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When we think of tough people in Scripture, we often picture David—the one who kills lions, tigers, bears, and giants. But Caleb's strength came from a completely different place. His strength didn't come from his arms, his size, or his skill. His strength came from believing that God was on his side.
At 85 years old, Caleb wasn't the strongest or the youngest, but when he asked for a mountain, he was stronger than ever. Why? Because he believed God was stronger than ever. He had a confidence that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with God. That kind of tough is available to every single one of us in this room.
God had made a promise to His people—a good land flowing with milk and honey, their inheritance. After a long journey, Joshua began dividing the land among the leaders. Then Caleb, at 85 years old, made his request:
"Give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day. For you heard in that day how the Anakim were there and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said." (Joshua 14:12)
He didn't ask for the easy land. He asked for the mountain full of giants. "Give me the hard one. Give me the one with the giants on it."
Every single person under the sound of God's voice will always have a mountain facing them. We can run from the mountain, or we can say, "Give me this mountain." To understand how a man gets to that place, we need to trace the choices Caleb made.
In Numbers 13, God commanded Moses to send scouts into Canaan—twelve men, one leader from each tribe. Caleb was one of them. For 40 days, these men walked the same land and saw the same cities. All twelve received identical information.
When they returned, their report was divided:
"We went out 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. And we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight." (Numbers 13:27-28, 33)
The giants were bigger than their God. Fear won.
But two of them—Caleb and Joshua—saw the exact same thing and came to the opposite conclusion. Same giants, same walls, same data. Caleb stood up and cut through the panic:
"Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it." (Numbers 13:30)
Before Caleb could speak faith, he had to quiet the crowd. Sometimes the loudest voices in the room are the fearful ones. Fear can be loud. Doubt can be loud. The ten had the whole crowd riled up, and panic always has a megaphone.
You may have ten voices in your head telling you why it won't work—why you can't, why you're too old or too young, too far gone. Your co-workers are loud. Your family group chat is loud. Sometimes before you can move in faith, you have to quiet the people. Not because they're evil, but because you cannot follow God and a fearful crowd at the same time.
Ten men looked and saw impossibility. Two looked and saw opportunity. Same data, completely different conclusion.
You don't always get to choose most of your circumstances, but you always get to choose your perspective. You don't get to choose the diagnosis. You don't always get to choose the layoff. You didn't get to choose who walked out on you or what was said about you when you were younger. But you always get to choose how you interpret what you are seeing.
Two people can sit in the exact same hospital room hearing the same news. One sees the end of the road; the other sees an opportunity for God to show up. Same hospital, different perspective.
Two people can lose the same job on the same day. One loses all hope; the other discovers a purpose they never would have found otherwise. Same situation, completely different perspective.
A friend's house was robbed a year ago. When asked how she was doing, his wife said something unforgettable: "You know, Ryan, to be honest, they stole all of the things I bought to impress other people. Maybe they did me a favor." Perspective. It's amazing what perspective can do to your past and set you on a different trajectory for your future.
Even though the Israelites didn't enter the land right away, God had something special to say about Caleb:
"Because all these men who have seen my glory have put me to the test now these ten times and have not heeded my voice, they certainly shall not see the land. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land where he went." (Numbers 14:22-24)
While the entire nation was punished for unbelief, God said, "Caleb, my boy Caleb, got a different spirit."
Some of you have felt different your whole life. You feel different at work, at school, at the gym. You've walked into rooms and quietly wondered why you don't fit the way everybody else fits.
You are built different.
You make different decisions. You talk different. You walk different. You love your spouse different. You raise your kids different. You lead different. You've been searching for sameness when different is what you're called to do.
But here's what nobody tells you: different is lonely. Caleb was one of two out of twelve. For four decades he was surrounded by people who chose fear, waiting on a promise only he and Joshua still believed. Being built different meant being outnumbered and being misunderstood.
If you're going to be who God made you to be, you have to make peace with this. Sometimes the whole room will vote for fear and you'll be the only one with your hand raised for faith. That's not a sign that you're wrong. It's a sign that you're Caleb.
Stop apologizing for the way God wired you. Stop dimming it down so fearful people can feel comfortable. The same different that makes you feel like an outsider is the exact different God is about to use. When the promise finally came, it didn't go to the crowd. It went to the one who was built different.
Some of you are closer to your promise than you think. But it's on the other side of you finally believing you were never supposed to blend in.
