Month: February 2020

If we want to see victory in the valleys, we will first climb the mountains!

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1. The Mountain of Temptation (Matt.4:8): The Discipline of Worshipping and Serving

2.  The Mountain of Revelation (Matt.5-7): The Discipline of Listening and Obeying

3.  The Mountain of Transformation (Matt.17:1-23) The Discipline of Beholding

4. The Mountain of Prognostication (Matt.24-25) The Discipline of Watching & Praying

5. The Mountain of Crucifixion (Matt.27) The Discipline of Believing

6. The Mountain of the Great Commission (Matt.28:16-20) The Discipline of Waiting and Going

God forgive us for trying to “avoid” what You meant for us to climb. We also confess, all to often we tried to recklessly climb what you wanted to move.

Revival is sustained by inhaling the breath of God in the momentary light afflictions; walking always upward and downward with the assurance of God’s consistent love; and fellowship with prayerful ardent singing pilgrims “in whose heart are the paths to Zion.”

A church with this momentum will collide with the world of need and awaken those bound in darkness. 

Worship involves climbing!

Genesis 22:1f: “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am, he replied.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you…Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Climb This Mountain (click) Worship Song

Christians need to learn how to first CLIMB mountains in obedience before they learn to MOVE mountains with faith. The Love of God must precede and feed our Faith in God! One of the places we grow or gain love is by abiding in Christ in the heavenly places.  Soaking in the Presence of God will ensure that we are speaking for God.

It is foundational to learn how to ascend where Christ has ascended to the right hand of the Father. We ascend in prayer, in fasting, in biblical meditation, in praise, in fellowship, in obedience,  in solitude and silence. We ascend by dying to self, rejecting earthly wisdom and going to the throne room of grace to find counsel, mercy and grace in time of need.

This climb is not geopgraphical but it is measured in relational distance. The Most High God has drawn near in Jesus Christ.  The Most High is Most Near, He is dwelling in you! Ascent has to do with our interior life and disciplines. 

We must continually MOVE toward God to be with God, in order to Move with God to MOVE mountains.  All doing begins with being. Like Mary, we must sit at His feet to fuel our servanthood like Martha. 

Matthew 17:20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

1 Corinthians 13:2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing

I was born in Cody, Wyoming.  Cody is located just east of Yellowstone, the Crown Jewel of National Parks.  My 4th son’s middle name is Cody. We named our second son Bryce after Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. However, I grew up in Colorado on the Front Range.  My dad worked as an engineer for the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture and eventually retired at the age of 48. He went on to build custom homes until the age of 62.  He was often in charge of entire National Forests like Pikes Peak and San Isabel. At the apex of his career he was the lead engineer who designed the specifications for the Pacific-Crest Trail which stretched from Mexico to Canada on the West Coast. The vast majority of the Pacific-Crest Trail traversed through mountainous regions. My dad received a rare National Merit awards for his work on this vast project. 

Mountains are in my blood, in my mind and embedded in my heart like jagged granite above timberline peaks. At the Langskov house,  Christmas trees were taken from the deep forests of Colorado with an axe. We did not stroll down to a local Santa-bait lot with pre-cut Tannenbaum’s.  My dad would lead us across snowy meadows and dangerous ravines to the perfect Christmas tree. At the age of around six years old, I remember one time I fell behind everyone and was alone in a snowy meadow.  The air was cold and perfectly still while I gathered my wits to figure out what to do. The peculiar sound of a sharp metal axe slamming into the wooden base of 30’ Colorado blue spruce became the voice of the Spirit to lead me to my father. 

 Last year, Cheri (my wife) and I  were blessed to be able to hike in  three significant mountain ranges within a couple months of each other…the Rocky Mountains, the California Sierra Nevadas and the Northern Mountains of Taipei, Taiwan. 

