Better Than A Roller Coaster High

I love pictures. Perhaps that is why poetry speaks my language, because imagery can resonate layers deeper than regular words. A couple weeks ago I wrote about “Cultivating a Life Worth Imitating,” but I’m realizing I have more words to share on this subject. It may be that a picture I’ve long carried keeps coming to mind. It may be too that I am not the only one who has experienced the roller coaster highs and lows of feeling close to God at conferences or worship nights or Bible camp only to plummet once the experience ends. If you would like to forgo the roller coaster relationship with God and learn a simple but profound secret for keeping that fire burning, stay with me as I share about the image I can’t get out of my head.

Let me set the context for you. It is 2002, and 15-year old me is spending the summer on an 8-week mission trip with Teen Mania. Who wouldn’t want to spend a summer in New Zealand (even though it’s their winter season), right?! I remember this day because there was a wood stove in the main space of where we had lodged for the night, and it was chilly enough to warrant a fire. A teammate stepped up to the challenge and soon had a toasty fire roaring. Hours later the whole group gathered here for some teaching time, and a leader began talking about how our hearts are just like a wood stove. The room was silent as we soaked in the words. If we want the fire in the woodstove to keep burning, we learned, we need to keep adding wood.

The teaching continued: the wood we put into the “woodstove” of our hearts is time spent with Jesus: immersing ourselves in Scripture, talking with Him, declaring His praises, quieting ourselves and listening. It’s simple. Yet for the first time it stuck me how necessary the everyday, ordinary moments of spending time with Jesus are.

This image of fire burning in a woodstove is the picture in my mind I’ve kept close since 2002. It spurred me to continue daily quiet times after returning home from the mission trip. I also discovered how quickly raw worship music brings me into the presence of God, so I played it often, and loud. As months turned into years, and years passed the decade mark, I found I could still in an instant feel as close to God as I used to at all the youth group events I’d attended. I didn’t need the big and impressive and loud. But I did need Jesus, and to not underestimate the importance of routine, mundane moments through which He can speak just as profoundly as He can at a special event.

Long hours of study through my college years would leave me feeling as penetratingly close to God as I did during large corporate worship sessions. Regardless of where I was writing, reading, or grading, I would turn on worship music, soaking as a sponge in truth about God’s character as well as how He defines me.

Visual reminders of gospel truths and God’s deep love for people all across the earth were instrumental too in teaching me to keep adding wood to my “woodstove.” I had learned from a roommate on the New Zealand trip to put Scripture verses up on the walls, so I created mixed-media pieces to cover the walls of my room when I returned home. These I brought with me to every dorm room I occupied, and I added in more: flags, maps, post cards and magazine cut-outs showing many different people groups. My room became my prayer closet for the nations, but what my heart was doing was learning in a very tangible way how to abide.

When I hit times of elevated pressure, complex relationships, and grappling with my yet-singleness, I could readily recall memorized Scripture verses and song lyrics. I was learning to keep stoking the fire by coming quickly and lingering long before the fire of His presence.

Friends, He is nearer than we often recognize.

Dearer than our spouse or closest friend.

The sound of our voices rising kisses His ears.

He pursues us always, loves us perfectly, delights to spend time with us.

Our hearts were not created to wait for roller-coaster highs to know He is present. Though it is simple to keep our fires burning, it is patient work that necessitates slow and steady faithfulness even when it feels trite and ordinary. Yet drawing near produces joy as each log we add our “woodstove” invites us to learn a deeper layer of who this beautiful Jesus is we can’t stand to be apart from.

The roller coaster of spiritual highs and lows can draw us into the presence of God, but we then need to keep stoking the fire so our hearts don’t grow cold. I invite you to let it sink in for a moment that “His banner over you is love” (Song of Solomon 2:4). You are “the apple of His eye” (Zechariah 2:8) and “like jewels in a crown” (Zechariah 9:16). He delights in you (Isaiah 62:4). He likes you.

Maybe you need to hear that today: God likes you. He wants more than anything to spend time with you. You move His heart and arrest His gaze. You are infinitely loved by and precious to Him.

Friends, the roller coaster eventually takes its toll. The highs are amazing and we feel His presence so tangibly, but then Monday comes around and in the drudge and grind of everyday life, we find we are missing something. The joy is elusive. The peace fleeting. The doubts heavy and present. The ordinary dreary.

We long to live on mission and invite our neighbors into our hearts, homes, and lives, but we can’t offer what we don’t have. Peace that sustains solely on the top of the roller coaster is not all that irresistible—occasional peace is an empty substitute for the real, everyday peace that never leaves. Joy that is intermittent is similarly underwhelming. Prayer that falls easily from our lips only when we are surrounded with a crowd means little the other 99 percent of our lives.

We need to live a testimony that declares the goodness of God in our life even in the ordinary moments before our words have weight. We have to know first what we declare to others. But if our fire is not still burning, how can we warm others—light a fire for others?

Father, we love You. But sometimes You feel so distant.

When we grow weary, would You stir our desire for You.

We invite You into the ordinary moments of our everyday—into dishes clanking, and garage doors opening, deadlines stalking, and to-dos supersizing.

Teach our hearts to yearn for You. May we rest in You through the mundane as well as the storms.

May we sense Your nearness in an instant.

May we seek You when we are alone with You just as we do at big events.

And may the fire burning in our “woodstove” encourage others in our neighborhood to also forgo the roller coaster and simply stoke the fire.

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