What Valley Are You Passing Through Today?

[HKHaugan]

“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near
in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the heavens will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel (Joel 3:14-16).”

Decision is the key word here. Multitudes are all and every heart having to decide about the reality of God the Son appearing in the world. He came for them, to offer them eternal life and a full life here. Decision is the point of challenge to where I believe I am as I assess my life, its meaning and purpose. Decision may very well be a confrontation when faced with the need to see the truth in any given situation in which I find myself. Decision could very well be the thing I avoid because I am afraid of its consequences.

Every day everyone is faced with decision and it is a valley full of turns, levels and mountains on each side. Unlike physical terrain the valley of decision is never the same from moment to moment which is true for everyone. The world in which we live is an invisible hilly and obstacle strewn atmosphere where attitudes are the boundary markers and fences that define the terrain of the heart in each of us. Attitudes are birthed from the pains both physical and emotional we encounter. They are the defensive walls we build in our hearts to fend off anything that sounds or looks like what caused those past hurts. Attitudes are what people hear and see in our relationships.

Stronghold is the word the apostle Paul uses to best describe attitude, 2Cor.10:4-5. In that passage pretentious thoughts and arguments are the attitudes opposed to God because they are self-invented. They are the methods we use to defend ourselves in the valleys of relational decisions that are the every-moment challenges to our hearts. If we liken the process to a building then sin with its mix of fear and pride is the mortar we use to hold together the bricks that build the wall against personal challenges. Those bricks are real. They are what we make to deal with an unexpected situation, not being able to answer a question, being caught in embarrassing moments, the fear of internal exposure, facing an impossible task, handling the local smart aleck, the superior intellect, the insult, the immediate mutual dislike, the opinionated person, unjust treatment and other’s false perceptions of me.

We could multiply these many times over but attitudes are the strongholds and most of us built these in our hearts from the time we were born. It is the self-deluding power of sin that is the sandy foundation of our attitudes that Jesus went to the Cross to defeat.

So how did He defeat them? He physically bore the spiritual brunt of sin since sin is the isolating attitudinal force that alienates us from God and one another. Sin isolates us through attitudes that keep our minds justifying what I think is the best way to respond to the world around me. What I discover in this process is that no one ultimately agrees with me about anything, that my heart is never understood by others and that I begin to lose the motivation to do anything or I live alone by resignation to the worldly concept of fate which does not exist. That’s sin’s goal.

Sin is what caused the Jewish leadership and Roman authorities to see Jesus as a threat and a fickle public to see Him as a failure deserving to be executed. All those combined individuals were driven by the strongholds that made them what they were and no different from the same condition in every person before and after Jesus. It was His death that absorbed the power of sin and His Resurrection that exposed sin and all its expressions. It was His death that exposed strongholds. It was His death that exposed the devil and the spirits that reinforce attitudes. It was His death that exposed the idea we can rely on our own resources which are imperfect due to sin to be human beings apart from God. It is sin that divides all of us right to this moment.

The exposure of the reality of sin was the single most important awareness the Cross brought for the heart making it the essential conscience grabber whenever seen. It stands for the imperfection of man’s mind and heart and their need for being touched by the One who hung there. It opens to us the face of God whose love for man was seen in the willingness to die for more than one’s self,---for the hearts, minds and souls of those who deny, reject and even hate Him. No wonder atheists, agnostics, religionists with all their strongholds try to rid any public view of the Cross. The Cross is the spiritual shovel digging away at the grave of sin to return the breath of life to those having been trapped and buried in the coffins of strongholds.

Then that natural and supernatural Resurrection, Jesus as the fulfilled man overcoming the grave, spiritually and physically---mind, heart and body---rising from the dead as the fulfilled God the Son that we might also not only rise from our tomblike strongholds but spread the good news that everyone by faith in Him can do the same and be healed.

The Cross showed us that faith in Jesus is the way to die and His Resurrection showed us that faith in Jesus is the way to live.

“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.” Every next moment we are in that valley filled with strongholds, ours and others’. In Jesus we have the one stronghold offered by our Heavenly Father to replace all those made in fear.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…(Ps.23:4)”---the big satanic stronghold, can we say with the same Psalmist (27:1), “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life---of whom then shall I be afraid?”