This message on The Mountains of Matthew originated while preparing a teaching on the Beatitudes in Matthew. Here is a picture of a few of  the First Mountaineers of Matthew from Quarry Oakes, CA. I have included my teaching notes and the original sermon in audio format at the end of this blog.  The teaching now has Seven mountains rather than five. I have added the Mountain of Temptation and the Mountain of Solitude.

Mountains are a central background drop to many pivotal Scriptural stories that help us understand who God is and what He has done on our behalf.

STOP, REFLECT and PRAY right now and allow the Holy Spirit to quicken stories that happened in the mountains of Scripture (Mount Sinai, Mount Carmel etc.). In this season, whichever stories were brought to your memory, begin to read and meditate and commune with the Holy Trinity.  Receive grace and truth to behold His glory and fulfill His calling upon your life!

In 1986 the Lord spoke to me  while I was attending Fuller Theological Seminary. I was seeking Him regarding His will and leadership and my responsibility in the body of Christ as a leader. He showed me Zion National Park on a map of the United States. He said I needed to go there and seek His glory. So I gathered a couple of friends and we drove to this spectacular park to hike, explore  and camp for a few days. We were blown away because a Methodist circuit rider preacher in the late 1800’s had named many of the incredible colorful mammoth sandstone rock formations.  The Great WhiteThrone, the Sentinel, Angel’s Landing and Weeping Rock were a few of the names. For over a decade this became an annual pilgrimage for my family and many other church families throughout the region.  We would camp for a week, hike, praise the Lord, seek God for His heart and ways to be revealed to us for that particular year. We celebrated in the spirit of the great Jewish Pilgrimage of the Feast of Booths.

Our annual pilgrimage was called Convocation in the Cleft. The theme story was Moses on the Mountain of God in Exodus 33:18-23:

18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” 19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” 21 Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

We gained so many insights about the heart and ways of God as we climbed around the park with our friends and families!  The amazing truth is a Christian doesn’t necessarily need a car and tank of gas and a nearby mountain range to seek God! Although I would highly recommend getting on the  road and finding places nearby to walk, hike, camp or back-pack to seek God in the high places of His creation to learn His heart and ways! You can simply find a place of solitude in your home or in your car as you commute to work. Read a story with a mountain in it and meditate and pray and allow the Spirit-Lord to lead down paths of goodness and mercy. Paths of revelation and insight in the back-woods of the Holy Scripture. Like Lewis and Clark, with a notebook or journal in hand begin to take notes and draw what you see and feel as  signage of your pilgrimage for others to find! You can be in a wheelchair or a professional athlete to seek God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. You don’t need the latest high priced REI gear, high elevation oxygen tanks and an ice axe to reach the peak of Mount Zion and the manifest presence of God. God the Father is immediately accessible for the Christian through the blood of Jesus and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. God is an infinite continent waiting to be discovered and celebrated in humble worship and service. The State of Colorado has fifty-four mountain peaks  above 14,000’. It is one of the highest concentrations of above timberline regions in the world. You could climb one peak a week and it would take you just over one year. 

How much more in the unfathomable depths and heights of Christ Jesus do we explore everyday!?

Jesus received power on the mountains to serve in the valleys of death, sin, sickness and brokenness.

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John 4:21-24:  “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

May the Mountains of Matthew weekly call you up to the glory of God.  May the Holy Spirit lift you to stand on the Rock that is higher than you! May He hide you in the Cleft of Christ as His glory passes before you.  May you be transformed by His glory and grace to follow Him in bold loving obedience in the valleys of your life.

We must climb  the Mountains BEFORE we possess the valley’s and cities below for the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

My dad was also in charge of National Forest signage for all of California. He designed and determined the best most efficient way to guide people to the the lakes, the campgrounds and the trailheads. 

