Too many song lyrics with "Mountain" in them to choose just one.

What. A. Week. I now have a better understanding of the phrase “Thank God it’s Friday!”

[Before any further, I want to send a shout-out to Lindsey's mom who apparently reads my blog...Hey Mrs. Dilleshaw!]

This next week, SendNYC is having its first board meeting in Orlando before the Southern Baptist Convention’s meeting there. It’s so exciting to see things coming together for this! However, that’s meant a lot things needed to be done in a short window of time. It’s been a lot of work, but I really have loved it! I cannot imagine having a job that I didn’t like. How do people get up every morning and head off to a job they don’t love? That idea just makes me cringe inside. I mean, we all have passions and things we love to do. There are activities that make us feel alive. Why not use those? Why not find a job that incorporates those loves into your day? I guess most people would say I'm being a bit naive to think that it were be possible. But I still think it is.

I won’t bore you with the details of what I’ve been working on. I will, however, share a taste of what God’s been showing me this week! Again, I’ll try to keep it short, but I make no promises!

While I haven’t faced challenges like some people I know, there have definitely been mountains that I’ve had to climb. There have been obstacles in my path and even times that the path looked like a dead end. If you’re anything like me, those kind of moments tend to draw out questions such as “Why is this happening?” and “Won’t You take this away?”. Mountains are scary. You can’t see around them. They’re tall and dangerous and threatening. Let’s be honest: life would be a whole lot easier if God would just move those pesky things out of our way. I mean, as believers, our goal is to reach Him, right? So wouldn’t we reach our goal sooner if we didn’t have to climb those mountains? Right. Okay, God, time for those things to move!

And sometimes they do.

But most of the times they stay right where they are. Most of the time, we’re expected to set off on a journey up and over that really tall mountain without a convenient tunnel for us to drive through. It’s difficult and tiring and frustrating at times.

But I think there’s more to mountains than just that.

Climbing those mountains develops muscle and strength and endurance. Without these challenges, we wouldn’t have much more of those things at the end of the journey than we did at the beginning. We'd all be wimpy little Christians without the strength to much more than sit around. But God has so much more for us to do! Without the climbing of the peak, we would be useless when we reached the plains again. Also, I think we can all say that the climbing of the mountain changes you. Whatever the difficulty or situation, it forever alters who you are. Our end goal is not just to reach Him, but to reach Him in such a way that we resemble Him.

C.S. Lewis said, “tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.” So take heart! Yes, you will come upon mountains in life that will not be moved. They will stay there, staring back at you in that really intimidating manner they would have if they had eyes. But God has allowed it into your life. While He may not be the source of the trial, He is sovereign over all things which means He has allowed this specific trial to enter your life. And He never wastes time with His children. If something is in your life, it is because God is big enough to use it for His glory and your ultimate good. Otherwise, He would have told it “No.”

So I say we ask for His strength and endurance as we head off on this part of the journey. You can reach the top. I can pretty much promise that you will have to be strong and courageous (Joshua 1) to reach the top, but you will reach it. So get to going. We've got a mountain to climb.

And besides, after you’ve climbed that mountain, you get to enjoy the view.