{"id":1348,"date":"2020-01-07T10:18:10","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T16:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2020-01-07T10:18:12","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T16:18:12","slug":"mountain-top-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/?p=1348","title":{"rendered":"Mountain Top Moments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Ben Cooper is a senior tuba performance major from Decatur, AL. He graduates from UA in May and intends to continue his education in pursuing his masters degree.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve all had those moments that make us feel closer to\nChrist. Those moments where we look at every opportunity as an opportunity to\nshare God\u2019s message. Many of us may have felt this after a week at church camp,\nor after a great trip with a church group. I like to call these \u201cMountain Top\nMoments.\u201d We also have moments where we are far away from God, whether it be\nbecause of troubles going on in our life or we are going through a change (like\nmoving away from your family to come to college). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, my greatest mountain top moment was the weeks after I was told I needed to have open heart surgery. Something about being told you are going to have a major surgery really makes you want to be on your best behavior. Before knowing about my surgery, I wouldn\u2019t consider myself a bad person. I went to church whenever I could, and I talked about God occasionally. However, once I knew my surgery was coming I was doing everything I could to be the best person, and Christian, I could be. Along with this, I also said many prayers and promises to God. I asked for him to get me through this surgery successfully and told him that once it was over I would live my life for him in any way I could. Then after everything was finished and I was on the road to recovery, everything just went back to normal. My mountain top moment was over, and I was back where I always was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going in to my junior year of college I realized that I was not staying true to my promise. I hadn\u2019t made much of an effort to reach out to people or make a difference in people\u2019s lives, so I decided to change. Going to the University of Alabama I am surrounded by so many kinds of people, and because of that I have many great opportunities to show God\u2019s love. The thing that helped me make the biggest impact was Tide 4 Christ. I always had friends in the group, but I didn\u2019t really talk to very many people. I wouldn\u2019t go out of my way to go to any of the activities planned if it was at all inconvenient for me. Once I decided to go in with an attitude that wanted to make an impact, I was able to do many great things. Most recently I went on a mission trip to Costa Rica for 8 days and I never would have imagined myself doing that any time before. Along with great opportunities to serve, I realized I started having a lot more fun at other events once I started reaching out to different people and making as many friends as I could. Now I can say that I feel much better about the promises that I made during my \u201cmountain top moment.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What point on the mountain are you right now? If you\u2019re on the bottom, you can always start climbing up, and if you\u2019ve been at the top and fell back a little bit, are you at least trying to stay above where you were when you started?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve all had those moments that make us feel closer to Christ. Those moments where we look at every opportunity as an opportunity to share God\u2019s message. Many of us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blogs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8LSHf-lK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}