Climbing Your Mountain

God must have had fun when He created Earth’s mountains. I wonder what He was thinking when He pulled off Mt. Everest, the world’s summit of all summits. Perhaps He had Sir Edmund Hillary in mind as He spoke to that particular peak, shaping it higher and higher until it towered with a distinction all its own.

I can picture Him throwing back His glorious head and pumping His mighty arm in the air, knowing that in the distant future a young boy would grow up with wild adventure pulsing through his veins and a penchant for conquering that mountain.

Mt. Everest was a life challenge for Edmund Hillary. We can read of his daring and his ultimate conquest and admire him with a “Wow, what a great story!” We can even feel the tingle of a quickened pulse as our minds take in a smidgen of the courage, planning, preparation, and endurance he went through to achieve being the first person ever to reach the top of Mt. Everest’s summit.

But there is another, very real challenge buried within this tale…

Can your own heart believe that God has already planned a glorious story of achievement for you?

You and I are more wondrously formed than God’s masterpiece of Mt. Everest and every bit as called to a life of crowning achievement as young Edmund was. As Ephesians 2:10 tells us,

“…we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.  (NASB)

Whether you are already a Christ-follower or not yet a believer, one thing stands true: God is no respecter of persons. You were planned and prepared for in His eternal heart just as much as was Moses or King David, Jesus’ twelve disciples or Martin Luther, Billy Graham or Sir Edmund Hillary.

The list just as easily and meaningfully can read Daniel Cameron or Daniella Jenner, David Wayne or Jason James, Cherie Leigh or Charlene Grace. It can just as easily have scribed on it your own name…

Before you click ‘delete’, mentally sneer at me “yeah, su-r-r-e,” or God forbid, take a too-proud stance of “It’s about time you noticed I’m God’s greatest gift to the world!” would you consider where you fit in God’s timeless classic – His Story? There is a perfectly fashioned niche for you for which you have been perfectly fashioned.

It has been six years since Holy Spirit blew afresh on my love for creative writing. As I yielded to the stirrings within to write, He gave me one mandate: “Point them to Jesus.”  That mandate is being lived out in my renewed passion for storytelling and ongoing discovery of my own life story and how it fits into His.

In recent years “Point them to Jesus” has had the added facet of a burning desire to walk alongside others as they too engage the process of discovering who God has created them to be and do.

Will I ever physically climb Mt. Everest? I can tell you right now, no. There is only one Sir Edmund Hillary. But then again, there is only one Nancy Bentz, or ______________ fill in your name.

You and I have been fashioned to accomplish things for God’s Kingdom that only each of us can achieve through the power of the Holy Spirit. If there is a growing restlessness inside you, it may well be that God is calling you to scale the Mt. Everest He has created just for you.

Can you name it? And if so, have you been preparing well? It’s one thing to desire to “end well.” It’s quite another to be diligent about dedicating the necessary time, energy and commitment that will equip you to be able to do so.

Before he was ever knighted “Sir” Edmund Hillary, many difficult and demanding years had gone before. I believe Edmund’s secret to his success in arriving at the pinnacle of Mt. Everest lay in his ability to name that youthful passion God placed within him and then harness it to the essential disciplines required to make it to the top of the world’s highest peak.

If you have not already begun, “today” is always the best time to choose stepping into the harness with God. If you are already in His harness, be encouraged. He never asks you to pull more weight than you can bear, though your desire to reach the top will be more than matched by His determination to see that you are fully ready, equipped, and able to scale the heights of your mountain.

A glorious view awaits you!

Gracefully Free