“I lift my eyes up, unto the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from You, Maker of Heaven and Earth.” - Psalm 121:1-2

The mountain first and foremost is the place of encounter. To find the Lord as He is and be utterly shocked by Him. To be brought to trembling before His awesome majesty and shudder before the whisper of His power. To feel the energizing fear of the Lord tantalizing you as your soul cries out for the eternal life you’ve spoke of a million times more than you’ve ever really tasted.

It is an encounter with Life itself. To be before the Lord on the mountain is to have your insides rent and your outsides feel like insides. It both satiates and invites your longing, creating within you a desire to cry out in ways you can’t fathom how. Fire, power, thunder, and gentleness all in the same feeling. Your core treads carefully as it jumps in and out of itself toward what it was created for.

All fades away. All melts away as much as we let it. We draw near, utterly unworthy but daring not to think on that or anything less than what is above, terrible, and beautiful. It is on that place of earth, between earth and sky, on that mountain, where everything comes into unbelievable clarity. It is this God, utterly indescribable and impossibly kind, that brings humility in His wisdom, and leaves us undone yet unashamed in our naivete.

Words like love, power, glory, and salvation take on new meaning and fuller definition, making the previous meanings seem like shadows.

Being closer to heaven physically and spiritually, on the earth and yet above it - we realize that it is this God, Jesus, who has created all things. The mountain is a pivotal place of revelation concerning the relationship between heavenly and earthly things, giving perspective, vision, and focus. All issuing forth from the God-Man Jesus, in whom God has purposed to join heaven and earth together.

Lord have mercy on theology based outside encounter. Lord have mercy on vision from lower than Your Holy mountain. “Get up to the mountain!”, says the Lord!