There's a mountain in front of you right now. Maybe you can't see it with your eyes, but your gut knows it's there. It's the thing God's been nudging you toward that scares you half to death. A mission trip. A hard conversation. A career change. A ministry you feel wholly unqualified for. And every time you look at it, you start doing the math on why it can't work.
That's exactly where twelve men stood one afternoon in the wilderness, staring at a land God had already promised them. Their story in Numbers 13-14 isn't ancient history for history's sake. It's a mirror. And it lines up perfectly with the marching orders Jesus gave His church in Matthew 28. Same call. Same fear. Same choice.
A Good Land Full of Giants
God freed Israel from Egypt, split the Red Sea, and promised them a land flowing with milk and honey. Before they took it, He had them send in twelve spies, one from each tribe, to look the land over. They came back with a report that was both wonderful and terrifying.
"We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there" (Numbers 13:27-28).
Notice that word nevertheless. The land was everything God said it would be. The fruit was so heavy two men had to carry a single cluster on a pole between them. But the giants were real too. The fortified cities were real. And ten of the twelve spies let the giants have the final word.
That's how it goes for us, isn't it? God shows us something good, something He's clearly called us to, and then our eyes drift to the size of the obstacle instead of the size of our God. Fear has a way of making the promise blurry and the problem sharp.
A Different Spirit
But one man in that crowd wasn't buying the panic. Caleb quieted the people down and said something that ought to be tattooed on the heart of every believer:
"Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it" (Numbers 13:30).
Caleb saw the same giants. He saw the same walled cities. He wasn't naive about the danger. He just refused to let the danger outrank the God who made the promise. Ten spies said, "We can't." Caleb said, "We're well able," and the only difference between those two reports was where they were looking.
Years later, after Israel's unbelief cost them forty years wandering in the wilderness, God said this about Caleb: "My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring him into the land where he went" (Numbers 14:24). A different spirit. Fully followed. That's the whole ballgame. Not sinless perfection. Full-hearted obedience, even when it's terrifying.
The Great Commission Was Never Optional
Fast-forward to Matthew 28. Jesus is about to ascend to the Father, and He leaves His church with marching orders:
"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20).
Read that first sentence again before you read the command. All authority. This is the same God who spoke galaxies into existence, who split seas, who holds the whole universe together by the word of His power. If He is for you, who in the world can stand against you? The command to go and make disciples isn't a suggestion box item. It's the marching order of the King of kings, backed by every ounce of His authority.
And making disciples has a simple shape: preach the gospel, then teach the word. There's nothing else in the entire world, no program, no education, no amount of money, that can change a person from the inside out except the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul said it plainly: he wasn't ashamed of it, because it's "the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). That gospel, taught faithfully, is what turns a garage-dwelling refugee family into church planters. It's what turns a swamp behind a house into holy ground. It's what took a young couple with a one-way ticket and no safety net and planted a church that today counts a hundred and fifty Venezuelans, Peruvians, and everyone in between worshiping together under one roof.
What Full Obedience Actually Costs
Here's the part we don't like to talk about: obeying God fully rarely feels safe going in. It felt safe for Caleb to say the words "we are well able," but it wasn't safe to walk toward walled cities and giants. It wasn't safe for a young couple to sell everything, buy one-way tickets, and move their family to a house on a dirt road next to an open sewage pond. It wasn't safe, from where we sit, for a father to watch his son learn to ride a dirt bike for the very first time at an age most American kids have long since outgrown training wheels, simply because there was never a safe place to try back home.
But here's what thirteen years on the mission field will teach you: there is nothing safer than being exactly where God has called you to be. Nothing. Not comfort, not savings, not staying put. If He is good, if He loves you, if He is all-powerful and knows the end from the beginning, then the center of His will is the safest square footage on the planet, even when it looks like a mud road next to a sewage pond.
Give Me That Mountain
Caleb wasn't a young man when he said, "Give me this mountain" (Joshua 14:12). He was eighty-five years old, still asking God for the hardest ground in the whole land, because a promise from God doesn't come with an expiration date. Don't let the enemy hand you his oldest trick: too young when you're young, too old when you're old, and somehow never the right season to obey. Age was never the qualifier. A different spirit, fully following the Lord, that's the qualifier.
Paul asked the question that still hangs over every church: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14-15). Somebody has to go. Somebody has to teach. Somebody has to fund the ones who go and teach. The gospel is what changes a person from the inside out, forgives sin, makes us new creations, and gives us the hope of heaven, and it's still spreading to the ends of the earth through ordinary people who decided the giants didn't get the final word.
So what's your mountain? Whatever it is, whatever fear has been talking louder than the promise, remember whose authority backs the command. Ask Him for it. And then go take it.
This article is drawn from the message "Give Me That Mountain" from our Gospel of Mark series at Calvary Chapel Star. Watch the full message on our YouTube channel.
