Category Archives: Mark

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Biblical Ignorance and Spiritual Impotence

When There Is No Power, There Is Only Spiritual Impotence

Too many churches today are filled with believers who think they have plenty of Bible knowledge, but in reality don’t because they have no biblical power when it comes to the exercise of their faith. I don’t want to be like that—arrogant yet empty—and I’m sure you don’t either! That was the problem of the Sadducees in Jesus’ day—no real knowledge because there was no real power. As we used to say in Sunday School when I was a little kid, “I don’t want to be a Sadducee, ‘cause they’re so sad, you see!” They truly were a sad lot, and the reason was exactly what Jesus exposed in them: Biblical ignorance and spiritual impotence.

The Journey: Mark 12:24

Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.”

Ouch! The teachers of the law and the Pharisees weren’t the only ones who incurred Jesus’ ire. This time he went after the Sadducees, pointing out both their ignorance and their impotence.

The Sadducees were a smaller group than the better-known and more popular Pharisees. They were typically the upper crust of Jewish society, the aristocracy, the ruling class—and real religious snobs. Among the many things they believed—or denied—was the resurrection of the human soul after death. That is why they tried to trap Jesus with this question about marriage after the resurrection. The High Priest, along with many of the regular priests belonged to the Sadducees. They were sort of the modern equivalent of the senior pastor and the pastoral staff, or perhaps more likely, they are akin to the religious elite today—denominational leaders, seminary presidents, Bible college professors who deny the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Jesus and the supernatural.

In the case of this “difficult conversation” with these Sadducees, Jesus went after the very thing they were most proud of—their authority—rightly pointing out that they had neither a right understanding of the Scripture, and therefore, no right to lead: “You do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” Or as the Message translation puts it, “You’re way off base, and here’s why: One, you don’t know your Bibles; two, you don’t know how God works.” If Jesus had been born in Fort Worth rather than Bethlehem, he might have said, “Bubba, when it comes to the Bible, you’re all hat and no cattle!”

Allen Ross writes, “There are Christians today who are very much like the Sadducees of old…Although they claim to be Christian, they do not actually believe in the resurrection, especially the resurrection of Jesus. And to them, doctrines of angels (and demons) are mythical expressions from a primitive mentality. Their form of Christianity has been submitted to modern reason…they are above the common Christian’s simplistic faith.”

All hat when it comes to Bible knowledge, but no cattle when it comes to biblical power. I don’t want to be like that—arrogant yet empty—and I’m sure you don’t either! As we used to say in Sunday School when I was a little kid, “I don’t want to be a Sadducee. ‘Cause they’re so sad, you see!” They truly were a sad lot, and the reason was exactly what Jesus exposed in them: Biblical ignorance and spiritual impotence.

Let’s never allow either our Biblical education or our spiritual position to create a barrier to real knowledge and true power. The antidote for being either a Sadducee or “sad, you see”, is simple faith in God, childlike openness to his Word, humble obedience to his will, and an altruistic desire for his empowerment.

In matters of faith, belief and practice, go back to what Scripture plainly says and ordinarily means—and obey it!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, I want to know you. And I want to know Jesus in the power of his death and resurrection.
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Watch Out For Cheap Forgiveness

Restoration Requires Repentance

How does God forgive us? Only when we confess. Confession opens the door to forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 says, “If…” underscore that conditional clause, “…if we confess our sins…” then comes the apodosis, or the consequence, “God will forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Nothing in the Bible indicates that God forgives sin if people don’t confess and repent of the sin.

The Journey: Mark 11:24-26

I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours. But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too. But if you refuse to forgive, your Father in heaven will not forgive your sins.

Don’t skip past these words too quickly! Far too many Christians claim an exemption on this one—to the Lord’s dismay and their own harm.

Is there someone you have not forgiven? Why? Did their offense against you rise to the level of a moral offense? Are they continuing in harmful behavior against you or others? If the offense doesn’t rise to that high threshold, then go before the Lord and ask him to help you forgive. If the offense does meet that threshold, make sure you are not holding on to destructive feelings against, allowing bitterness to take root in your soul, or nursing a grudge. Don’t let their sin pull you into their sin.

