What God Tells Us to do in the Meantime

Most of the moments we remember for the rest of our lives happen on a mountaintop.

The altar where you gave your life to Jesus. The birth of your child. A baptism weekend. A retreat where God finally got your attention and you came home different. I'm telling you, some of the biggest turns in my own life happened on a spiritual mountaintop — a church camp, a men's retreat, a trip overseas where God gave me a word and changed my direction. Those moments matter. When you're on one, you rarely want to come down.

But here's the deal. Life isn't mostly mountaintops.

Life is mostly the meantime. Tuesday nights. The school drop-off line. Homework fights. Four hundred ordinary dinners a year. My son just started driver's school — when did that happen? — and the road to that moment wasn't a highlight reel. It was ordinary day after ordinary day. And I think a lot of our frustration comes from not knowing what to do with the in-between.

This past Sunday we sat in Luke 9, where Peter, John, and James go up a mountain with Jesus. And right there in front of them, Jesus changes — his face, his clothes, bright as lightning. Moses and Elijah show up. It's a full-on mountaintop moment. Honestly, it's God showing off. Those three men would never forget it.

And Peter does what a lot of us do. He says, in so many words, "Let's just stay up here. I'll build three shelters. This is great." Luke tells us the truth about him, gently: "He did not know what he was saying."

Because here's what Peter missed. There's no food on the mountaintop. Nothing grows up there. The mission was always down the mountain.

Some of us will do almost anything to keep the glory days going. If we could just get church to feel the way it used to. If marriage could be as passionate as it was in year one. If the friend group still had time, before the demanding jobs and the crying babies. Mountaintops are great — but every single one of them ends. And when the moment fades, we're left standing in the meantime, wondering what to do.

God actually tells us. A voice comes from the cloud and says one thing: "This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him."

That's the instruction for the meantime. Listen to him.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that the instruction is listen. It's easy to listen on the mountaintop — no distractions, the voice is crystal clear, everything's obvious. But then you come down into a sea of voices. Culture's voice. The voice telling you you're behind, you're not enough, you should just settle. The two a.m. voice doing the math on every worst-case scenario. In all of that noise, you have to make a conscious decision: listen to him.

Listen to him in the car. Cooking dinner and folding laundry. Walking the halls at work with your Bible open and your ears attentive.

Here's what I can't get past. The first and greatest commandment is to love God with everything — no other gods before him. God wants to be chosen. And anybody can worship on a mountaintop. Anybody can be grateful when the lights are up and the moment is big. But it's in the meantime that God sees what he really means to you.

Opening your Bible at work when nobody's watching. Worshiping in your car. Obeying when it means being lonely. Giving when it costs and nobody claps. Walking away from the sin like he told you to. That's how God knows what he means to you.

And isn't that exactly what our Lord did for us? Two mountaintops bookend his life — all of heaven rejoicing at his birth, and the victory of his resurrection. But in the meantime? He lived the life and died the death, for the joy set before him. The meantime is where we got to see how much we mean to him. He laid down his life.

So maybe today is your mountaintop day — maybe you receive God's love for the very first time. Or maybe today is a meantime day, and the step in front of you is simple.

Here's mine for you this week: one morning, before you pick up your phone, open your Bible instead. Just once. See what he says in the ordinary. That's where it counts.

If you're still working any of this out, that's okay — that's what this church is for. We'd love to have you. We meet every Sunday at 8:30, 10:00, and 11:30. Come as you are.