I was probably in my early twenties when I first started thinking about leveling mountains.
We were sitting around a campfire at Camp Agape near Ducktown, Tennessee. I had been on quite a few mission trips by then, and I loved them. There was something about getting away from normal life for a few days and being surrounded by people who were all focused on the same thing. We were there to serve, share Jesus, and work for the Kingdom together. But, eventually, you had to go home.
That was always the part I hated.
You’d spend a week serving God, come home spiritually fired up, and pretty quickly find yourself right back in the rat race. I wasn’t necessarily falling into some deep spiritual valley, but I missed the environment of the mission trip. Before long, I’d find myself looking forward to the next trip, church fellowship, youth event, or whatever the next big thing happened to be.
That night around the campfire, my friend and youth minister, Kevin McGehee, started talking about the mountaintops and valleys of the Christian life. I don’t remember everything Kevin said that night, but I remember exactly what happened in my head while he was saying it.
What if I could take the tops off the mountains and use them to fill in the valleys? Then it would all be level ground. Consistent.
That idea has stuck with me for more than twenty years. And Kevin, if you’re reading this, I’m not sure I’ve ever told you that.
Until now, I guess.
Growing Older Isn’t the Same as Growing Up
This week at Thompson Station Church, Pastor Sam continued our study of Philippians with Philippians 2:12–30. Paul tells the Philippians to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
Sam made an important distinction Sunday. Paul doesn’t tell us to work for our salvation. We can’t earn it. Jesus has already done the work necessary for our salvation. Paul tells us to work it out.
Our Life Group guide describes this as sanctification. God saves us by grace, His Spirit works in us, and we’re called to cooperate with that work through daily obedience. What God is doing on the inside should eventually become visible on the outside.
Sam compared it to all those New Year’s resolutions that come with brand-new gym memberships. You can buy the membership, maybe even buy some new workout clothes, but at some point you have to actually work out. Some don't get that far.
He also said something that stuck with me: Christians grow older, but they don’t always grow up.
I’ve been in church essentially my entire life. I was blessed with parents who made sure we were there. I’ve been on mission trips, taught Sunday School and Life Groups, served in ministry, and now I’ve written Bible studies and devotionals. None of those things automatically means I’m growing.
I can know more Bible verses and still lose my temper. I can teach about humility and still want everybody to know when I was right. I can write an entire devotional about Jesus and still hear Him occasionally say, Just be quiet, Maury.
Actually, I hear that last one more than occasionally.
Sometimes Working It Out Means Shutting Up
I don’t like unfairness. One thing that really gets under my skin is when someone comes to me with a problem like everything is on fire. They need help immediately. It’s urgent. So I help.
Then I reach back out because I need some information or an answer to continue helping them, and suddenly I get nothing. Apparently the five-alarm fire has extinguished itself.
There are times I really want to respond, I thought this was important? I can see the words in my head. They’re good words, too. Concise. Accurate. Possibly even deserved.
But I’ve gotten better with age at asking myself whether saying what I want to say is actually going to help anything. If the answer is no, and especially if I know it’s probably going to make things a little worse, I’ve learned that sometimes the most Christlike thing I can contribute to the conversation is absolutely nothing.
That may not sound particularly spiritual, but I think it’s exactly the kind of thing Paul is talking about. In our Life Group this morning, we moved directly from working out our salvation to Paul’s very practical instruction to “do everything without grumbling and arguing.” He tells us that we’re supposed to live differently in a crooked and twisted generation, shining like stars in the world.
Sometimes shining looks like sharing the Gospel or serving somebody in need. Sometimes it looks a whole lot less impressive.
Sometimes it looks like not sending the email or sending that text message.
They Know Who You Are
People I work with have told me they appreciate that I stay calm when situations get stressful. I don’t walk around the office yelling, “Jesus help us!” every time something goes wrong. That would probably create a few additional problems. But He really is the reason for my calm.
I’ve learned to look at a problem and ask what I can do, what I can’t do, and what the next step should be. Instead of staring at the entire thing and becoming overwhelmed, let’s break it down and start working through it. Some of that came from my years in management. People depended on me, so I learned to look at the bigger picture and handle the things I could handle. Some probably came from being the oldest brother, too. Now Karen and the kids look to me that way, and that encourages me to be a calming presence for them.
Age has helped, but Jesus is my calm. Scripture tells us to cast our cares on Him because He cares for us. I can take the stuff that’s worrying me and give it to Him. I’ve also learned through experience that freaking out does not, in fact, solve anything.
A while back, a coworker stopped me and said, “Hey Maury, can I talk to you for a second? Non-work related.”
She told me her nephew was very sick. Faith wasn’t something we talked about much at work, so what she said next surprised me a little. She asked me to pray for him because she knew I was a praying person.
I told Karen about it as soon as I got home. She looked at me and said, “They know who you are and what kind of man you are.”
I’ve never forgotten that.