Having said that, there is another side to the forgiveness coin that we need to consider if we are going to have theological balance in this matter. The question that always comes up when you begin to talk about forgiveness is: Do we have to forgive everyone who has offended us?

I think there is a fair amount of confusion on this, and a lot of misguided theology is to blame. Perhaps you’ve been taught that you are to forgive others even when they don’t repent of the wrong they have committed. And the scriptural justification for that is Jesus’ words we read here. That might be leveraged, for instance, to say to the wife of a chronically unfaithful husband, “You gotta’ forgive him, or God won’t forgive you.”

But that interpretation fails to reconcile Jesus’ teachings with the rest of scripture, best summarized in Colossians 3:13 and Ephesians 4:32, where we are commanded to forgive others in the same manner that God forgives us.

How does God forgive us? Only when we confess. Confession opens the door to forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 says, “If…” underscore that conditional clause, “…if we confess our sins…” then comes the apodosis, or the consequence, “God will forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Nothing in the Bible indicates that God forgives sin if people don’t confess and repent of the sin. Remember, as C.S. Lewis observed, “Forgiveness does not mean excusing.”

Furthermore, the Bible always calls the sinner to repentance—that is, a radical reversal of the attitudes and actions that resulted in the sin. Confession without repentance is always hollow. (Matthew 3:7-8, Acts 2:37-38)

So when a wife is encouraged to forgive her adulterous husband while he’s continuing in his sin, she’s being asked to do something that God himself doesn’t require. What Scripture does teach is that we must always be ready and willing, as God is always ready and willing, to forgive those who repent.

But forgiveness without confession and repentance doesn’t lead to reconciliation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great theologian who was martyred by hanging in a Nazis concentration camp in 1945, said forgiveness without repentance is “cheap grace… which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner.”

Let me suggest that when there is no confession for a moral wrong committed against you, the better response would be to release that person to God’s justice in hopes that God will deal with them in a way that brings them to repentance and reconciliation. Further, we are never to give into bitterness, hold grudges, or let anger over sin pull us into sin. We must be very alert when we find ourselves in such a situation.

If you forgive cheaply, as Bonhoeffer warns, you may very well circumvent God’s process to bring that person to repentance and in so dong, close the door to reconciliation in your relationship.

Be very discerning about cheap grace. Genuine forgiveness and Biblical reconciliation require a two-person transaction that is enabled by the confession and repentance.

Is there someone you have not forgiven? Why? Did their offense against you rise to the level of a moral offense? Are they continuing in harmful behavior against you or others? If the offense doesn’t rise to that high threshold, then go before the Lord and ask him to help you forgive. If the offense does meet that threshold, make sure you are not holding on to destructive feelings against, allowing bitterness to take root in your soul, or nursing a grudge. Don’t let their sin pull you into their sin.

Yes, forgive! Do it early and often, quickly and fully. Be a forgiver, for sure, but don’t go beyond what Scripture teaches.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, to all who have sinned against me, I forgive then just as you have forgiven me.
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Righteous Indignation

Jesus’ Capacity For Anger Reveals His Even Greater Capacity For Mercy

The person who is not angry at things that thwart God’s love and purposes for people is therefore incapable of experiencing or advancing God’s kingdom. As a general rule it is never right to be angry for any insult of injury done to ourselves. Christians should never be resentful or reactionary, but it is appropriate to be angry at injuries and injustices done to other people. Selfish anger is always a sin; selfless anger can be one of the great change-dynamics in this world.

The Journey: Mark 11:15-16

Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace.

Jesus was no pushover, was he! For sure, he was a man of love and peace, but he had a huge capacity for anger—righteous indignation—never for what was done to him, but for what was done to others. He knew how to get angry and stay good—the perfect blend of “good and angry”.

In this case, he exploded with anger at people who were disgracing the temple! They had turned it from a place of prayer into a place of commerce—and even at that, they were ripping off vulnerable worshipers. But this wasn’t the only time Jesus blew a gasket: His anger flashed at the Pharisees who didn’t want him to heal a crippled man just because it was the Sabbath. He castigated his disciples for shooing the children away from him. He publicly chewed out Peter when he tried to substitute a cross-free plan for salvation.

