Periods of high spiritual exhortation of come to most Christian people. They may have lasted for days or for only an hour or two. The memory of these occasions remains highlights of our experience. We often make a mistake striving for their recurrence. We tend to strain after them. All strain is wrong. Quite often God takes us up to these mountain tops to equip us with some rather dreary bits of work down in the valley. Almost every period of exhortation is followed by a time in the valley. But God is not less with us in the valley because we do not feel the breath of His Spirit blowing upon us.
Indeed this is just a bit of drudgery in the valley done with quiet confidence that He is there, which fits us for the mountain top experience. Some people cannot face the valley without panic. Unless they feel God and there they begin to think He has forsaken them. We walk in the valley by faith – the evidence of things we can either see nor feel. God expects us after we’ve got out of the kindergarten to be able to walk without the “feel” of His hand in ours.
God loves to get people who can be trusted to go on quietly and without fear even when there is no visible or sensible sign of His nearness. Can you walk in the valley without a sense of strain? Then you’ll find your road leading naturally again to the mountaintop. Valleys surround every mountain top.
