What Is Your Mountain?

God has a way of starting stuff. You look up and, suddenly, the conditions seem perfect for a new job, a new love, or a new pursuit. It’s because God wants us to succeed, ascend, connect, and expand. Pursuing goals, reaching higher heights, climbing our “mountain,” and succeeding in some way is a part of God’s plan for each of our lives.

The mountains we seek to climb can be gorgeous, honorable, world-changing, Kingdom-expanding, God-pleasing missions. Yet mountains don’t lie about their heights, their rough terrain, or their thin air. I think we just do a bad job keeping them in perspective, without the extra glamor and romance.

What is your mountain? The climb may be a professional one. It may be in social stature or class, or a new ministry you’re growing.

Every climb is distinct, but some things characterize them all: The higher up you go, the more that threatens to separate you from your original and most real identity as a son or daughter of God. The mountain offers new titles, new responsibilities, and new business. There is money to be made on the mountain. There are pats on the back and applause, likes and attention and ego-feeding.

And it’s that incredible benefits package that seduces us into making the mountain home. Being crowned by the climb seems like the more glorious marker for your existence. That honor can be misleading, though. You may get to the highest heights in what you do, but further from the world below that kept you aware of who you are. And after all, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

While I am 100 percent certain that God started my trek on this mountain, the puzzling part is that the climb took so much out of me and even pulled me away from him at times. We think the awesome task is climbing the mountain, being great, and changing the world. But the most awesome task is climbing the mountain God instructs us to without letting it change our core relationship and identity in him.

Lord God, as I reflect on the mountain I’ve been climbing, I ask you to show me any ways where I have made it about my own success and not about walking closely with you. Amen.