In “other” Words: The View from the Mountain Top

The Sphere of Exultation

from “My Utmost For His Highest”

by Oswald Chambers

“Jesus lead­eth them up into a high moun­tain apart by themselves.” Mark 9:2

We have all had times on the mount, when we have seen things from God’s stand­point and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spir­i­tual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, some­thing is wrong. It is a great thing to be on the mount with God, but a man only gets there in order that after­wards he may get down among the devil-possessed and lift them up. We are not built for the moun­tains and the dawns and aes­thetic affini­ties, those are for moments of inspi­ra­tion, that is all. We are built for the val­ley, for the ordi­nary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our met­tle. Spir­i­tual self­ish­ness always wants repeated moments on the mount. We feel we could talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay on the mount. The times of exal­ta­tion are excep­tional, they have their mean­ing in our life with God, but we must beware lest our spir­i­tual self­ish­ness wants to make them the only time.

We are apt to think that every­thing that hap­pens is to be turned into use­ful teach­ing, it is to be turned into some­thing bet­ter than teach­ing, viz., into char­ac­ter. The mount is not meant to teach us any­thing, it is meant to make us some­thing. There is a great snare in ask­ing — What is the use of it? In spir­i­tual mat­ters we can never cal­cu­late on that line. The moments on the moun­tain tops are rare moments, and they are meant for some­thing in God’s purpose.

It is not often that I totally dis­agree with the quote selected for this writ­ing exer­cise. But this is one of those times.

We are built for moun­tains, dawns and aes­thetic affini­ties because we are cre­ated in the image of the Divine Cre­ator. So to say that we are not meant to reflect that beauty on a con­sis­tent basis is wrong and offen­sive to the one who made us — and reflects totally out­dated think­ing. The above quote was, after all, writ­ten in 1918 and reflects the kind of nar­row, black-and-white, neg­a­tive world view that was char­ac­ter­is­tic of that time period.

We are born pure and capa­ble of being in spir­i­tual con­ver­sa­tion with the Divine in a most pro­found way, but then we grow and go out into the world — and become cor­rupted by its nature.

I don’t find any­thing remotely self­ish or self-centered about striv­ing through­out one’s life to recover that ini­tial spirit of purity and open­ness. In fact, in my view of Chris­tian­ity, that is what we should all ascribe to each and every day.

I do not believe that the Divine desires for us to leave the moun­tain top at all. Rather, I think that those moments of sheer ela­tion, joy, and rejoic­ing are not the way we live every moment of every day because we are exist­ing in a bro­ken world. The author would have us believe that the Divine pushes us off the moun­tain when, in fact, I believe that we slide back down the hill­side because we are, like this world, imper­fect and unable to sus­tain our spir­i­tual con­nec­tion at that level of inten­sity. The Divine would rather that we remain in that type of com­mu­nion on a con­stant basis, but it is impos­si­ble because of our flawed natures. It breaks the Divine’s heart and that heart­break led to the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice that was made in order that we will reach a point in time when we will live in per­fect har­mony with the Divine.

The most effec­tive way to wit­ness to oth­ers is to sim­ply model the beliefs we espouse and reveal the joy that we feel when we wake up each morn­ing to real­ize that we are at the begin­ning of another day truly made by the Divine Cre­ator. You can preach to oth­ers from now until — lit­er­ally — the end of time with­out chang­ing their mind about spir­i­tu­al­ity or con­vinc­ing them to believe. We utterly lack any abil­ity to con­vert oth­ers. Only through the inter­ven­tion of the Spirit can a non­be­liever come to know and love the Divine.

Mark 9:2–13 describes the Trans­fig­u­ra­tion of Jesus, wit­nessed by Peter, James and John. Surely that expe­ri­ence was meant to teach the dis­ci­ples that Jesus was truly the Son of the Divine, as evi­denced by their being enveloped in a cloud and hear­ing a voice declare “This is my Son, whom I love. Lis­ten to him!” Fol­low­ing that event, Jesus told them not to speak of what they had seen until after they had seen the Son of Man risen from the dead. They were con­fused, of course, and fol­lowed his direc­tion, but talked among them­selves, try­ing to com­pre­hend what he had told them.

To say that “moun­tain top” expe­ri­ence of the Dis­ci­ples was not a teach­ing moment is to miss the point. Jesus was illus­trat­ing for them what he would look like after his res­ur­rec­tion and made them privy to his com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Eli­jah and Moses in order to teach them what eter­nity will be like.

It is true that we toil here in a val­ley — cop­ing with the mun­dane, ordi­nary aspects of our lives while seek­ing to ful­fill our dreams, dis­cern the Spirit’s whis­per­ing to us in those “still, small moments,” and under­stand the goals the Divine has crafted for our lives here in prepa­ra­tion for the next. Those are the mile­stones by which I eval­u­ate the qual­ity of my life. Those mark­ers are the real test of my “met­tle” because they reflect the fact that I am a unique and loved child of the Divine Cre­ator, and bring honor and glory to the one who assured that I will spend eter­nity on top of a beau­ti­ful, flaw­less moun­tain top.

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