 Below are only a few Scriptural signposts and trailheads that call us into the mountains of God to reveal his eternal nature and divine attributes:

Judges 5:5 The mountains quaked before the Lord, the One of Sinai, before the Lord, the God of Israel. THE TRAIL OF FEAR AND TREMBLING: LEARNING HOW TO RESPOND TO THE WORD OF THE LORD

Isaiah 52:7 How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” THE TRAIL OF THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD: LIFTING YOUR THOUGHTS AND WORDS ABOVE THE FRAY OF UGLINESS IN THE WORLD

Amos 4:13  He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord God Almighty is his name. THE TRAIL OF OMNIPOTENCE: DISCOVERING the DEMONSTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

Jonah 2:6  To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. THE TRAIL OF DEPRESSION AND HUMILITY: LAYING THE AXE TO THE ROOTS OF SIN and PRIDE

Luke 6:12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. THE TRAIL OF THE NIGHT WATCH: LIVING WIDE AWAKE IN A SLEEPY WORLD

Action: 

• Listen to Beatitudes and The 5 Mountains (1) Audio Sermon and include somebody else.
  

• Start a Mountaineer Club that is dedicated to seeking God and His kingdom first.

• Start a Journal that maps your walk with God

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Steven Curtis Chapman, Dive (Click for Song)

23 For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, 24 and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ 25 So take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. 26 But we must run aground on some island.”

27 When the fourteenth night had come, as we were being driven across the Adriatic Sea, about midnight the sailors suspected that they were nearing land. 28 So they took a sounding and found twenty fathoms. A little farther on they took a sounding again and found fifteen fathoms.29 And fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. 

–  Acts 27:23-29

Read Acts 21-27

I was very freaked out by the 1954 movie Creature from the Black Lagoon (Click Link). My oldest brother Johnny made me watch it because he was charged with taking care of his two younger brothers and sister. Like any good older brother he fulfilled his calling to lead the charge of  torturing me with fear most of my childhood. This movie set the stage for an inordinate fear of monsters by land or sea. I grew up as a competitive swimmer in Colorado, swimming my first race of 25 meters backstroke at the age of 4 for the Belmont Barracudas. As I grew older, I remember during practice I would look down at the drain grate at the bottom of the 10’ deep end. I would picture the face of the Creature from the Black Lagoon staring at me while grasping the grate with his hands. This vision deep in my mind would cause chills to run through my already chilled body. I imagined him tearing the grate off and ascending from the depths to capture me and pull me to his aquatic lair. I never really told anyone about it until now. 

Biblically, there are the depths of God, the deep things of Satan, the depths of human experience, the literal deep of the ocean etc. I have broken down the biblical narrative on the “the deep” into two categories. The “Deep” in the bible conjures up both positive and negative images and metaphors.

Positive

Negative

Welcome to the Depths

Our passage Acts 21-27 sets a context for dealing with the depths of adversity. Smooth waters can quickly become troubled due to no real fault of our own. We are just along for the ride. We are minding our own business. We don’t mean to bother anyone with our boring lives, let alone our problems. However, like Paul, who was clearly under a government seal to appear before Caesar for a trial that would eventually lead to his beheading by Nero. We clearly see that Paul did not lose his head before he was beheaded. As a follower of Christ, we can shine in the deep darkness (Isa.61:1). We can be cool headed when others are losing their mind. I love the popular World War II saying in England, KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON” (Click Link).

Troubled waters are inevitable in our walk through this earth. Conflict of all stripes and colors will break out in one form or another. Danger signs are posted everywhere and we all too often ignore them and we recklessly proceed. We ignore “Do Not Enter” signs as we seek to enlighten ourselves with forbidden fruit, resulting in damaged relationships, isolation, blame-casting, shame and fear. We are drawn to areas posted with Enter at your Own Risk: Large unexpected waves may sweep you off your feet into the ocean. We consume things that have “WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined this product may cause cancer.” I am not suggesting we should live life playing it safe, pulling back choosing boredom over adventure.

I believe the MORE we WAIT on the Lord, the more we are willing to LAUNCH out into the DEEP of God’s purposes with powerful love to reach those unreached with the Gospel.

