Posted by kind permission of Bryan Hupperts.
When
The Mountain Falls On You!
Bryan Hupperts
SheepTrax Media™ features the wit, wisdom and
deepthinking of Christian humorist, author, and
cultural commentator Bryan Hupperts.
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When The Mountain Falls On You!
Hi SheepTrax!
Have faith. It certainly sounded easy enough. Matthew 17:20, “So Jesus said to
them, "I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to
this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be
impossible for you.’” So I spoke to the mountain. It began to shake violently.
It began to move. Thank You, Jesus! It began to rise!
And then Ker-Splatt - the mountain dropped right back
down to earth with a whumping thud, piling right on
top of little ole me. Lemme guess, Lord; today’s life
lesson isn’t about power faith but rather trusting faith. And here my squished
earthly remains are being stratified like layers of rock under umpteen hundreds
of tons of weight and pressure. I don’t think a band-aid is going to take the ouchie away, either.
Did some anonymous prankster tape a ‘Kick Me, I Love Jesus’ sign on my backside
again?
I thought I had obeyed God. I stepped out in faith. I mean, I spoke to the
mountain and it did move – a little. Nobody warned me that mountains don’t like
to be spoken to or moved and look for opportunities to speak right back.
A sage once said, “Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug.”
There are times when you can stand in the midst of the congregation and shout
for the joy of overcoming victory in Christ. And then there are other those unpraise reports times when a few faithful friends have to
come along and scrape your splattered inner workings off the windshield of the
semi truck of life. Squiggly, victorious you got suddenly squished.
One of the hard things about being an angel is that angels don’t bounce. They
can only fall once, for when they take the long plunge from the grace of God,
there is no road back. Jesus didn’t die to redeem the angels. When they jump,
it’s without benefit of a bungee and makes for a permanent fall.
We humans, on the other hand, can fall, and fall, and fall again. In fact,
we’re so good at tripping over our feet, our tongue, as well as the only rock
in a 40-acre field, that God gave us this little proviso in Proverbs 24:16, “A
righteous man falls seven times, and rises again.” We got bounce! It’s a grace
thing.
There is something resilient within the spirit of man that causes us to rise
again after even the most crushing of defeat. As a guy who has spent several
years of his life trying to tunnel his way from beneath a mountain that fell,
who has had to have his innards scraped back together and cleaned up like a
splattered bug on a windshield, I can sympathize.
Sooner or later, if you’re going to walk by the Spirit, you will encounter the
Cross of Christ. It is the wonderful place where your sins were forgiven, but
it is also the same dark and foreboding place you go to have your life
crucified. The Cross is an instrument designed with one end in mind: death.
And, trust me on this one, if you want to die to self, the church is full of
well-meaning people just waiting to lend a helping hand, a crushing boot,
whatever!
However the mountain falls on you, it is an excruciatingly painful time when
you tend to forget about the past goodness of God. But I have discovered the
reason the mountain I had commanded by faith to move had summarily fallen on
top of me. Matthew
In our quest to have our prayers answered, we sometimes tend to ignore God and
his ways. Our issue becomes The Issue that we feel God should stop and address
to the exclusion of all others. And He will allow wayward us step out just far
enough in faith in one direction only use oft-painful circumstances to get us
to deal with those things we’ve tended to ignore in our own lives.
Hummm… being buried alive under this mountain has
given me time to think, to pray, to take inventory and to finally realize that
God is far greater, and that I am far smaller, than I ever knew. Next time when
God begins to deal in my heart, may I have the wisdom to remember my mountain tunneling time. Whether it’s falling mountains or bug smooshing windshields, I will preemptively
fall upon the Rock to be broken ‘cause God save me from ever having the Rock
fall on me again!
Finally, the good thing about being thoroughly smashed flat is that the Master
Potter can lovingly scoop you up, rework your shape this time with little resistance
from you, and forge you into the beautiful vessel He intended all along. And
then the Spirit of God whispers, “Now, let’s finish this thing. In my
authority, speak to the mountain…”
Bryan Hupperts © 2003
SheepTrax Media ™
deepsheep@sheeptrax.com
www.SheepTrax.com
http://www.sheeptrax.injesus.com
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