On the Road to Pentecost: Another Mountain

After years of living away from home and in different countries, someone very dear to me, just shy of turning forty, decided to pack up twenty-two years of the life she’d made abroad, and return home. Physically this couldn’t have been an easy task but spiritually, through much prayer and contemplation, she was prepared. And so, she journeyed the several thousand kilometers to uncertainty, remaining confident that God has her back.

How many of you at the age of forty or older, established in your job, and comfortable in your own home, would be willing to pack it all up and venture into unsure territory, in a totally new direction? For some reason her story made me think of the Bible’s Caleb, who at eighty-five years old chose to climb a mountain. You see, it appears as though that’s exactly what she has also chosen to do, and at first glance, this may seem like a bad thing, an against the odds kind of journey, but take a good look and perhaps you will see something else emerge.

We always remember what Jesus said about removing the mountain (see Matthew 17:20; Mark 11:22-23) because it’s a well discussed verse but the Bible does talk about other mountains. Mountains where the Lord met with His chosen ones. Places that were spiritually charged with God’s presence and the movement of the Holy Spirit. For example, Mount Sinai is where Moses first met God and twice after that, for forty days and forty nights. Moses also climbed another mountain in order that he should espy the Promised Land.

David’s mountain was Mount Zion, a fortress he conquered from the Jebusites (see 2 Samuel 5:6–9), there he lived and talked with God. And what about Jesus? Jesus spent a great deal of time on the mountain in fellowship with God. It was up a mountain that He led His followers to deliver the Beatitudes, and it was where He multiplied the loaves and the fish. Jesus’ transfiguration took place on yet another mountain.

Mountains aren’t always symbols of opposition, there is another mountain where we can have a supernatural encounter with God – Father, Son and Spirit. It was upon a mountain that Moses received God’s Word, and where Jesus received supernatural empowerment. Mountains often represent places of great spiritual breakthroughs.

Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said… So now, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke that day, for you heard on that day that the [giant-like] Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said. (Joshua 14:1 & 12 AMP)

So yes, Caleb did indeed ask for his mountain even though he knew that he would come face to face with sure giant-like opposition, but he was confident in God’s power and His promise.

Beloved, while on the road to Pentecost, when you are faced with yet another mountain of what appears to be giant-like opposition know that the Lord is with you, to empower you and to bless you.

Amen†

 

 

 

Shelley Johnson “On the Road to Pentecost: Another Mountain” © 2016 revisited May 26, 2025