Lead Me to the Rock that is Higher than I – kenbarnes.us

From the end of the earth I call to You when my heart is faint;
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I (Psalms 61:3 NASB).

God Never Promised Us a Rose Garden
When you come to faith in Christ, you will experience love. joy, and peace.  But we fail to mention that these by-products of the Christian faith are often couched between hardship, suffering, and struggle.  God seems to be more concerned with our character than our comfort.  In the typical Christian experience, struggle is the name of the game.

Lead us to the rock that is higher than I.
In our scriptural reference, David finds himself fainthearted and overwhelmed by the isolation and trials of his spiritual voyage.  Like the Psalmist, our spiritual odyssey is like our climb up a mountain with a rocky and uncertain terrain.  With the length of the trek and the unsure footing, we become fatigued.  We reach up for one more rock above us, but our hands start slipping off the rock, and we realize our strength is insufficient to pull us up.  One last time, we call out, “help Lord,” as we extend our hand.  It seems as if an arm comes down from behind the rock and latches onto our forearm and our hand onto His, and He pulls us to the cleft of the rock.  And one more time, we realize that God’s grace has prevailed when our strength has failed.

The Ongoing Journey
We breathe a sigh of relief and, for a time, bask in His presence.  About the time our wounds are healed from the journey, and we feel secure in our rocky refuge, we turn and look up the mountain.  We understand that we must either continue up the mountain or descend back to the lowlands.  There is no such thing as the status quo in the Kingdom of God.  We are either moving toward Him or away from Him.  So, we continue our ascent up the mountain, experiencing one impregnable rock after another, never able to scale any cliff in our own strength, but only with God’s help. 

As we go from one rocky crest to another, we discover that we get a clearer view of the glory of God, which motivates us onward.  We still get weary from time to time. We ask the Lord, “how many rocks must I climb”?  We realize getting to the top will take as many as necessary.  At the mountaintop, we will fully experience the real rock (the Lord Jesus), who is higher than I.

Image used by permission from Microsoft.

Ken Barnes, the author of  “The Chicken Farm and Other Sacred Places”  YWAM Publishing and Broken Vessels through Kindle Direct Publishing.
Ken’s Website— https://kenbarnes.us/
Ken blogs at https://kenbarnes.us/blog/
Email- [email protected]