One More Thing About Plateaus

So here we are running free and running wild on this remarkable plateau. We feel the refreshment of a cold mountain waterfall after a hot summer day’s hike. Discovering, growing, learning, renewing. It’s great! But there is one more thing about plateaus. They often come at price. And some times they come at a very painful price.

I discovered the eye-popping, grace-awakening truth of submission to the Lordship of Christ just before I turned twenty. At that point in my life I was finally ready to acknowledge that there wasn’t peace doing things my way. But it took four years of stiff-necked selfishness and emptiness before I was open for God to swoop in with this life giving truth.

The next big plateau came almost twenty years later. I desperately needed to learn that Christ lives His life in me through the indwelling work of the Spirit. That nugget was received only after more personal struggle. Reflecting on that time I’ve said things such as, “Trying harder just wasn’t enough, and honestly we were both feeling like failures in marriage…Being a husband and father is enough to break a person. It seemed I was often reacting out of frustration. I remember one evening saying to God, ‘I just can't live the Christian life. I am a failure.’”

It seems that there is something in our humanness that makes us most prepared to receive a golden nugget of truth at our point of weakness. In humiliation and struggles, in brokenness and floundering the Lord is ready and willing to reveal Himself in new ways. It’s like He’s saying, “I’ve been waiting for you to get to the end of your rope, but is it ever worth it. I’ve got something really special waiting for you.”

I’ll have to tell you about our Mexico experience sometime. It was filled with challenges but has yielded up one of those valued plateaus. In the meantime let’s ask ourselves what lies behind the door of our current difficulties and what lush stately garden awaits us.