Okay, here we go. We're gonna, as Nick said, we are gonna have an extended time of worship tonight, but that doesn't mean the Lord doesn't want to speak to us right now. And I believe that there are some timely tools that the Lord wants to give tonight, because we're in a season of processing now, where it's like New Year's is coming up, and you're looking back on 2019, and you're looking forward to 2020, and everyone's gonna ask you, what was your highlight, and what are you looking forward to, and we're in the season of kind of contemplative thought. And I've learned that if we don't have processing tools, what ends up happening is we kind of just let life happen to us, and it feels kind of haphazard, and we become victims of our circumstance.
And so what I believe the Lord wants to do tonight, in our walk with the Lord, how do we process the highs and lows? If you look back on this past year, many of us have probably had what I'm gonna call mountaintop moments, where it's like, God's real, no, like for real, he's real. Like, did you know he's real? How does anybody not believe in Jesus?
Like he's right here in your face, maybe you got supernaturally healed, right? Maybe your family was in a really rough spot, and supernaturally provision came, and you're like, everybody, he's real, right? It's in your face encounter with God moments, mountaintops. But if you were alive for this last calendar year, you know that you don't stay there, right?
Often there's valleys as well, really difficult times. Things are going through, you're going, I don't know how to do this, it's that difficult. And then there's a lot of times that are just kind of the plains, the Nebraska's and the Kansas's of our spiritual journey. We love Nebraska Nicole, we love Nebraska.
But it's just kind of the flatlands, like there's not a whole bunch of movement that doesn't feel super exciting or super devastating, it's just the plains, right? So what I wanna talk about tonight is how we navigate the spiritual landscape that we find ourselves in, specifically honing in on those mountaintop moments, because I believe there's keys there that if we process them well, actually equip us for the valleys and the plains. We're gonna look at this by looking at the life of Mary, Jesus's mom. Now here's the thing, Mary is not a Christmas figure, she's like, she was alive for more than that.
And I feel like sometimes we relegate Mary to like the nativity scene, right? And it might be a reaction to Catholicism or the Eastern Orthodox Church that so venerated her that she's divine and we're like, we don't believe that. So we're just gonna put her on the front lawn as part of the nativity scene. And she's so much more than a member of the nativity club.
She's amazing and she's a hero. And there's so much that could be gleaned in this exact topic by looking at Mary. All right, so let's look at Mary together. We're gonna look at the little bit of her life that we get a clear glimpse of, this is in Luke 2 and Matthew 2.
We don't know how things started, but we know that somewhere between the age of 13 and 16, Mary, a normal middle school girl growing up in Judea had a mountaintop moment. Archangel Gabriel shows up, heck of a quiet time. Like that's, I'm gonna remember this one, mountaintop, right? And it doesn't stop there because this Archangel says to her, Mary, the Messiah that your people have been praying for and waiting for for literally thousands of years, God's picked you to conceive and bear and raise his own son.
Mountaintop, I'm gonna remember that one Lord, right? Doesn't stop there, she goes and stays with her cousin, Elizabeth. Elizabeth has also seen an angel, gotten visited, and supernaturally her and her husband have conceived, even though she was way past childbirthing age. And so Mary spends the season of pregnancy with another supernatural pregnancy, and they wake up in the morning and it's like, God's real, right?
I know he's real. Mary feels a kick, that's a Messiah kick. That's a God kick, did you feel that mountaintop? Like she's living in this extended season of God's reality being right in her face.
And she's staying with Elizabeth, so it's like feeding. And you're in those moments where it's like, we're doing it, he's real. I don't wanna skip over the hard parts that I'm sure we're involved, but we talked about last week, she ends up in a cave giving birth to this little boy. And as wild as that was, not a few hours later, these shepherds roll in and say, guess what?
Even more angels. The skies opened up and they were singing, glory to God on the high, say, let us to you, Mary. Confirmation, your son is the Messiah. Eight days later, they're in the temple, Simeon and Anna come up and they're going, he's the Messiah, they're in these prophetic words.
Mountaintop, mountaintop, a little bit of time goes by. She's sitting at home and all of a sudden, these literal kings from somewhere in what's modern day Iraq, show up at her front door, say, God created a celestial being that led me to your home. We're here now, here's a kind of expensive gifts, mountaintop. Mary is living on the mountaintop right now.
