On the Backside of the Mountain

If you’ve ever traveled to another country to serve as an intercessor in prayer than you have surely experienced the backside of the mountain.

When we met up with the rest of our team everyone was smiling and full of energy.  Bags checked, security done and waiting at the gate with anticipation of all the Lord was about to do.  This is the front side of the mountain.  Our team was ready to climb the mountain of intercession!

There are challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, and sheer joy in climbing the mountain of intercession on a mission trip half a world away from where we live.  Living each day in God’s timing is an incredible feeling.  Gone is the sense of ‘hurry’ and gone are the ‘to do lists’ of everyday life.  One of our field leaders asked us about doing an additional prayer assignment while we were with him, and it felt so good to say, “We are at your disposal today.”  God sent us to serve them and those they are doing ministry with and that was our only plan.

We were blessed with so many incredible times of seeing God at work; of seeing him answering prayer after prayer, of knowing that we were directly in the center of his plan at that time.  We were focused on the needs of others and our needs came second.  We could do this because God was supplying for our needs at every turn we took.   We were praying with everyone, in every place at every opportunity.  We were going up the mountain of intercession.  And then... it was time to go home.

After more than two weeks of serving non-stop, we were ready to go home.  We were ready to board that long flight knowing that our climb had been a good one.  We had finished our climb on the mountain. 

Then came the days just following our return when we walked around in a haze of jet lag and confusion and day to day life intruded rather rudely, if I might say so. 

We were now on the backside of the mountain, in the shadows of readjustment.  But, God was leading us, even there; especially there.  The beautiful part about God is that he always sees us clearly even when we can’t see ourselves clearly.  God knows when we are struggling to regain our footing and he is walking with us.  He is caring for us even when we can’t see it. 

This is the time we must truly walk by faith and not by sight.  On the front side of the mountain the sun is shining so bright.  But it is on the back side of the mountain that it is the Lord’s own light that is guiding us.  It’s in the tiredness and the times of being overwhelmed as we re-acclimate that God is tenderly caring for us.  It is there that the Lord is already beginning to prepare us to be ready for the next time we will climb the mountain of intercession on another field, in another country; ready once more to serve our Lord with all our hearts and to pray where he has called us to go into all the Nations.    

For now, we rest on the backside of the mountain secure in God’s care.

By Jacqui – One of God’s Intercessors