This morning’s word is The Hill That Makes You.
The anchor verses are Matthew 10:8 and Acts 8:4.
In a small town in western Kenya, an archway crosses the road and reads, “Home of Champions.” The town is Iten. It sits at eight thousand feet on the edge of the Great Rift Valley. Every morning, around two hundred runners run its dirt roads. Most of them are unknowns. Some will become world champions. All of them run because they were born into a country where running is one of the few paths to a better life, and onto a hill they did not choose.
Last year alone, more Kenyan men ran a marathon faster than two hours and eight minutes than the entire history of American marathoners. The thin air builds the lungs. The dirt roads build the legs. The long childhood walks to school build the endurance. The terrain that should have been a burden became the making. The Kalenjin runners of the Rift Valley did not choose the hill. GOD used the hill, and through it HE formed them.
That is the thread this morning. You are sent into terrain you did not choose, and what goes with you matters more than what you carry. It runs under four readings that do not look related. A disciple-making plan. A letter from a man in chains. A story about a lost compass. A teaching on whether GOD still heals.
Jesus formed HIS disciples in three rhythms. First time. Then teaching. Then HE sent them. Peyton Jones and Kris Langham, in their disciple-making plan Discipology, call that third rhythm tactics. The sending is the point. Mark 3:14 holds both halves at once. Jesus appointed twelve “that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach.” Being with HIM and being sent by HIM are one act. In Matthew 10 HE gave them authority and sent them: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” They did not feel ready. Readiness does not come first. Obedience comes first. The sending itself begins the qualifying.
What travels with the one who is sent is not strength he can muster on his own. Ignatius of Antioch, the second-century bishop and martyr who wrote seven letters to early churches on his way to Rome and execution, carried something else into his chains. In chapter four of his letter to the Trallians he writes, “I have great knowledge in God, but I restrain myself, lest I should perish through boasting.” Then the line that holds the letter together. “I therefore have need of meekness, by which the prince of this world is brought to nought.” The runner of Iten does not attack the hill. He submits to it every morning, and the submission is what builds the lung. The one sent into unchosen terrain carries meekness, not force.
Here is the question under all of it. If you did not choose this terrain, did GOD do this to you? The wilderness story in the ten-day plan from ResLife Church answers it sideways. The author was lost as a teenager, hunting with his father. He had dropped his compass and trusted a pond he thought he knew. It was the wrong pond, one of two that looked the same, and he walked miles astray before he saw it. The runner trusts the road he was given, not the road he wishes he had. Jesus in the wilderness, in Matthew 4, met every lie with the same answer. It is written. The Word is the compass that holds when every landmark shifts.
And the deeper question still. Pastor Daniel Vander Klok of ResLife Church, who writes on the healing ministry of Jesus and the believer’s part in carrying it forward, answers carefully. GOD is not the source of the pain. GOD is the master of the reverse. In Acts 8 a great persecution scattered the church, and those who were scattered went about preaching the Word. The scattering meant to destroy the church became the way it went into all the world.
You did not choose your terrain either. You did not choose where you were born or who raised you, or the hour the loss arrived. But you were sent into all of it. What goes with you is the meekness Ignatius named, the Word that Jesus used in the wilderness, the authority Christ gave HIS disciples, and the master of the reverse who has been turning attacks into fuel for two thousand years.
This is a Sunday morning. You are still on the road. The hill is still high. The hill is not the gift. The reversal is the gift. The hill is the ground where the reversal finds you. And you are not alone.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
This Sunday’s Marc My Sabbath homily, What Goes With You, carries this word further. Read it here.