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Claiming Our Mountaint - Part 2 - Moving to a Mountain

by Jerry Ousley  
10/12/2012 / Christian Living

Mountains are extraordinary creations of God. They hold me in awe. There's just something majestic about looking up at that big pile of rocks jutting up from the surface of the earth. It may be covered with trees or it may be so high that there comes a point when the tree-line disappears and you see barren rock and maybe even snow covering the top. There are mountains that are so high that the tops disappear in the clouds way up in the sky. They never cease to amaze me.

While I love looking at mountains, I wouldn't want to climb one. For one thing I'm out of shape. We walked up to "Clingman's Dome" one time in the Great Smokey Mountains. That trek up the well marked path was steep enough for me. I was out of breath by the time we got up there. I can't even imagine how much energy we would exert hanging on to little places in the rock held by a rope high atop some of the mountains we see people climbing. I have a great respect for those who love the sport of climbing mountains but folks, I doubt you'll ever see a picture of me hanging on for dear life on the side of a mountain. For one thing it would be terribly embarrassing to have my picture taken crying like a baby way up there!

In Genesis 12:6-8 we read about the experience Abram had with God. Just after this experience, God directed Abram to move to a mountain. There he set up camp. However, he didn't stay there. We read later on where he returned to this mountain home but life took him away from it.

We too will move to a mountain after we have encountered God. It is a spiritual place where we can escape. It's a place that is full of peace and away from trouble. Everyone needs a mountain to claim as their own, where they can escape the hustle and bustle of life.

It would be great if we could move to a mountain and just live the rest of our lives out in peace, quiet and trouble-free times. But that isn't reality. While we most definitely need to claim our spiritual mountain we will not stay there. We may be able to return to it and with some that may happen more often than with others. But we all have to leave our mountain from time to time.

The thing about mountains is that they are surrounded by valleys. Spiritually mountains speak of victory, triumph and good times, while valleys speak of trouble, trials and misfortune. We can't really appreciate living on a mountain unless we go through the valleys of life.

We have often asked, "Why would God let this happen to me?" We could be referring to a number of things. They all mark significant periods of trouble in our lives. In our modern time it could be losing our financial stability, losing our homes, our savings, our health and many other things. It could mean the loss of a loved one. It's very hard to understand, that if God is such a good and loving Father, why He would allow us to experience calamity.

But He does because we all have life-lessons to learn. These periods of teaching are not punishment from our Father but are times meant to bring us to a point where we can learn to lean on Jesus. None of us are so strong that we don't need help from time to time. We all need a place to lean. There is no place better than on the shoulder of Jesus Christ. During our valley experiences we find out that those things are not as important as knowing just who we really need to depend on.

We need mountains and we need valleys. But thank God that after each and every valley experience, if we have come to Jesus Christ, we always have our mountain to return to. Claim your mountain today. Remember that you can't always stay there, but you can always return there.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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