Take Me Higher

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 

—Colossians 3:1–2 NIV

Take me higher, God. 

That one statement is a prayer He taught me to pray about ten years ago. 

I was in the midst of a messy situation—one I had certainly contributed to, but also one in which I felt hurt and wronged.  My attempts to rectify the problem only made things worse, as the environment I was in seemed more focused on sweeping stuff under the rug than actually dealing with issues. As a result, I felt lost, misunderstood, and alone.

That’s when the Father spoke to me. “You need to come up higher.” He used the image of an eagle, which uses wind currents to ascend. Instead of getting caught up in a storm, eagles use the storm’s winds to fly higher. 

The storm I was in at that time was destroying me. I was focused on my sin and emptiness, the sins against me, and the lack of healthy resolution, but God was calling me higher. So I leaned into His presence and allowed Him to give me a new perspective.

And that messy, painful situation led me into one of the sweetest seasons I have ever had with Jesus. 

In those months, God did massive amounts of healing in my heart. He came to me as a perfect Father, loving and kind. He came to me as a passionate fire, all-consuming and refining. He came to me as the lover of my soul, sweet and intimate. 

And it started with coming up higher. 

Just like I had been, we can easily get caught in the storms of this world. There’s certainly plenty of storms and plenty of opportunities, whether it’s personal struggles or national and global chaos. 

Maybe we get disappointed when something doesn’t work out the way we wanted it to. Maybe we lose a friendship or a job opportunity. Maybe the daily news evokes fear. Or maybe it’s even just the mundaneness of everyday life that seems to drag us down—groceries, laundry, errands, appointments.  

Heaven has a perspective on it all, and it’s a better perspective than the one we have. In my situation, all I could see was messiness and pain, but God showed me an opportunity to dive deeper into behavior patterns, repeated choices, and unhealed trauma so that I could find healing not just from this situation, but from wounds throughout the previous decade of my life. And even more than that, I fell more in love with Him and knew Him deeper and better than ever before. 

In your storms, you might see a lost opportunity, but God might see a better door down the road. 

You might see a broken relationship, but God might see protection. 

You might see tedious routines, but God might see the ministry of serving your family. 

Sometimes we just have to get a little higher to see what God sees. This is part of what it means to set our minds on things above. We need to look past the immediate circumstances, past the comfort of our flesh, past our temporal surroundings, to see the spiritual and eternal picture. 

There’s more life above the storm. More freedom. More joy. More peace. When you ask God to take you higher, when you allow the winds to lift you above the storm, you find yourself right next to Jesus, which is the best place to be because at the end of it all, His eyes of fire are exactly where we’re going to be looking anyway. 

So in whatever storm you’re facing today, whatever situation you can’t see beyond, just whisper, “Take me higher, Lord.” He will lift you above the storm and open your eyes to see from His perspective.