The euphoria experienced in the days and weeks after baptism is to be cherished throughout your lifetime. Let no one take away that sense that the door to heaven was opened to you when you were baptised in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
However, those mountain top experiences are inevitably followed by the valleys. We live in a fallen world. One that must be faced “for what it is,” as well as “the way we want it to be.” Sin, temptation, and the losses that beset us all are to be managed in faith, hope and love.
These have been times of disconnection and doubt for many. There has been more time in the valleys than on the mountain tops. Christians who have previously thought their faith and fellowship to be secure, have found themselves struggling to get back to church assemblies.
If this period of isolation should have taught us anything we must be proactive in our efforts to proclaim the name of Jesus to friends and strangers alike. The only cure for relationships that we previously thought to be robust, but have shown themselves to be threadbare, is to go and rebuild those friendships in the Name of the Lord.
Nothing has changed in the three thousand years since King David penned Psalm 23. Of those times spent off the mountain tops he said: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me” (Psalm 23:4).
God neither abandons us in our struggles nor wipes away any memory of the good we have done in the church. Work in His name is not forgotten…
“For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints” (Hebrews 6:10).
John Staiger
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