All tagged valley

Living in the Valley, and Praying from the Mountain

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional, Mountains and Valleys

While working on a lesson about “The Wings of Eagles and Valleys”, the Holy Spirit spoke to me regarding something unexpected. Scripture began to reveal to me that throughout time people have typically lived in valleys, but seldom atop mountains. It came to me that they would go to the mountain to meet with God as they sought out a quiet, private, and undisturbed, place to meet Him in prayer. I was captured by this concept because most sermons speak of valleys as hard places that are full of trials... but as I studied I found that they are so much more than that. Valleys are where we live. Valleys are where the lakes exist and rivers flow slowly to the sea as they carry and deposit the nutrients and silt washed from the mountains to fields of grain and grapes.

Living and Praying in the Valleys

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional, Life in the Valley

Most Christians envision themselves standing on a mountaintop with their arms stretched up towards the sky, and there is nothing wrong with that because it is a Holy place, but when it comes right down to it, we live out our everyday lives in the valleys. We go to the mountain, but we return home to the valley, and yet we spiritually seem to have this idea engrained in us that valleys are bad places to be. Perhaps it is because whenever we think of a valley we recall the 23rd Psalm and its reference to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but scripture has much more to say about valleys than to tell us that death resides there too. After all, death can only reside where first there is life.

To Clear the Water we can’t stay on the Mountain

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional, Leaving the Mountaintop

When we are lifted up and standing in that spiritual high place with Jesus don’t we want to stay there forever? When we are feeling the electric thrill of faith coursing through us and every hair on our body has risen as if in unison to the breeze of God's breath, don’t we want to remain in that euphoric state always? Well of course the answer is yes, but that is not what we are meant to do. God has more for us to do.

Quiet walks and our gift of peace

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional , Waking with God

When I was a boy it wasn’t uncommon to see people, and families taking a stroll in the evening. When people would have a problem in their life they wouldn’t go to a psychiatrist, they would take a quiet walk to meditate, think, reason, and if they were Men or women of faith they would discuss these things with God, and Jesus Christ. Somehow over the years we have fallen out of this habit, and come to believe that all our problems are to be addressed by yet more action, not less, and that quiet times of solitude are a waste of time. I invite each of us to ask ourselves a simple question today; “How much time do I spend alone with God, and Jesus, or in meditation versus going about my active life in the world, or even faith?”

Are we walking in Fear through a Dark Valley?

Richard Forbes
Christian , Daily Devotional , Valley of Death

I was speaking with a good friend yesterday about a place known to all who even casually read scripture, “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”, and he mentioned that as he toured Jerusalem that this was presented as a real place, The Kidron Valley. We quote this phrase when we are facing terrible situations in which we might truly die, and we have also affixed many figurative meanings to it as well, but when David was writing this psalm (23rd Psalm) he might, quite literally, have been writing about this very real valley; an evil place of deep darkness where children were sacrificed to Baal. Are we facing a place of evil in our lives today? Are we at the entrance to a very real valley of deep darkness in our lives, a place where death awaits, or are we walking through a more figurative place, such as a season of darkness and evil?