Day 15 Adventure ~ Mountaintop Experience
MARK MITTELBERG
Few places are as beautiful as Montana’s Beartooth Mountains in midsummer, and no outdoor activity is more fulfilling than backpacking among the craggy peaks, where the sky is clear, the air crisp, and the aroma of pine needles fresh and fragrant. Then there are the high-altitude flowers, with shapes, colors, and sizes you just don’t see down in the lowlands.
One summer, Heidi and I enjoyed a nearly week-long trek into this region. We set up a base camp next to a sparkling mountain stream and took hikes each day, exploring in various directions.
A few days into our trip, we met Dan, who had come up alone and set up camp nearby. We introduced ourselves and invited him to join us the next morning for a day hike up a mountain that overlooked the area. He accepted, and we met him soon after sunrise.
It was a beautiful morning. We walked along, chatting and enjoying the alpine scenery, and the higher we climbed the more mountain flower variations we noticed. After we had all commented about how amazing they were, it struck me that I might be able to bridge the conversation to more significant topics. So I decided to throw out a line and see what happened.
“You know, God must have quite an imagination to create such beauty,” I began. “We keep seeing all these incredible shapes and colors of flowers. The Creator must really be creative.”
I still have a clear mental picture of the scene: we were on a gentle incline, walking single file on the narrow trail. Heidi was up front, Dan was in the middle, and I was in the back (somebody had to guard our group from the grizzly bears). When I made my comment about God’s imagination, Dan glanced back at me and said, “Well, I guess that would be true if you believed in God, but I don’t.”
End of discussion. Or so he thought.
Dan didn’t realize it, but I’m an intellectual-style evangelist who was looking for an atheist to interact with in the mountains. Finally, something really interesting to talk about, I thought. Enough about floral life; let’s talk about eternal life.
It wasn’t hard to keep the dialogue going. I simply replied, “Really? You don’t you believe in God? Why not?” As I expected, he was more than happy to explain his rationale to Heidi and me.
In fact, the rest of the way up the mountain he did his best to lay out the reasons we shouldn’t believe in God, why he couldn’t exist, and how we can live without depending on some manufactured deity. We listened patiently, asking a few questions to gain a clear picture of his beliefs and waiting until it seemed right to offer some of our own thoughts.
That opportunity occurred during most of the hike back down the mountain. As persuasively as I knew how, I tried to answer the objections Dan had raised and to present what I considered to be compelling evidence for God’s existence. We talked about science, logic, philosophy, history, and archaeology, and I tried to explain how all of this — and how knowing Christ in a personal way — had impacted our own lives.
Our discussion lasted all the way back to our base camp, where we started a campfire and talked for a -couple more hours. I wish I could report that at the end Dan fell to his knees, confessed his sins, and then begged us to baptize him in the nearby babbling brook as the fish jumped in the warm glow of the late afternoon sunshine.
That didn’t happen. I do believe, however, that Dan heard some information he hadn’t encountered before. And I trust that God will use that conversation whenever Dan reflects back on our time together.
That said, I think we might meet Dan again in heaven someday. Why? Because there’s one more part to our mountain experience.
Heidi and I had to pack up our stuff and head back down the several-mile journey to where our car was parked. We got everything together and stopped to say good-bye to Dan and to encourage him about what we’d discussed.
Then, about halfway down the trail, we stopped at a little stream to rest and get a drink of water. While we were there we met five big, athletic, and very friendly guys heading up the trail to enjoy a few days of camping. As we talked with them, we found out they were also Christians — and not just any old Christians; they were leaders in the famed Navigators ministry. In other words, they were sort of like Green Berets for God.
As soon as we found that out, we figured God was up to something — maybe a revival in the Rockies — so we told them about meeting Dan, filled them in on our conversations with him, and even drew them a map so they could locate where he was camping. Then we sent them off with a challenge.
“Look, fellows,” I said, imitating the tone of a drill sergeant, “we got this thing started. Now you guys go find Dan and see if you can finish the job.”
It might be my imagination, but I think those guys were salivating as they bounded up the trail, swiftly heading toward the spot we had scrawled on that makeshift map.
Now you know why I think Dan might end up in heaven — whether he likes it or not.
Action Principle
Often the most amazing evangelistic encounters come out of making the right split-second decisions. You might not be thinking about spiritual matters or be aware of the opportunity that’s about to open up in front of you. But suddenly you see it and think: Should I or shouldn’t I? I’m not really “prayed up,” I don’t know what I would say next if the person shows interest, and I’m certainly not ready to answer a lot of deep theological questions. My advice? Ignore all of that and do four simple things: take a deep breath, say a quick prayer, open your mouth, and let it fly. God can guide and use you, but first you’ve got to take the small risk of getting the conversation started. That’s where the adventure really gets going.
Stepping into the Adventure
In John 4 we’re told about the conversation between Jesus and a woman drawing water from a well. Jesus asked her for a drink, and she quizzed him concerning why he, a Jewish man, would break the cultural customs to talk to a Samaritan woman. But Jesus wasn’t interested in such mundane matters. He saw an opportunity to turn the conversation toward a much more important topic.
“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water,” he told her (v. 10). Living water? What’s that? the woman wondered. So she started asking him about it.
Jesus had initiated a spiritual conversation, an initial element in the chain of events necessary to fulfill his mission “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). How can we follow Jesus’ example? Ask God each day to give you the awareness to see the opportunities as well as the courage to seize them. Then when you recognize an open door, do the four things I mentioned in the Action Principle:
- Take a deep breath. Funny thing, but outreach always goes best when you have plenty of oxygen in your lungs.
- Say a quick prayer. Ask God to lead and use you. But it must be quick — about the amount of time required to take the deep breath.
- Open your mouth. This makes your words much easier to understand.
- Let it fly. You’ve got air in your lungs, God on your side, and something to say; what more could you possibly ask for? Speak up and spark some spiritual action. Don’t delay, don’t change the subject, and don’t give the Devil time to whisper in your ear that this is not an opportune moment. Just let it fly, launch into the adventure, and watch God work.
Good -people bring good things out of the good stored up in their heart. . . . For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. Luke 6:45 TNIV
Taken from The Unexpected Adventure by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg. Copyright © 2009 by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg. Used by permission of Zondervan.
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