Jesus knew how to be angry at the right time for the right reasons and never angry at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. He didn’t go around picking fights, but when he saw injustice, or man-made barriers to the abundance of God or spiritual strongholds that got between people and salvation, it really ticked him off.

So what ticks you off? David Seamands writes, “Anger is a divinely implanted emotion … If you cannot hate wrong, it’s very questionable whether you really love righteousness.” The person who is not angry at things that thwart God’s love and purposes for people is therefore incapable of experiencing or advancing God’s kingdom. As a general rule it is never right to be angry for any insult of injury done to ourselves. Christians should never be resentful or reactionary, but it is appropriate to be angry at injuries and injustices done to other people. Selfish anger is always a sin; selfless anger can be one of the great change-dynamics in this world.

Where is God’s kingdom being deliberately prevented in the world around you—by Satan, or worldly systems or manipulative people? Be very prayerful, and be very careful, but consider the possibility that a little righteous indignation may be in order.

A man who cannot be angry, cannot be merciful. (B.B. Warfield)

If God truly rules your life, then you will learn to get angry in the right way for the right reasons at the right time. If your anger does not meet that standard, then at best, you are expressing unproductive anger, and at worst, destructive anger—and for that you ought to repent. But if there is no anger at the things that anger God, then you ought to repent of excessive angerlessness and ask God to give you the mind of Christ so you can begin to see things as Jesus did.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, teach me to be angry—and sin not.
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What Does God Look Like?

Just Look At Jesus

In Jesus, God has identified with us so we can identify with him. In Jesus, God has come near to us so we can come near to God. In Jesus, God has made a way for us to live before him with complete confidence and daring prayerfulness—we can “come boldly to the throne of our gracious God, and there we will receive his mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” Wow! In Jesus, we get a live demonstration of what God is like.

The Journey: Mark 10:13-14

One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.”

What does God look like? No human being has ever seen him and lived to tell about it. So we are left to wonder.

I love the story of the little girl who was drawing a picture when her mother asked, “Honey, what are you drawing?” Quite confidently, the little girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God!” The mother reminded her that no one really knows what God looks like. To which the little girl said, “they will when I get done.”

In Jesus’ day, the people of Israel had never seen God. They only knew of him from their wooden rituals, vacuous traditions and misguided theologies. They had no visible clue as to what God was like, but Jesus came along and said, “they will when I get done.”

So what does God looks like? Just look at Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 1:15, “Jesus is the image of the invisible God.” Verse 19 says, “For in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” In other words, when you see Jesus, you’re seeing God himself. Jesus is the perfect picture of God; the absolutely accurate image of the Father. Jesus is the invisible God made visible. So what does watching Jesus tell us about God here in Mark 10?

How does God feel about your marriage? Just look at Jesus telling the Pharisees, “What God has joined together let not man separate.” (Verse 9)

  • How does God feel about your children? Just look at Jesus gathering up a bunch of kids in his arms and saying, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.” (Verse 14)
  • How does God feel about your struggle to let go of earthly dependencies? Just look at Jesus’ interaction with the rich young ruler: “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” (Verse 21)
  • How does God feel about your competitiveness with others? Just look at Jesus saying to his disciples, “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.” (Verse 44)
  • How does God feel about the things you care about? Just look at Jesus asking blind Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Verse 51)

What is God like? What does he look like? How does he feel about you? Just take a look at Jesus—it will really encourage you. Take a moment just to drink in what Hebrews 4:15 (The Message) has to say about it:

In Jesus, we don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

In Jesus, God has identified with us so we can identify with him. In Jesus, God has come near to us so we can come near to God. In Jesus, God has made a way for us to live before him with complete confidence and daring prayerfulness—we can “come boldly to the throne of our gracious God, and there we will receive his mercy and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”

Wow! In Jesus, we get a live demonstration of what God is like. And that’s a good deal for us way beyond description! As John Henry Jowett said,

Who would have had sufficient daring of imagination to conceive that God Almighty would have appeared among men as a little child? We should have conceived something sensational, phenomenal, catastrophic, appalling! The most awful of the natural elements would have formed His retinue, and men would be chilled and frozen with fear. But, He came as a little child. The great God ‘emptied Himself’; He let in the light as our eyes were able to bear it.

