Perspective On The MountaintopSample

Gas In The Car

Experience is the fuel for opportunity. The things that happen to us provide us the chance to make our choices. It is like being dealt a hand of cards. You can’t control what you are handed, but you do get to decide how to play.

We tend to fear imperfection. We are frightened because experience is also the cause of pain. If we can avoid it, perhaps we can avoid being hurt. If we can control it, perhaps we can sidestep the negative circumstances and their consequences. But no matter how much we try, we cannot fully control our circumstances. We cannot keep pain at bay. We cannot eliminate risk or silence difficulty. What we can do is adopt a different perspective about the experiences that happen to us. We can be shrewd playing the cards we are dealt.

In short, we can persevere. The Apostle Paul tells us that our suffering produces endurance. If we can fully grasp those words, it can revolutionize our perspective. It strengthens our mentality, understanding that we are strong because He is strong. We are not forsaken because God is with us. He is with us until the end. 

God is with us on the mountaintop and He is with us in the valleys. We cannot quit or believe that a season is the end of it. We can persevere. There’s a verse in the book of Hebrews that says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Races have finish lines for good reason. God exhorts us to run our race well until we stretch at the tape.

The end does not consist of circumstances. We tend to view circumstances, especially negative ones, as a finish line. The circumstance arrives, and we must “deal with it”. Then, we somehow seem surprised that a new set is waiting in the wings. Circumstance is more like a checkpoint than a finish line. It reminds us that we are on the journey and that we have choices to make.

Let’s embrace our experiences as opportunities and keep running the race – all the way to the end.