Give glory to the Lord your God before He causes darkness, and before your feet stumble on the dark mountains, and while you are looking for light, He turns it into the shadow of death and makes it dense darkness.
Jeremiah 13:16 (NKJV)
If you ever get a chance to go to the Grayson Highland State Park, DO NOT hesitate! 😊 It was one of my absolute favorite sections on the Appalachian Trail, (AT). It is GORGEOUS! It reminded me a lot of hiking in the Colorado Mountains. There are even wild ponies wandering all through the area. (It was wild goats in Colorado, Mountain Goats and Longhorn.) 😊
The picture above faintly shows the Kiosk along the AT for this area. After reading the historical information about the area my problems started. There was a strong, cold, misty, rainy wind blowing here as it was all out in the open. It was easy to see the trail to the Kiosk, but there was no visible trail leaving the Kiosk! The fog was so thick I could see only a short distance ahead.
I knew one of the worst things I could ever do was to get lost in a wide-open space in the fog. I had never done it and had no interest whatsoever in doing it now. So I recite my quote, “Do the first time what you wish you had done the first time!” That means I first ask God for a little help.
After praying I start out to try to find where the AT continues south by walking in a particular direction until I all but lose the Kiosk, which honestly was not far. After no luck, I would walk back to the Kiosk and try again at a slightly different angle.
I did that several times without any luck, so I decided to try something different. I walk out as far as I could safely go, and walk in a circular direction around the entire Kiosk. Still no luck, only the trail coming to the Kiosk.
At this point I am asking God if I should hike back north into the woods and look for a place to camp for the night. I really do not want to as it is so windy here and I still have several hours of daylight left. It is preferable over getting lost though. ☹
About this time God provides me with another option. “Go over to the fence and walk along it.” “That is a super idea,” I thought! “I will not get lost doing that!” So off I go, able to extend my search beyond sight of the Kiosk without recklessly endangering myself.
I was THRILLED when I eventually came to the trail and hightailed it south trying to generate some body heat to warm up a little. “Thank you, Lord!”
There were other times I found myself in fog even worse than that. Like the time in the middle of the night at camp. I woke up in my lovely, warm, comfortable sleeping bag with the call of nature whining in my ear. Under great duress I finally cried “Uncle!,” and climbed out of my bag and tent to be surrounded by some of the densest fog I had ever seen. My headlamp only making it worse. Even half awake I knew the danger and thought I only walked a few feet from the tent. When I turned around, I saw no tent though! “Ok,” I thought, “I will see it within a few steps.” I looked at a tree by me, walked in the direction I thought the tent was, but…, no tent. I walked back to the tree frustrated and more worried than at Grayson Highlands. This time I had no pack with everything I needed to be safe on my back, and I am also only half dressed to boot! Lord, a little help?!
Thankfully on my next try I find my tent. I guess a few steps half asleep are more than a few steps wide awake. Thank you again, Lord.
“I really need some sleep.” 😊
Now, would I have found the trail at Grayson Highlands or my tent in the middle of the night if I had not asked God for help? Maybe. But, as God says in Jeremiah, at some point I would end up in dense darkness, a world of hurt, for not recognizing Him and giving Him the glory He is due.
God inspires James to address this issue as well in James 4:2b–3. …You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures, (NASB95).
Here are some reasons why I want to live for God’s pleasure rather than my own, some reasons to give God the glory He is due, rather than to content myself to live in dense darkness.
- I do not like the thought of basically telling God, my Creator and Savior, I would rather take my chances without His help in order to live my life for my glory, than to live it out through and for Him.
- I dislike not having the peace and confidence that whatever I am going through is part of God’s glorious and divine plan.
- I do not want to forfeit the time we spend together throughout the day.
- When my body dies and I enter eternity, I do not want to be singing the song “I Did It My Way.” I want to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
- I do not want to be stumbling in the dense darkness, I want to be walking in God’s light of truth.
It is not that I have not been found on the negative sides of these statements or will not be found there in the future. None of us can run from 1 John 1:10. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word (the truth) is not in us. (NKJV)
But that does not give us our golden excuse enabling us to freely sin as we please because neither can we run from 1 John 2:3–4. And we can be sure that we know him (have placed saving faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior) if (conditional clause) we obey his commandments. If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth (according to God’s Word). (NLT)
So even though I fail in the five areas mentioned above, here is how I overcome in order to get back to them and not find myself on a dark path. I refuse to surrender to sin and accept him as a hiking buddy. I follow the Apostle Paul’s example. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, Philippians 3:12–14 (NKJV). If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, 1 John 1:9 (NKJV).
This was the difference between King Saul and King David. King Saul gave in to his sinful bents and found his life filled with dense darkness and eventual death. King David, even though he sinned as did King Saul, refused to surrender to his sin but fought against it, by confessing it and turning away from it. Giving glory to God King David earned God’s description of him as being a man after God’s own heart.
On foggy days, it might be an especially good time to ask ourselves if we are lost in the dark shadows of life. If we are living in darkness rather than light, (1 John 1:5-7). If we find we are, our next question should be if we are going to be like King Saul who forfeited the five positive elements mentioned above, or are we going to be like King David? King David, who did not surrender to his sin but confessed and repented of it in order to gain back the five elements above, pressing further on toward the goal set before us.
Faith Aids 