Reaching the Peak

[HKHaugan]

1Peter 3:15

“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do it with gentleness and respect.”

Today is my 85^th birthday. The above passage is one that Bible Gateway had chosen for today’s verse of the day. Revering Christ as Lord in my heart is very real to me. What it does is to reveal three dimensions in me:

First, my mind says its all about me while my heart says its all about God. But my spirit yearns to act for God. My mind does believe everything the Word of God says. But the mind is not alone.

Second, my heart is where I find self-justification, my attempt to escape responsibility for whatever causes me to rebel and be in control of everything I do. My heart is where the unwordable conflicts in decision making takes place. The heart is where I feel fear, desire, reticence, hiding, confusion, doubt, procrastination, inferiority, needs and all their relational concerns, acceptance and rejection, worry, anxiety, affection, trust, guilt, defensiveness and the order of each fluctuating in importance as the need each presents arises. I understand when the Lord tells Isaiah that people’s hearts are far from Him and then, as Mark quotes Jesus, the heart is where all the unspeakable stuff comes from.

Third, my spirit motivates me to act safely or to act serving God. It is the Holy Spirit who brings my mind, heart and spirit to view the peak, the Lord Jesus, and move out for Him. But it is crippled by the inner conflicts I allow to dominate my thinking.

There is no clearer definition of the inner conflict in each of us than the word describing it, sin. Sin is the weak underbelly of our personal human nature. It was met face to face by Jesus on the Cross. Death is its grim reminder. If there were any better way than the Cross to show the despicability of this spiritual negative power, God would have brought it. But the peak of God’s very nature, His Son Jesus, bore death on the Cross in His mind, heart and soul, to show His is supreme love at the lowest point of human experience, its end. When Jesus rose from the dead, every mountain, every fence post, every place where two lines intersected, became a visual reminder of the mind, heart and spirit’s deepest and highest horizon of hope. Jesus brought His Kingdom here. He became our personal intersection, the crossing from the physical to the Spirit, from the invisible to the visible, the unseen to the seen. Everything visible has an unseen spiritual reality. Ultimate reality is spiritual and when everything comes to its designed climax, we will meet the Lord of all in the relational Spirit reality for which we were created. We will see the Father, the Son and the Spirit. “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face Him face to face.”

The whole process is like when you look at a mountain range and see its snow capped peaks, Jesus is the highest glistening peak of pure white relational snow. He is personal perfection so completely beyond my comprehension, yet always forgiving, understanding and helping me forward. He has the heart above all hearts. He is the peak and I am the climber picking my way up the trail toward that peak. He is the goal, the focus, the grand junction between me and His kingdom. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me.” “I lift mine eyes up unto the hills, from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord who hath made Heaven and earth.” We can all be thankful our names are written in the Book of Life. We will have reached the peak and see the whole range of the reality that awaits.