Being kind to people doesn’t make us Christians. Plenty of people who don’t follow Jesus are kind, generous, wonderful people. But I do think there should be something different about us, and when opportunities come, I don’t want to hide why I live the way I do. I’ll mention church. I’ll talk about what we did Sunday. I’ll talk about Jesus when the door opens naturally.
The thing is, once you tell people who you are, you have to back it up. That’s where the working out happens.
Don’t Forget You’ve Been Saved
Sam told a story Sunday about a man who had walked with a limp for most of his life. Eventually, the man had surgery, but afterward he continued to limp. Someone who knew him commented to the doctor that it was a shame the surgery hadn’t worked.
The doctor told him the surgery had worked perfectly. The man had simply spent so much of his life walking with a limp that he continued walking the same way even after he’d been healed.
I wonder how often we do that as Christians. We’ve been saved, but sometimes we continue walking as though nothing happened.
Sam talked about having a healthy fear and respect for God and never losing our hunger for His Word.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Our salvation isn’t simply something that happened once and then got filed away. It changes the way we live because we remember what we’ve been saved from and Who saved us.
Sam also said the Christian life should be a life of gratitude. He told the story of Richard Williams, who survived the sinking of the Titanic. Doctors wanted to amputate his legs after the disaster, but Williams refused because he believed he would need them. He recovered, went on to become an accomplished tennis player and Olympian, and lived with a deep awareness that his life had been spared.
Sam’s point was simple: Don’t forget you’ve been saved. Then act like it.
He also said, “An ungrateful Christian is an unconvincing Christian.”
That made me think about my own life, particularly my marriage.
Karen and I sometimes joke about our “boring” marriage, and I mean that as one of the greatest compliments I can give it. There isn’t a lot of drama. Nothing major is happening all the time. We’re just here loving each other, raising kids, going to church, and chasing Jesus together.
It’s normal. It’s our normal. And we love it.
Every once in a while, though, I stop and realize how incredibly blessed that normal is. If I could sit down with 25-year-old Maury and show him his future, I’d probably tell him, “Dude, you are sooooooo blessed. More blessed than you could ever imagine right now. You have a beautiful wife and four awesome kids who all follow Jesus. It’s a blessed life. Did I mention the beautiful wife?”
Do I get frustrated? Absolutely. I asked my kids what I complain about, and apparently their answer is “people who don’t use their brains.” Mistreating people gets under my skin, too, and I’m certainly not always successful at keeping my frustration to myself.
But miserable? No. I’m never miserable.
Like Sam said Sunday, I’ve got Jesus. He put it another way that I really liked:
“Because of the Good News on Sunday, I can get through the bad news on Monday.”
That doesn’t mean Monday won’t stink sometimes. It means Monday doesn’t get the final word.
The People Who Showed Me
Toward the end of Philippians 2, Paul gives the church two examples of men whose faith had become visible: Timothy and Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus had served alongside Paul and had nearly died in the process. Paul wanted the Philippians to understand that his service mattered. Our study guide makes the point that there really aren’t insignificant jobs in God’s Kingdom. Faithful service matters whether everybody sees it or not.
That brought me back to Kevin again.
There was another mission trip during those years, this one to Iowa. I’d been working at a newspaper when layoffs came, and I was one of them. I went about six months without a full-time job. I wasn’t embarrassed as much as I was discouraged because I looked and looked for work and nothing seemed to happen.
I was still delivering medicine for H&S Pharmacy on Saturdays, and Bob, Bill, and Mike took care of me. They’d find odd jobs for me to do so I could make a little extra money here and there. Looking back, that entire season was such a God thing. I never missed a house payment. I never missed a bill. God provided, many times through people who simply saw a need and did what they could to help meet it.
When the Iowa mission trip came around, I told Kevin I couldn’t go because it cost too much. He told me that if I wanted to go, not to worry about it. It was taken care of.
Then he handed me an envelope with spending money.
That trip ended up being exactly what I needed. For a little while I could stop thinking about applications and interviews and wondering when I was finally going to find a job. I could focus on God’s work instead.
We served at a huge truck stop where we did a Vacation Bible School-type ministry with Bible crafts, face painting, and opportunities to share the Gospel. I was doing the face painting and drew a hummingbird on a woman’s arm with Sharpies. It turned out pretty good, and she commented that it looked like a tattoo. Other people saw it, and before long nobody wanted face painting anymore. Apparently I had opened an unauthorized Sharpie tattoo parlor at an Iowa truck stop. I spent the day drawing everything under the sun while we talked to people and shared Jesus.
I also had my own hotel room, which was pretty cool. It was one of the first times I remember being by myself as an adult in what felt like a real grown-up hotel room.
One day when we had some free time, we needed something to do, and I suggested driving to Dyersville to see the Field of Dreams. Everybody thought that sounded fun, so we stopped at Walmart and bought a foam bat and ball so we could actually play when we got there.
It was a good day.