She's having all these experiences. But then another angel shows up. This time to Joseph and this one isn't bringing glad tidings of great joy. This one tells Joseph in a dream, I need you to leave right now.
King Herod has your son on his hit list and he's trying to kill you. That's the equivalent of us hearing that the FBI has your name and is coming to find you. Imagine the anxiety, right? And Mary, who's been seeing all these angels, Mary's not the one who gets that word, her husband is.
So now there's this faith where she's going, wait, what? I've been living up here and now you're telling me, okay, well, then we go and she enters the valley. And she's fleeing to Egypt being hunted by a literal army. She ends up in Egypt where she's a refugee.
No one speaks the language. She doesn't have her community around her. This whole time she's trying to raise a little boy, the anxiety that comes with that. She's in a valley.
And then sometime we don't know how long after, but they find their way on another long painful journey with a little kid back to Nazareth. And then we reach Nebraska. And there's just kind of decades of no more angels, no more prophetic words that we know of. Not crazy hard, it's just I'm at home with kids.
Joseph's a carpenter, the planes, right for decades. And I think this journey echoes a lot of our journeys or people that we know are specifically heroes of the faith. We see this pattern of like there's the crazy mountaintop followed by the crazy valley. And then there's this kind of flat land that they also live in.
So we want to talk about processing that specifically the mountaintops because as I said, I believe there's keys that God gives us in those moments where you're so convinced of the reality of God, there's keys there that have meaning outside of just that moment. So I want to address real quickly some of the ditches, the ways that we could process that I don't think it's healthy. But if we're aware of them, then if we start to do that, then we go, oh, there's that thing, I don't want to do that. As I'm sharing these, I feel like shoot, that's me.
It's like, awesome, there's a better way than we can correct, right? The first way that we incorrectly process, the mountaintop moment, is we get addicted to it. We go, I need that because that experience validates God. I need the encounter because otherwise it says something about me, maybe I screwed up, maybe I'm not good enough.
And suddenly I need an angel or a prophetic word or the Holy Ghost goosebumps or at least I have to cry during worship to prove that God's real in my life. And if you have an extended season where that doesn't happen, suddenly you panic, you go, I need an encounter. I need something. So you start fishing for it, you go, ah ha, Bill Johnson's coming to Chicago, totally worth the drive because if Bill Johnson's there, there's going to be an encounter.
So I go to Chicago so I can get encountered. And you're hunting for the next encounter. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't go to Chicago. I'm saying Bill Johnson is amazing.
What I'm saying is that you should pursue that out of hunger, out of desperation to find something that validates your walk with the Lord. That's an incorrect way because you lose faith then. It's about the experience. It's not about God and what he's doing.
You're not partnering with the season and asking God questions. You're chasing an experience. You're like Peter then on the amount of transfiguration where Moses and Elijah and he go, sweet, this rules. Let's build a tent, we're living here now.
And Jesus says that's not how it works. We gotta go back down, right? So we can't get addicted to it. On the flip side, some of us, the second that we start going down the valley, we go, it was probably all fake anyways.
It probably made it up. I thought the Lord said that. I felt it in the moment. Gosh, I was really crying during worship and the Lord said this thing through my brother and all this stuff, but now it can't be real because look at my circumstances.
And we dissociate. The two, the mountain, the valley suddenly become fully separate and we dismiss it. Or at the very least, we just explain it away. Yeah, that was real, but that was for that season and now I'm in this season and we get this divide where they're separate events and they weren't meant to be.
It's almost like self-preservation saying, I'm just gonna do this now because I don't wanna touch that because now I'm feeling the pain of not having that so we build a wall. I believe the third way that you can incorrectly process encounters with God is that you just get used to him. How many of us have grown up in a community of faith and someone comes and gives you a prophetic word and it's like, wow, that's amazing on that church. It's like, yeah, I totally cried during worship.
It was awesome. But we end up treating it like a Christmas card. That's like, oh, that's sweet of you, Jesus. I appreciate that.
I'm gonna hang that on my fridge for a couple weeks and then I'm gonna forget about it. And what was meant to be a mountaintop moment that had value that was gonna be a sustaining connection point with God turns into this almost like, oh, that's neat, thanks. We don't attribute the value to it that God's wanting for us. He's giving us a gift and we're, I don't wanna say we're despising the gift.
