Mountains: Find Hope and Vision in God’s PresenceSample

Relying on God’s Presence to Carry You Through

Truth be told, I prefer the autonomy of self-sufficiency. It’s just the way I’m wired. Maybe I’m speaking your truth too or describing one of your loved ones. Perhaps you know what it’s like to swat away a helping hand in pursuit of wobbly independence or to watch someone else do it.

But we’re not built for self-reliance. Self-reliance is always going to get in the way of our relationship with God. I think we know this deep down, but in practice, we struggle to appreciate our neediness and to choose desperate dependence upon Christ. The Christian life is an ongoing tussle between hope and doubt, self-reliance and dependence on God, resisting our limitations and grasping a helping hand.

In our Scripture passage this week, we find a group of inexperienced Christ followers struggling to find a way down from the high of Jesus’ resurrection. They, too, found themselves wrestling with mixed emotions—joy and fear, faith and doubt. They were confident Jesus was alive after his death and were filled with adoration... but also uncertain about what would happen next.

On the final mountain in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gathered and commissioned all of his disciples, men and women, and set in motion the culmination of God’s original plan detailed on Mount Eden—to see the whole world flourish.

Why does the Great Commission take place on a mountain? Because God uses mountains in the Bible to symbolize a place where we can enjoy his presence, always. Even if we rebel against God and reject his presence, he’s proven to us through Mount Eden that he will come close to us. Even if we fail to fulfill his laws for us the way the Israelites failed to follow the Torah, God has proven to us through Mount Sinai that he will be with us no matter what. Even if our hearts need an overhaul, like the people listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, God promises to renovate our hearts from the inside out. Even if we need to be transformed into Christ’s likeness, like Peter, James, and John did at the Mount of Transfiguration, God will do it on our behalf so that we can be close to him and become more like him.

Which brings us to our final mountain, the Mount of the Great Commission. If we had any doubts that God’s presence is faltering, if we had any concerns that we are too far gone, God reminds us at the Mount of the Great Commission: He will be with us always.

You may be standing by yourself or facing the unthinkable without the people you thought would always be by your side, but you are not without a companion. Jesus is with you.

In Jesus’ final mountaintop meeting with his disciples, he commissions worshipful and doubtful Christians with the promise of his staying presence. In doing so, he gives permission to folks like you and me who process conflicting feelings in our faith to rely on Jesus’ divine presence.

Prayer: God, thank you for the truth that I am never alone. Help me to hold tightly to you, trusting that the only way to carry out the Great Commission is by staying in your presence. May I be unashamed of my dependence on you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.