And we have beheld his glory!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for making yourself known to me in the person of Jesus Christ. And thank you for making a way through Jesus for me to come into your presence to receive the mercy and find the grace that I need to make it through this day in victorious fashion.
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Applauding Biblical Marriage

One Man, One Woman For A Lifetime Of Committed Love Is God’s Idea

If you are considering marriage in the future, or you are married, just remember, when you say “I do” before a human officiant, God says “Amen” from heaven.  And Jesus adds, “What God has joined together, let man not separate.” This simply means that the dissolution of the marriage covenant was never part of God’s original design. God didn’t think up divorce, we did that all by ourselves. God instituted marriage before the Fall; man devised divorce after the Fall.  So, in light of how God feels, when you choose your love, choose carefully, then commit to loving your choice for the rest of your life.

The Journey: Mark 10:2-9

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” ”What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Now here is a passage that rubs against the cultural fur these days. So a little background information will helps to understand what’s going on here. In the first century, the Pharisees were divided into two groups led by two great rabbis—Hillel and Shammai.

With regard to divorce, Hillel was a liberal. He taught that a Jewish man could divorce for any reason whatsoever…no matter how flimsy. If a wife burned the toast, the husband could divorce her. If she insulted his mother, he could divorce her. If he found a woman he liked better, he could divorce his wife and marry that one. If his wife rented one too many chick-flicks at Blockbuster, out she goes. By contrast Shammai was a conservative. He said that divorce could only be obtained on the grounds of sexual immorality.

As you can imagine, a lively debate raged between those two groups. Now when the Bible says they came to test him, it really means they came to trap him by forcing him to choose sides. If he sided with Hillel, that would be popular with the liberals; if he sided with Shammai, the conservatives would love him. They weren’t seeking the truth, just trying to force Jesus into a corner.

But Jesus wouldn’t be drawn into their little debating game. Its interesting that the Pharisees asked about divorce )Mark 10:2), but Jesus replied by talking about marriage. In fact, he set a trap of his own by asking, “What did Moses command you?” (Mark 10:3) He didn’t ask them what God had willed, but what the law had given as a concession. We will get to that later.

Then he quotes the book of Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, “at the beginning the Creator made them “male and female,” and said, “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Now in this statement, Jesus makes points about marriage that we need to hear:

First, marriage between a man and a woman was God’s idea. This is very important for the many social issues in our day. Marriage from God’s point of view is always one man with one woman joined in a legal union. This rules all the iterations of alternative marriages we now embrace in our society. No matter how you slice it or make it sound politically correct, that is always outside the will of God.

It also means that those who choose to ignore the formality and spirituality of a marriage ceremony to “live together” are in violation of God’s expressed will. Any time we treat marriage other than one man, one woman for life…it’s wrong, because it perverts God’s divine design given in the Garden of Eden.

Here is a second things Jesus is saying: Marriage is meant to be a lifetime commitment. This passage establishes the permanency of marriage in the strongest possible terms when it says in Mark 10:9, “What God has joined together, let man not separate.” This simply means that divorce was never part of God’s original design. God didn’t think up divorce, we did that all by ourselves. God instituted marriage before the Fall; man devised divorce after the Fall. This means that divorce always represents human failure at some point in the marriage relationship.

But the Pharisees had asked a second question: “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” (Mark 10:4). The background of this question comes from Deuteronomy 24:1-4 where Moses laid down some basic principles regarding divorce and remarriage. The key word is the word “command.” Why did Moses command a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce? Good question. There’s only one problem: God never commanded a man to do that. That is not in Deuteronomy 24. So it is a bogus question based on a deliberate distortion of the Bible.

That leads to the third thing Jesus is teaching: There is a difference between what God commands and what he permits. Jesus corrects their distortion by reminding them that “Moses … permitted you to divorce your wives” (Mark 10:5). Do you see the difference? The Pharisees used the word “command” and Jesus used the word “permission.”

God’s permission does not equal God’s approval. They said God commanded divorce. Jesus said, no, God permitted it, but he never commanded it. God’s original plan was that married couples would never divorce. And that leads to another point: The real reason behind every divorce is a hard heart. Jesus goes to the heart of the issue when he reveals the reason behind Moses’ instruction: “Because your hearts were hard.” In one phrase Jesus swept aside all their cheap, selfish excuses and exposed the real reason behind every divorce–a hard heart.

