. You see, the way that we truly give glory to God and bring down His power is to confound the darkness that we find ourselves in. When we cry out to God and give Him thanks and praise in the deepest part of the valley, we will find ourselves loosed from the darkness that had previously contained us and a door is opened to us, a gate swings open and we find ourselves on the mountaintop. True freedom is delivered to us by God and no prison nor any darkness nor any set of circumstances can contain the power of God, quite the opposite. To discover this secret is to throw of the chains of the reality of this world and exchange them for wings that allow us to fly away to the mountaintop of the Kingdom of God which is our true reality.

For the prisoners sake we willingly take our place in the valley. We step down from that place of glory and walk through this world with all of its trials and darkness. Yet we do it knowing that our reality is Jesus Himself and His kingdom, a kingdom that we are already walking in. Can you see it brothers and sisters? Can you lift up your eyes right now and see the Kingdom reality of God? It is there and it is more real than the world that we see with our human eyes. When we can do this we can cause two worlds to collide, we can bring the supernatural reality of God and His light into the darkness of this world.

Act 16:26 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.

Shall we shake this world to its very foundation? Shall we shake our own lives and the lives of our families and friends? Shall we step out of the deepest valley and onto the highest mountaintop of His manifest presence? The power of God already resides within you, for greater is He that is within you than He that is in the world. Do you believe this? Can you pray and give thanks and praise the living God no matter where you find yourself today? It is the key to loosing the bands of the enslaved, to bring the reality of God’s kingdom right into the darkness. The mountaintop comes down to the valley. Christ came down to earth. God steps down and walks among men. He is God amongst us, will you call on Him today?