Below is a letter I wrote to the college students of our church who attended a retreat where I was privileged to preach. Our theme was The Heart of True Religion. We asked the questions “what is at the heart of Christianity? and “what do all true believers across space, time, and tradition have in common?”
We are now three weeks out from our retreat. I wanted to say thank you for attending and making it a weekend to remember. Special thanks go out to all who helped with planning and executing the retreat.
In our pastor's sermon yesterday he mentioned that it is a good thing to have the “mountain top” experience, to have revival. It is good because it gives us a glimpse and a taste of what could be more true of our day-to-day lives, and what will be completely true of our lives for all eternity when we fully dwell with Christ.
What I hope you have considered already and will continue to consider is-- where to now? Where do we go when we come back down from the mountain? What is true of retreats, mission trips, and other similar experiences that cannot be part of our regular lives? What can be true? How do we go about cultivating lives of continual renewal?
Let’s start with what cannot be brought down the mountain. We cannot live free from work, homework, and other responsibilities. It is tempting to think that if we could just lay aside all personal responsibilities that we would live in a state of constant renewal. That is not the case-- for work, learning, relationships, and many other responsibilities are commissioned by God and are for our good. In the midst of busy semesters, long shifts at work, and dealing with that relationship that drains you is exactly where God wants your renewal to shine most. God wants your personal renewal to spread to all those areas that feel burdensome and tiring.
But, after spending the last few weeks thinking about this, I am convinced that there is not a single element that cannot be brought down from the mountain, only specific forms. What do I mean?
I mean that what was in practice from February 3rd through the 5th that yielded fruit in our lives can actually be our real lives, starting now and continuing until the Lord’s return or our being welcomed into His arms through death.
The elements we practiced on the retreat were—
2) an hour or more given to personal reflection and prayer each day
3) singing hymns, Psalms, and spiritual songs with the body of Christ outside of a corporate worship service
4) hearing the Word preached
5) confessing our sins and weaknesses in small groups
6) unhurried time to laugh and play games together
7) rising early
8) staying up late
9) reading theology from across Church history
10) regularly sharing meals together
11) significantly less time connected to social media and technology
12) disconnection from the world’s pressures for success, notoriety, and short-term happiness.
These are just 12, and there are likely more that have yet to come to my mind.
Now, can we practice each of these elements in the same form that we did on the retreat? Obviously not. We cannot gather on a daily basis to play battleship or have a worship service every night. That is what makes the mountaintop special.
But we can practice these elements, and I would argue that any long-term good that comes to your personal walk with Jesus from mountaintop, revival, or mission trip experiences will come from making the elements the norm for your life.
What would that look like?
1) Could you spend more time with God each day? Do you need to? Or are you content with the dose you have? The blessings that come from unhurried time with God in Scripture are there for the taking. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, when was the last time you came to the Scriptures and said, “I will not let go until You have blessed me!”
2) We think a lot about ourselves, and not in a good way. We are overwhelmed by what people think of us, whether or not we match up to society’s standards for success. But I am not convinced that we spend nearly as much time as we could be in reflecting on our lives, and from there going to God and asking Him for help to change us.
If you are constantly being told by the world how your life should look, when you don’t measure up it makes sense that a low-grade guilt, a sense of unworthiness, and a need to be and do better rises up within you. The problem is that you were never meant to get your identity from the world. What would it look like to spend an hour each day in God’s Word, seeing His definition of fullness of life, and then letting that drive you into reflection and prayer, not guilt, but grace, where you can grow to be like Jesus?
3) I sing every Sunday, and I sing in the car, but why can’t it be true of my life that I would gather with believers on their campuses, in my neighborhood, or in the parking lot of their workplaces to worship Christ?
4) How many messages do we listen to each week? I am not talking about sermons, but messages. Messages on social media, messages from work, school, friends, and other pressures? How many notifications come in on a single day? Can we expect to thrive spiritually when we are drowned in messaging and not be immersed in the preaching of the Word? Do you think it would be of benefit or detriment to your life to listen to two or three sermons per week outside of Sunday morning?
5) What would it look like to take the small group you were in on the retreat and carry it over into the rest of life? Would it be helpful or hurtful for you to find a core group of two to four people and regularly pray for, read Scripture to, sing with, and confess your sins together What is keeping you from having a group that regularly helps you preach the Gospel to yourself when you can’t seem to find the words or the energy?
6) Jesus said that unless we become as children, we cannot enter the Kingdom. There is something innately human about playing a game together. What would it look like for you to gather with your church body and play games? Do not discount this. My relationship with Hannah owes a lot to a game of Pictionary! You never know what God can do with a game or a good laugh with fellow believers.
7) I struggle here as much as anyone. God often gets the leftovers of my day rather than the first portion. I often come to God dragging my feet after a hard day rather than enter into my daily tasks with a vision of the Most Holy. What would it take to get to bed thirty minutes earlier? What would it take to improve your quality of sleep so that you need less in order to get more? Do you long to worship the Creator with the rest of creation as the sun dawns on a new day?
I know for me I have had to cut back on late night sports games on the tv. I also started charging my phone in the hallway so that the last thirty minutes or so of my day is spent reading rather than staring at blue light which is not helpful when it comes to rest.