Once again Jesus reminds them of God’s original design: “But it was not this way from the beginning” (Mark 10:6). The breakup of a marriage was never a part of God’s original design for humanity.

Now look at verses in Mark 10:11-12, because here’s a final truth: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” What’s he saying? Anyone who pursues divorce and remarriage improperly violates God’s expressed will.

This means that God takes our wedding vows seriously. When you stand before a minister and pledge to be faithful “till death do us part,” God says Amen from heaven. And if you divorce on unbiblical grounds and then marry someone else, in God’s eyes you have violated his expressed will.

While God never commands divorce, he does permit it when one partner has flagrantly violates the sanctity of their marriage vows. Now please hear me on this: Divorce is not the unpardonable sin to God and it shouldn’t be to us. We should be quick to forgive and slow to judge. Remember, we’re all sinners saved by the grace of God. Who are we to stand in self-righteous judgment over others because their sin is different than ours? That doesn’t mean lowering the standard, but it does mean having the heart of a forgiving God. If divorced and remarried people don’t feel comfortable in the church, perhaps that says more about us than it does about them. So we should make every effort to be loving, accepting, forgiving and gracious!

Now just as Jesus did, rather than focusing of the failure of a marriage, let’s take a look at what it takes to live out God’s desire of a one man to be wed to one woman for life marriage. Among the many things we could say about nurturing a healthy marriage over a lifetime, here is the one thing it must be built upon:

Commitment! Marriages that make it are not marriages that are problem free; they are marriages where both spouses have a high level of commitment to make that marriage work, even when they don’t feel like it. Notice what God says to us in Malachi 2:15, “Didn’t the Lord make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are his. And what does he want? Godly children from your union. So guard yourself, remain loyal to the [spouse] of your youth.”

Never under-estimate the power of commitment! There was a study done of 6,000 marriages and 3,000 divorces that conclude this: “There may be nothing more important in a marriage than a determination that it shall persist. With such a determination to make the marriage work, individuals force themselves to adjust, to accept situations, which would seem to be sufficient grounds for a breakup, if continuation of a marriage were not the primary objective.”

So if you want to have a healthy marriage, you must honor your marriage covenant at all cost. And if you want to please God, with his help and through his grace, carefully choose the one you are going to love, then committedly love the one you have chosen—for a lifetime.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, help me to live out your ideals for an honoring marriage with my spouse. Empower me through your grace to be living proof of Jesus’ sacrificial love to the one you have given me to love in marital union all the days of my life.
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Give To Get, Stoop To Rise, Die To Live

The Logic Of The Upside Down Kingdom

It’s absolutely amazing that when God became human in Christ that he wasn’t born to royalty in a palace to the celebrations of the adoring throngs. In fact, it was just the opposite: he was born in a barn to a teenage mother in an obscure village that was nothing more than a wide spot in the road to no fanfare whatsoever. Then, as you study the life of this Christ in the Gospels, and as writers of the New Testament translate his life into our Christian theology, you are driven to the conclusion that humility, servanthood and sacrifice were not just values Jesus suddenly embraced when he became man just to impress people. These were pre-eternal convictions fundamental to the essence of God’s being. As Jesus generously embodied these very things, through him you were seeing who God was – and is – in living color. And that, dear believer, is your fundamental duty: to be undeniable proof of a unpretentious Lord.

The Journey: Mark 9:35

Jesus sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.”

Here is yet another example of the upside logic of the Kingdom of God. We get that a lot from Jesus: To live, you’ve got to die; to get, you’ve got to give; to receive honor, you must be willing to be humble; to be rich, you’ve got to give it all away; to be first, you’ve got to be okay with last place; to be great, you’ve got to be the servant of all.

Though from the world’s point of view this is totally upside down, its’ totally normal from heaven’s perspective. When you really think about these kinds of counterintuitive statements, you realize they were the values that Jesus deeply held and, in fact, were driving convictions he lived out in actions every single day.