I'm gonna say that in a moment, it kinda gets washed out in the noise. I wanna specifically say this to our church community cause I feel like at times we question the validity of the experiences with God because we've been hammering it home for years going, you have everything you need for life and godliness. God's giving you full access to the throne room. Vail was torn, you're in.
There's no more striving, right? So we use that language but then we look at the experience, we go, I don't really need that. Like God's giving me everything. So I'm not gonna even desire it somehow wrong to desire being on the mountaintop cause I should be satisfied wherever I am.
But here's the thing guys, those mountaintop moments, like Jesus had a mountaintop moment. Jesus had moments of intense connection with God. And in any relationship it's healthy to have those moments of intentional special connection. If it's me and my kids, man those moments of connection are so vital because it's not always like that, right?
In every relationship there's a value in having that special mountaintop moment. And I wanna talk about why. Because we've been talking about the ways to not process it and going, okay, well now what do I do? Here's some tips and things to remember.
First of all, God is not only on the mountaintop. So please remember all these things that I'm saying about the value of that. I'm not saying that he's distant from you in any way. He's always faithful but I do believe that there are keys.
There are things where the moment happens and we go, okay, and we think that we got it. And then three months later we go, oh, I actually didn't get it. Now I got it. And we're revisiting that because there are keys there.
So why do we have the mountaintops? What's the point? The first reason, and now we're gonna go back to Mary, right? The first reason that I think God gives us these mountaintop moments is they just get our attention.
Mary's just kind of doing whatever 14 year olds did in first century, Judea, and an angel shows up and now it's got her attention. And then she's going to live with Elizabeth and now we're like, okay, God's everywhere. And then there's these shepherds. And she's waking up in the morning going, is today an angel day?
Cause I'm like, she's expecting, right? She's hungry. She's looking for God in everything because of the mountaintop experience. She's convinced of the reality and creates hunger and it wakes her up.
So they get our attention. So many times you guys, we just get lulled into what we're doing. And if God comes this close, we go, oh yeah. And our eyes open a little more and we're re invited into the things that we thought we've been doing all along, but in a fresh way.
They're not just moments in and of themselves. I believe those mountaintop moments can actually give us keys in the valley. We're not addicted to them. We also don't totally divorce the two.
So I picture Mary and she's a refugee now living in Egypt. There's no community around her. There's no one taking care of her. She's not by your mom to be able to say, what do I do with this thing when it does this thing?
Right? Like there's pain, there's loss, there's separation, there's anxiety. Is her going to find us here too? Right?
There's that she's in that moment. And then it's 3 a.m. And she's exhausted. And baby Jesus wakes up because that's what babies do at 3 a.m.
And then baby Jesus fills this diaper because that's what babies do. And so she's reaching over to the bag. I just imagine this, right? She's reaching over to their one bag of all their belongings, opens it up to try and find a change of clothes and she smells frankincense.
She smells myr. And she's reminded, oh yeah. That happened. God was faithful in that moment.
He spoke then and I can carry that through into this circumstance. I'm in the valley, but he's with me. He didn't forget me. And this is what happened there points me right now back to him, not to the moment.
Hear me. We're not trying to go back to the moment. We're reminded of him. And the essence of what happened on that mountaintop is him.
And we're reminded Mary has those gifts and those memories that sustain her through the valley. And then we come to the plains, normalcy, right? Say most of us live. Those mountaintop moments give meaning to the mundane.
Because we remember Mary every time that her husband comes back from the shop. And he just made a manger for the local farm. She sees the manger and she remembers. Every time Jesus' birthday rolls around, she remembers.
Every time they go to the synagogue, she goes, Simeon was right there. When he spoke truth over, I can't remember. And the day to day has meaning. If we properly process what happened on the mountaintop, there are gifts that keep us leaning in, that keep us thankful.
There's something about the character of Mary that the gospel writers wanted to point it out multiple times. And this is why I think she's the poster child of how to properly process this stuff. The Bible says two separate times about her and Mary pondered all these things in her heart. And she treasured them up.
That word treasure means to preserve, to keep from being lost, to keep in mind less than be forgotten. And Mary had this habit of remembering and cherishing these things. The phrase that I'm gonna sum this all up in this thoughtful thankfulness. She's treasuring them, she's pondering them.
There's intentionality in it. And this is apparently not just on the mountaintop. Because the first time it says it, it's when those kings from the east come. She's pondering it.