Looking back, though, what Kevin did for me lasted much longer than that trip. His helping me when I didn’t have much made me more aware of other people’s needs. I know what it feels like to have someone see that you need help and quietly take care of it, and I’ve always enjoyed being able to do that for someone else when I can.
Years later, when I was teaching, I noticed one of my students had a pair of shoes with the sole separating from them. They were being held together with tape. I quietly found out what size he wore and bought him a brand-new pair of shoes.
I didn’t tell anybody.
I don’t know that I consciously thought about Kevin when I bought those shoes, but I do think there’s a connection. Somebody had once looked at me during a difficult season and essentially said, It’s taken care of. Experiencing that kind of generosity makes you want to be that person for somebody else.
That’s what influence does. Kevin was a signpost pointing me toward Jesus, and hopefully I’ve been able to point a few people in the same direction.
Level Ground
I still think about that campfire.
In my early twenties, I thought the goal was somehow to eliminate the spiritual highs and lows. Take the tops off the mountains, fill the valleys, and make everything level. I understand it a little differently now. The mountains are still going to come, and so are the valleys. Following Jesus doesn’t mean our circumstances suddenly flatten out and everything becomes easy. What I’ve learned is that my relationship with Him doesn’t have to follow the same ups and downs as everything happening around me.
Maybe marriage is the best way I know to explain it.
Karen and I see each other every day. Some days are great. Some days are exciting. Some days are frustrating, and some days are just boring. A boring Wednesday doesn’t mean I love Karen less, and a great Saturday doesn’t mean we’re somehow more married than we were on Wednesday. The relationship is bigger than the circumstances of the day.
My relationship with Jesus is the same way.
I don’t need a mission trip to feel close to Him anymore. I don’t need the next church event or some spiritual mountaintop. Following Jesus is woven into ordinary life now. It’s reading my Bible. It’s writing Grit & Wit and seeking other opportunities to write about Him. It’s thinking about the next book. It’s talking with my brothers and texting back and forth with Mama. It’s trying to be a godly husband to Karen and a godly father to our kids.
It’s helping at church when I can while also being okay with saying no when my schedule doesn’t allow it. I’ve learned that I don’t think God wants us to burn ourselves out trying to prove how committed we are to Him. Sometimes faithfulness means serving, and sometimes wisdom means recognizing that you can’t do everything.
It’s also going to work and trying to be the calm when everybody else thinks the building is on fire. Sometimes it’s recognizing an opportunity to talk about Jesus. Other times it’s realizing that the most Christlike thing I can do at that particular moment is keep my two cents in my pocket.
That’s closer to what I meant all those years ago when I imagined taking the tops off the mountains and filling the valleys.
Jesus is the same on a bad day as He is on a good day. Karen and I don’t have less of a marriage on the boring days, and I don’t have less of Jesus when nothing particularly spiritual or exciting is happening.
I’m just happy in the life God has given me.
I also don’t want to become a fun sponge who walks into a room and sucks all the joy out of it because I’m trying so hard to look spiritual. Quite the opposite. I want to be so full of God that the excess pours out on the people around me.
Maybe that’s what working out our salvation looks like. God keeps working in us, and over time the people around us begin to see the evidence.
Not just on the mountaintops. Not just in the valleys.
But in all that ordinary level ground in between.
Live It
Paul’s command to “work out your salvation” isn’t an invitation to earn what Jesus has already given you. It’s an invitation to let what God is doing inside you show up in the way you actually live.
This week, pay attention to the ordinary moments. Notice how you respond when you’re frustrated, whether gratitude or complaining comes more naturally, how you treat the person who needs something from you, and whether you’re willing to listen when God tells you that the best response might be no response at all.
Then ask yourself a difficult question:
If the people around me didn’t know I was a Christian, would the way I live make them curious? Another way to put it, if you were put on trial for being a Christian, would they have enough evidence to find you guilty?
You don’t have to yell about Jesus. But when somebody needs Him, it would be pretty great if they knew you were a praying person.
Dinner Table Devotional
Read: Philippians 2:12–18
Paul tells Christians to “work out” their salvation and then immediately gets practical about what that means. Our faith isn’t supposed to stay hidden inside us. God changes our hearts, and over time that change should affect our words, attitudes, choices, and the way we treat people.
Paul says believers should shine like stars in a dark world. We don’t necessarily shine by being louder than everybody else. We shine by living differently because Jesus has changed us.
Talk About It
What do you think it means to “work out” what God is working in you?
Why do you think Paul specifically tells Christians not to complain or argue?
What is one way someone could recognize that you follow Jesus without you telling them?
Who is someone whose life has shown you what following Jesus looks like?
What’s one ordinary situation this week where you can be a light to someone else?
Pray
Jesus, thank You for saving us and for continuing to work in us. Help us not to simply grow older in our faith but to grow closer to You and become more like You. Teach us to be grateful, to obey when no one is watching, and to live in a way that points other people toward You. Give us a steady faith on the mountaintops, in the valleys, and everywhere in between. Amen.