Prayer Mountain

For me, prayer mountain was the most personally impacting experiences from the whole trip. It was for two reasons: the Prayer cell and the stations of the cross.

For two hours we traveled up the mountain to look at the sites of Christ's life, death and resurrection. At each stop, one of the Beeson Pastors National, one of the staff, or one of the Beeson Pastors International shared a devotional thought. The preaching ws not just preaching. It was an encounter with God. Each devotional built on the other, even though this was not intended. Randy began the experience of inviting us to enter into Christ's life as a little child upon his daddy's lap.

Alicia talked about how Christ stilled the storm. She focused not only the fact the Christ still stormed but that it was his presence in the boat which made all the difference.
John Stockle, a PHD student at ATS, shared powerfully how we as pastors need to die to pride. He shared how everything in his life had gone well but the past two years all the things he tried to do didn't work. He had to die to himself. He invited us to do the same.

Randy closed this time by reading the resurrection story and inviting us to run up the hill to see if Christ was truly raised. It helped us remember that that is what it was like for those first disciples.

These thoughts don't capture the moment. You did have to be there. It has also been two weeks since then.

This is the prayer cell I went to later that night. I wrote about that experience a couple weeks ago and you can see that link here. It was a pretty small room, about 6 by 3.

Overall it was a great experience and I'm glad to have gone.