But then the next time we hear this said, it's 12 years later. When they're doing their annual family trip to Jerusalem and to shoot where's Jesus, we lost the Son of God. There he is, okay. There's the anxiety moment.
And Jesus says, didn't you know what be about my father's business? And she goes, oh yeah, your father, I remember. And it's at that moment the gospel writers say again, she pondered all these things and treasured them in her heart. She's habitually pondering and thanking.
And I believe that that is the key that the Lord would give us tonight. When you're on the mountaintop, you're pondering, you're thoughtful, you're thankful. When you're in the valley, you're pondering, you're thoughtful and you're thankful. When you're in the plains, you're pondering, you're thoughtful and you're thankful.
I believe that Mary shows us the way how to do this. And I believe that all of us are invited tonight into looking back at some of the experiences we've had with the Lord. Maybe it was your salvation moment. Maybe it was at summer camp.
Maybe it was in a prayer room somewhere on your YWMDTS, or there's these moments that are mountaintops. And I think the Lord's calling us back and saying, would you ponder that thing? Would you treasure it up? Because there might just be a key for you in there.
Because you might not be on the mountaintop right now. But God, in his faithfulness saw you right now, tonight. And there might be, there just might be a clue in there. There might be a key in there that he meant for tonight.
Where's your team, you can come on up. What we're gonna do is create a little bit of time for this, okay? So some of you may be thinking to yourself, I have no idea what he's talking about with these mountaintop moments. I kind of just feel like I've been on the plains most of my life, a couple of valleys here and there, but I don't even know what you're talking about with these experiences with God.
And I'm telling you this, like I said, there's a value in it and in any relationship, there's value in it. So Jesus wants it for you, I promise. I know these people walk him up, it's okay. They're supposed to be there.
But God wants to encounter you in a significant way that's more than just like a clockmaker that says, well, now you have Holy Spirit, so see you later, good luck is the other side. He wants to get in your face. He wants to encounter you in one of those mountaintop moments. So if you've never had one, be expected for 2020.
Because if you ask for it, it's going to happen. Because Jesus wants to be close to you in a real tangible, in your face kind of way. Heck, maybe tonight, we're gonna have an extended time of worship. Why not tonight?
Where God brings you up and you're elevated and you're going, oh, that's what he's talking about. Why not? And for some of you, you might be going, oh yeah, I'm remembering that thing. That moment.
Holy Spirit might bring up something that isn't the obvious one. I've had some moments in my life, right? That are like, those were the big guys. But when I did this exercise for myself, Holy Spirit brought up this memory of this one time that I had totally forgotten about.
And he said, son, there's something still in there for you. You moved on too quick. And it's kind of springs me back to it. So I think there's an opportunity for us to do that.
It's gonna be gold that we find. It's actually designed by God for this season, whether you're in the Plains or the valleys or if you might be on a mountaintop. I believe that there's gold that we can find if we just look for it. So let's all stand up together.
If you're willing, we're gonna spread out. Again, we've mentioned this. We have room tonight. Spread out because we're not gonna sprint into a song quick because we want you guys to have room to process this and actually action what we're talking about out.
God is so good. He wants to talk to you. He wants to meet with you. He wants to remind you.
And he's given us those mountaintop moments for more than just an isolated incident. So like Mary tonight, we get to ponder and be thoughtful and be thankful and look back so that we can move forward with a fresh, renewed fixation on him. My prayer for you tonight is that it would be like that frankincense moment for Mary, where she's rummaging through the bag and she gets hit with a sense of frankincense and it gives her fresh vision and fresh reason for things that she's doing. So let's pray together.
Jesus, we are so thankful for your leadership. We're so thankful that we're not doing this alone. We're so thankful that we're not aimlessly floating back and forth between things God, your leadership is perfect. And wherever we find ourselves right now, you can be present and you can be a good leader.
And I ask that in those moments where we're on the mountaintop, that the same truth that we knew were true that you remind us of now, whether we feel it or not. God, I thank you for sustaining vision. That isn't circumstantial. God, I thank you that in all the changing landscape of our lives, you're steady.
And you can bring us back to that moment. You can remind us of truths that were designed for right here, right now. So we thank you, Jesus. We thank you, Holy Spirit right now, for bringing moments to mind that we can mind the golden.
Like I said, guys, we're not gonna sprint into a song right now. There's time to sit totally down if I stand. But the goal right now is that we're asking God questions and we're pondering and we're thoughtfully thankful for what he's done.