8) I do not recommend practicing number seven and eight back-to-back very often! But when was the last time you were willing to sacrifice some sleep to see a starlit sky, or to stay up late because the conversations are more nourishing to the soul than an extra hour of sleep is to the body? When Hannah and I were dating we would drive back to Anderson from Greenville, and she would often roll down her window and stare up into the sky to see the stars. I admire her ability to adore the Creator through the Creation. I am often too busy or in too much of a hurry in the evening with many unimportant things to appreciate the beauty of the stars.
9) Maybe you make time for Bible reading, and maybe you pray often, but do you long to have a bigger vision of God cast before your eyes? I know of no better method than to read from saints across time, geography, and tradition, who were steeped in the Scriptures and in deep communion with the Spirit. If your Christian life tends to lack zeal, glory, or magnitude, why not pick up a copy of Packer’s Knowing God or Sproul’s The Holiness of God?
10) This might be an easy box to check on campus because of the cafeteria, but campus life is not eternal, the church is. “Well,” one might say, “how can I share a meal with my church when I do not have a kitchen or a table to invite them to?” That is a fair question. It reminds me of the student who hosted his entire small group in his dorm room, kids and all, and served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and led worship on a ukulele.
Or students could bless families in our church by offering to cook and clean up for them using the family’s space. Regardless, if you are a member of a local church, you are not a half member because you are a student. You are a full member, a full priest, and what a movement of the Spirit it would be if the hospitality of our church grew ten-fold through dorm room fellowships and ramen feasts!
11) Hands down the best thing I did for my walk with Jesus in the last two years was disconnect from social media, and lock every app on my phone except maps, Spotify, audio books, email, and text. In the blank moments standing in line somewhere or stuck in traffic, I cannot reach for my phone because nothing awaits me there. In those blank moments I have learned to talk with God or turn and talk with my neighbor sharing the wait line with me.
12) What would it look like if in your schedule, budget, and goals you could say that you are seeking first the Kingdom of God? Abraham Kuyper once said, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is the Sovereign over all, does not cry ‘Mine!’” Has the fact that Christ is the Sovereign over all changed how you order your schedule? How you study? How you spend your free time? How you work, budget, and pay bills?
Friends, these are but a few of the many ways that what God does on retreats and during revivals can break though into the everyday of our lives. I wonder, do you long for that? Do you long for God to invade every inch of your existence and claim it as His? What would your life, my life, our church, your campus, class, homework, jobs and paying bills look like if Jesus could rightly say that you have submitted your life to Him in every way?
Recently during a conversation with a friend, the statement was made “it seems like revival happens when the average Christian spends at least half as much time in the Word and in prayer as their pastor does.”
I believe this is true. I do not think that because someone got a degree, or reads big books, or leads a church, that they are automatically spiritual or in a state of ongoing renewal. I believe unhurried time before the throne of God in prayer and in communion with the Spirit in the Word is what causes this.
If God led me out of the ministry and into a nine-to-five job and I lost my zeal for the Word, prayer, and missions, then it was a shallow zeal to begin with.
God got ahold of my life in my early years of college, and while by no means did I achieve a great measure of holiness during those years, nonetheless before I ever considered the ministry an undeniable zeal was there for God’s glory. While I was a full-time student, and working full-time in management of a several million dollar a year business, I was also in church anytime the doors were open (except for women’s Bible study!)
I found someone to disciple me and met with him a minimum of once a week for five years straight. We are talking about somewhere in the ballpark of three hundred one-on-one meetings with the man who discipled me. Week in, week out, rain or shine.
After finishing homework (sometimes during homework) I was listening to the preaching of John Piper, Tim Keller, David Platt, Francis Chan, Matt Chandler, and Paul Washer. I would come home after closing at work, around midnight, and stay up and listen to preaching. Why?
Because I could not get enough of God. Because I could not sleep knowing there are people groups all over Asia and Africa that have zero access to the Gospel. Because I didn’t want to keep living as a slave to my sin.
I cannot say these things as boasting because they have not always been true since. As I let go of certain elements of a life of continual renewal, I lost my zeal. God’s glory lost its beauty and doctrinal precision took over. I thank God that I did not lose it forever, but for a season, to show me that every good thing in my life I owed to Him, even my late-night, homemade preaching conferences. I don’t want to lose it again. I can’t go on without Him.
I will resist the urge to go on. But I will close this with a plea, that if you long for a passion for His glory, if you want to be able to shout with all your heart, “Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done! As the angels sing and declare Your glory in Heaven, make it so in my life!”...If you want that to be true, if that is your longing, would you consider joining me in the pursuit of Glory? I hope so.
I work thirty or so hours a week for our church each and every week. Some days I prepare to teach. Some days I do some graphic design projects. Some days I clean the kitchen and buy pancake mix from the store for Shrove Tuesday.
But oh, how I long for the day when the majority of my weekly schedule was filled up with meetings with people to pray, to read the Word, to worship our great God, and to win the lost for Christ. I long for this. My schedule is mostly wide open. Will you join me in seeking the face of our God? I hope so.
In love, and all for Christ,
- Nate Cure
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