. . .but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)
My childhood home, a 40-acre playground with a river bordering the back of the property, afforded many opportunities for exploration and recreation. However, the gift of time to take advantage of this during my teenage years was minimal due to necessary and required chores on our small farm during the summer. I also spent most of each weekday riding with a neighbor to harvest crops, so I had money for school clothes and supplies. Crops included strawberries, raspberries, cherries, and bush and pole beans.
One day in the cherry orchard, I was perched on a 24-foot topping ladder, picking cherries at the top of the tree. Someone on a ladder opposite me jiggled the branches that pushed against my ladder, and I hurled backward toward the ground. While riding the ladder down, I had the presence to fall to my right side just before it hit the ground so it didn’t crush me. Bruised and shaken but not broken, I developed an unhealthy fear of heights, which affected my equilibrium, causing the tendency for me to feel like I was falling to the right in certain situations. For example, when I walked past moving escalator steps going down, even though I didn’t look over at them—just peripherally seeing them–I started to lean toward the opening as if I was about to fall. The same sense manifested when hiking on a narrow trail with a steep ravine to the right.
However, unknown to me, my spiritual walk was affected as well. God spoke to me concerning the spiritual limitations my childhood experience evoked at the close of a sermon one Sunday. The pastor’s challenge was whether we would dive deeper into God’s fullness. I envisioned two diving platforms—high and low. The higher the platform you dive from, the deeper the water needs to be. First, I stood on the lower platform, where I felt secure. Then, the challenge took on a deeper meaning as I felt God ask if that was the faith level from which I wanted to continue operating. Or was I willing to dive from a higher, more exhilarating height where I would rise high enough to see both the water I would be diving into and the vast panoramic view surrounding it? And did I trust him to take me deeper than I ever had to experience the fullness of God? I recognized that by having the trust and faith to jump from the higher platform, God would position me to operate confidently in a higher calling. And that as I soared to new heights and dared to dive deeper into my calling, I would exchange the shallowness of fractured surrender (resulting from fear and logical, analytical understanding) for the exhilarating freedom of flowing in the heights and depths of his love.
As soon as I said “Yes” to God and mustered the courage to go higher in order to dive deeper, I realized that, after relinquishing fear for the opportunity to go deeper with him, he also delivered me from my physical fear of heights. God met me more than halfway. He freed me from my anxious fears. Psalm 34:4 (MSG)
What an invitation to step beyond negative experiences and failures; the higher we climb, yearning to dive deeper, the more we understand the fullness of the depths of His love and riches in Christ Jesus.
. . .be fully capable of comprehending with all the saints (God’s people) the width and length and height and depth of His love [fully experiencing that amazing, endless love]; and [that you may come] to know [practically, through personal experience] the love of Christ which far surpasses [mere] knowledge [without experience], that you may be filled up [throughout your being] to all the fullness of God [so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself]. Ephesians 3:18-19 (MSG)
Joyce Olsen (Sonrise Magazine Editor) Author. Majored in Child Psychology and Elementary Education at Biola University and Fresno State University in California. However, her natural bent seemed to better match business and administration. In those fields, she worked in corporate administration, church administration, and also as an Information Security Analyst in the medical field. The focus of her writing is to inspire and provoke thought.
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