What I am saying is this life is peppered with trials, tribulation, tests, snares, and temptation. In particular, we find ourselves in TROUBLED WATERS, which are situations and circumstances that we did not necessarily plan for or could totally predict. Seasons that we are being driven by winds and waves blowing moderately and violently to a destination we know not. We thought we made a wise decision to continue in a certain direction and things seemed relatively smooth and out of nowhere things were put in motion, people made decisions contrary to your input. The mission became like a galactic Black Hole sucking everything into its black lightless abyss. The spirit of Captain Ahab of  Herman Melville’s Moby Dick possessed you, your boss, your church, your spouse, your child, your spiritual leader or the corporation where you work. Like the Apostle Paul, you discover yourself on a ship destined for Italy as a prisoner for the time being, being driven along by a violent two week Adriatic Sea perfect storm. Like George Clooney in the movie Perfect Storm, we need more fish, we need more money and we with the crew are willing to go further, go deeper, roll the dice and risk everything for the paycheck and glory of success. However, we soon discover that our little fishing vessel is no match for the sheer power of the stirred up depths and are tragically swallowed whole and all is or seems lost. 

I know some these waters of trouble. I was diagnosed in 2009 with a high grade tenacious cancer. Over the past 10 years I have had 7 surgical biopsies which required full anesthesia. I have had 12 different rounds of treatments and stents. However, the cancer kept recurring and spreading causing a lot of affliction in my body. In November 2019, I finally had to have a quality of life alternating major surgery. I lost several body parts but through it all I discovered a depth of God’s comfort, understanding, love and peace. The Troubled Waters became a training ground to experience the depths of God’s grace in a profound life-changing way.

Here is my first swim after major reconstructive surgery!

Troubled Waters will come. The good news is we can prepare for the inevitable seasons wherein we feel driven beyond our control and destined to be adrift in strange waters being pushed by a current toward an inhabited island in the seeming middle of nowhere. The Titanic iceberg is likely to be struck whether you like it or not and you will be scrambling for a life boat or you will simply determine to go down with the ship without a struggle while the violins play in the background. The Book of Acts chapters 21-28 is the extended season finale of the history of the early church, the First Followers of Jesus Christ. The Early Church goes out singing high praise to God for being counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ. They are far from the soft-evangelicalism of the Modern Church in America. The main character is the Apostle Paul. Undoubtedly, Dr. Luke, Paul’s traveling companion and physician, is the both the eyewitness and the author of the Book of Acts.  Chapter 27 is the considered the most detailed account we have of Ancient Maritime navigation on the Mediterranean Sea. The opening scene is he had just knelt on the beach of Miletus with the Ephesian Elders to warn them of coming difficult times for the church. After 3 years he had finished his work in Asia and he was bound in the Spirit on his way to “bonds and afflictions” inJerusalem (Acts 20:22-23), but not knowing that in around 3 years he would be chained to Rome for another 2 yearspreaching and teaching in prison before his death by Nero. This section of the Sacred Writings is filled with encouragement from the God of all perseverance for each of us. If we absorb the mindset of the Apostle Paul we will be able to make sense of our own TROUBLED WATERS and remain faithful to our calling to follow and know the depths of Jesus Christ, to faithfully discharge our ministries as gifted believers and to glorify God in the crucible of being forged into the likeness of the character of Jesus Christ.

If you are not a strong swimmer … here are some “planks” to float on! Once you are on the beach here is a bundle of ‘drift wood’ to build a bonfire on the beach so you can warm your faith , hope and love back up.

In review, here are some thoughts regarding how to navigate troubled waters found in Acts 21-27:

Father in Heaven, we purpose to seek you in the storms of life. We accept the trials as winds of revelation that will blow in Your Presence. We repent for the times we have doubted you and fled in cowardice. Today, we humble ourselves before you and ask for courage and strength from your Spirit to stand and lead those around us well.

Amen