Sweat Now, Summit Later: Four Days to Getting the Most Out of the MountaintopSample

Leave No Trace

The phrase "leave no trace," which pops up when discussing camping, hiking, or backpacking, originated in the 1960s. In the '60s, there was a boom in people in America taking advantage of visiting and recreating national parks. They went from having 33 million visitors in 1950 to 172 million visitors in 1970 (a five-fold increase)! In the words of one pamphlet, America was "loving her parks to death."

Leave No Trace was a slogan born in that era that essentially boils down to one word: "impact." Minimizing your impact so that if someone came after you to camp in the same spot, they would not notice your impact. The hope is that no one would ever know that you were there.

All this to say, when God comes into someone's life, the exact opposite happens. It would be a travesty if no one could see any evidence that He was there. If God comes into your life, and there is only lip service, but the people who interact with you see no visible impact of His presence whatsoever, that's not God's desire. He wants to create divine disruption. He wants to change. He wants to heal. He wants to alter. He wants it to be that if someone encounters a follower of Jesus, they can sense Him all over the place.

He is not about that leave-no-trace ethic when it comes to your life, when it comes to your heart, when it comes to your mind. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, you see it plain as day–the old has gone, the new has come. He wants to shake things up! He wants to make you new! He looks at you and says, this is a canvas I can work on. Think about it. The God who built the Bob Marshall Wilderness had the ingenuity to carve out the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef, and dug the Tetons with His finger. That Guy looks at your life and goes, I can't wait to get to work.

To make the most out of your mountain-top experience: brace for impact!

Take some time today to receive that word from God, thank Him for it, and ask him to open your heart and eyes this week to the areas He wants to leave a mark in your life.