Get Up Into the High Mountains

Our knowledge of Christ is somewhat like climbing one of the Welsh mountains. When you are at the base, you see but little: the mountain itself appears to be but one-half as high as it really is.

Climb the first rising knoll, and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet.

Go higher, and you see the country for four or five miles round, and you are delighted with the widening prospect.
Mount still, and the scene enlarges; till at last, when you are on the summit, and look east, west, north, and south, you see almost all England lying before you. Yonder is a forest in some distant county, perhaps two hundred miles away, and here the sea, and there a shining river and the smoking chimneys of a manufacturing town, or the masts of the ships in a busy port.

When we first believe in Christ, we see but little of Him. The higher we climb, the more we discover of His beauties. Paul, when grown old, sitting grey-haired and shivering in a dungeon in Rome, could say with greater emphasis than we can, “I know the one in whom I trust,”1 for each experience had been like the climbing of a hill, each trial had been like ascending another summit, and his death seemed like gaining the top of the mountain, from which he could see the whole of God’s faithfulness and love.

Adapted from a text by Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) was England’s best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century.
I know of nothing which so stimulates my faith in my Heavenly Father as to look back and reflect on His faithfulness to me in every crisis and every chilling circumstance of life. Over and over He has proved His care and concern for my welfare. Again and again I have been conscious of the Good Shepherd’s guidance through dark days and deep valleys.
—Phillip Keller (1920–1997)

God’s faithfulness means that because He is the truth, everything He says and does is certain. That means He is 100% reliable 100% of the time. He does not fail, forget, falter, change or disappoint. In the words of Lewis Sperry Chafer: “He not only advances and confirms that which is true, but in faithfulness abides by His promises. He says what He means and means what He says and therefore does everything He says He will do.”
—Dr. Ray Pritchard, Great Is Thy Faithfulness

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1 John 4:8 ESV / Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Romans 8:37-39 ESV / No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

John 3:16 ESV / “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.