Furthermore, as you study the life of Jesus in the Gospels as well as the theology of entire New Testament, you will come to the conclusion that these were not just values Jesus suddenly embraced when he became man just to impress people, these were pre-eternal values fundamental to the essence of God’s being. As Jesus lived out humility, generosity, servanthood, and sacrifice, you were seeing who God is in living color. Therefore, as Francis Quarles points out, “The voice of humility is God’s music, and the silence of humility is God’s rhetoric.”

When we invite Jesus to become the Savior and Lord of our lives and embrace the values of God’s Kingdom as our own, these, then, become the fundamental attributes of who we are and the defining characteristics of how we go about the business of the Kingdom. Or so it should! If we have had an authentic salvation experience, then humility will be evident to others who are watching our lives. Generosity will characterize our practices with money and possessions. We will eschew pushing and clawing our way to the top and serve our way into greatness. And in a way that authenticates the totality of our claim to Christian faith, we willingly to lay down our lives for others—not only in dying, but, in what is much more demanding sacrificial living.

That is the kind of greatness that endures—greatness in the eyes of God.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, examine my attitudes and practices in light of the eternal values of heaven. Where you find misalignment in my life—with my money and possessions, in my desire to for recognition and position, as I use power and pleasure, please make me more Christ-like.
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Everything Goes Back To Normal

Never Set Up A Tent On A Mountaintop Experience

Never fixate on a spiritual high. Resist the urge to erect a shelter on a mountaintop experience. Don’t rate your current and future Christian experience against those “glory days” of yesteryear. Simply see those experiences for what they are: Fuel for the assignment ahead. Then get back to normal. Climb down off your mountaintop experience and get back in the game. Lost people are still lost down there in the real world and the proclamation of God’s kingdom from your lips and through your life is still the only way they will be found.

The Journey: Mark 9:9

As they went back down the mountain…

In Mark 9:2-13 we come across one of the most fascinating and mysterious stories about Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus takes Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain, and there before their very eyes, for a few moments at least, his humanity morphs into the dazzling brilliance of his divine being. And if that weren’t enough to knock their sandals off, Moses and Elijah, Israel’s two great historical and theological figures, suddenly show up and begin to encourage Jesus about his upcoming death.

As you would expect of Peter, and as you can understand, the unpredictable disciple offers to set up shop for this impromptu triumvirate. At that, a cloud covers the Jesus and his heavenly guests, the Voice speaks a word of Divine authentication from the heavens, Jesus is suddenly left standing with Peter, James and John and everything goes back to normal.

“Everything goes back to normal!” That’s when Jesus leads them “back down the mountain” to the real world.

Here’s the deal: God never intends for us to fixate on “spiritual highs”; we are not to build tabernacles around them. They are simply means to an end, fuel to empower us for some spiritual assignment. Jesus didn’t have this encounter with Moses and Elijah just so he could feel special. The same account of the transfiguration in Luke 9:31 (NLT) tells us that these two Old Testament prophets came to encourage Jesus about his upcoming departure—literally, in the original text, his “exodus”. He was about to face the greatest assignment of all—the cross. This mountaintop experience was meant as fuel—encouragement, strength, a reminder of his life’s purpose—for his impending death for the sins of the world.

I am not down on “spiritual highs”. They are wonderful, and necessary. Just don’t fixate on them. Resist the urge to erect a shelter and live in their warm afterglow. Don’t rate your current and future Christian experience against them. Simply see them for what they are: Fuel for the assignment ahead.

Then get back to normal. Climb down off your mountaintop experience and get back in the game. Lost people are still lost down there in the real world and the proclamation of God’s kingdom from your lips and the demonstration of it through your life is still the only way they will be found.

As Charles Spurgeon said, “Serve God by doing common actions in a heavenly spirit, and then, if your daily calling only leaves you cracks and crevices of time, fill them up with holy service.”

Is there a “spiritual high” from your past (an ecstatic experience, a fruitful time of ministry, a wonderful season in an amazing church family, a dramatic period of spiritual growth under a gifted spiritual leader) against which you tend to measure current experience? Stop doing that! Repent of worshiping that experience and instead ask God to show you how he intends for that “high” to fuel you for the kingdom assignment setting before you today.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for giving me amazing spiritual experiences from time to time in my journey with you, but keep me from worshiping those experiences. Like Jesus, help me to see them simply as divine fuel for the next kingdom assignment.