mountain climbing

How many of us are facing trials right now that seem incredibly overpowering?  Some days the task at hand is to painful to handle and it feels as if you might break from the pressure of it.  If you could just shut your mind off for a while and rest.  

Yesterday I was in a bible study and we were discussed the following quote:

Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step - on the level it looks petty, but then this step they keep up on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and soon has to stop, dead beat with the climb.....Such an expert mountaineer, when the thick mists come, halts and camps out under some slight cover brought with him, quietly smoking his pipe, and moving on only when the mist has cleared away....You want to grow in virtue, to serve God, to love Christ?  Well, you will grow in and attain to these things if you will make them a slow an sure, an utterly real, a mountain step-plod and ascent, willing to have to camp for weeks or months in spiritual desolations, darkness and emptiness at different stages in your march and growth.  All demand for constant light, for ever the best - the best to your own feeling, all attempt at eliminating or minimizing the cross and trial, is so  much soft folly and puerile trifling....Baron Friedrich von Hugel.  

I really loved the picture this statement paints.  If we are to succeed at this life that God has blessed us with, we need to have a sure, quiet, regular step.  Not a racing to the finish line in an attempt to do all we can as fast as we can.  Filling up the calendars so there is no margin of free time and quit reflection.  

That mist might look different to each one of us depending on where we are at.  Some of us might be in a mist of waiting on God, some of us might be in a mist of bad marriage or ministry frustrations. But no matter what our individual “mists” are, the lesson still holds true for all of us.  We can’t figure it out on our own.  We need to be confident and sure of who God has called us to be.  We need to make our life a series of quiet regular steps of simple obedience and let Him be responsible for the out come.  We need to be careful to NOT get ahead of God’s timing.  We need to be constantly reminded, or maybe I just do, that it isn’t about us and about what we can accomplish for Christ.  It is about what he is accomplished in us and about sitting back and watching Jesus do what he does best THROUGH our lives.  If we remain obedient to His call and His voice!  Takes the pressure off doesn’t it?