Go to work different. Go to school different. Go to that barbecue a little bit different. Don't fall for the doom and gloom trap. You will never have a shortage of grumpy, complaining people. They're in your office, in your group chat. Here's what chronic complainers never realize: complaining costs them the exact energy they could be using to contribute.
Don't complain about the obvious. Everybody already sees the giants. Be the one who brings something else to the meeting, to the feed, to the party. Life is hard. Decide to enjoy it anyway.
Every single day, anybody can point at giants. It takes a different spirit to still believe there's a promise on the other side of it. You're built different.
Some people go through life with their arms folded. This is their posture everywhere they go—raising their kids, marriage, work. I want to give you a different posture because we have choices.
Listen to what Joshua said:
"And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive as he said, these forty-five years, ever since the Lord spoke this word to Moses while Israel wandered in the wilderness, and now here I am this day, eighty-five years old." (Joshua 14:10)
When Caleb stood up and said, "Let's go. We can do this," you'd think God would have rewarded him on the spot. But that didn't happen. Because the people chose fear, the whole nation was sentenced to wander. And Caleb, the man who actually believed God, had to wander right along with them. He did the right thing and still had to wait. He believed God and still walked in circles for 45 years.
Maybe that's exactly where somebody is living right now. You're not fighting a giant today. You're just waiting. You know what God promised, but you're still waiting on healing, still waiting for a child to come home, still waiting for an illness to turn around. Sometimes waiting is quietly harder than fighting because at least in a fight you get to do something. In waiting, you just wait on God.
A prophet named Habakkuk wrote one of the most honest statements of faith in all of Scripture. Instead of pretending everything was okay, he laid out his reality:
"Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labor of the olive may fail and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." (Habakkuk 3:17-18)
Notice two words: though and yet.
Habakkuk doesn't pretend everything is fine. He doesn't post a highlight reel and fake it for the camera. He writes a brutal list: though the fig tree doesn't blossom, though the olive crop fails, though the fields produce no food. These are all economy-driven—somebody losing their job, their food, their livelihood, their future. He's naming the reality out loud, one at a time.
You're allowed to have a though list. God is not intimidated. He's not shaking on His throne because you have challenges in your life. Your honesty is not the opposite of your faith. Your honesty is the soil your faith actually grows in. Faith does not deny reality. Faith invites a holy God to your reality.
Caleb had a though list too. Though I was 40, but now I'm 50. Though I'm 60, 70, 80. Year after year, he buried family members while still waiting on a promise from God. Caleb had 45 years of reasons to be bitter.
If that's you—if the marriage isn't what you hoped, if the report came back and it wasn't the news you prayed for, if you're the only one in your family holding it together, if the money has run out—you're allowed to have a though list. God isn't flinching. He won't lecture you.
But don't forget the second word: yet.
"Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."
That little word is the hinge. It's a decision. Habakkuk doesn't wait for a fig tree to bud before he rejoices. He doesn't wait for the fields to fill back up before he worships. He rejoices in the middle of the though because joy is not the absence of trouble. Joy is the presence of God in the middle of trouble.
You can have a though list and a yet heart at the exact same time.
Then Habakkuk tells you how he's able to have that kind of posture:
"The Lord God is my strength. He will make my feet like the feet of deer, and he will make me walk on high places." (Habakkuk 3:19)
If you've ever watched a deer on the side of a mountain, you know what that means. A deer doesn't slip. A deer doesn't fall. It climbs places that look impossible with quiet confidence right along the edge like it's nothing.
God doesn't always remove the mountain. Sometimes God gives you the feet to climb it.
Some of us have been praying for God to move a mountain, and He might. But while you're waiting, don't miss what He's already doing. He might be giving you deer feet—feet you didn't know you had, a steadiness you didn't know you were capable of, a way to stand in a place that should have knocked you flat a long time ago.
What do deer feet look like? The fact that you're still here. The fact that you got dressed and came to church when it would have been easier to stay home. The fact that you're still loving people while running on empty. The fact that you're still smiling. The fact that you haven't quit. That's not weakness. That's deer feet.
Removed mountains don't always change people. Climb mountains do.
I'd rather pray that God gives you the strength to overcome a mountain than to remove it altogether. You're going to have seasons you didn't sign up for, walls you didn't choose, delays handed to you by other people's decisions, bad news, a world falling apart. You will not always get a say in the though, but you will always get a say in the yet.
That's posture. It's Caleb at 85 years old saying, "The Lord has kept me alive" instead of "The Lord made me wait." It's a different perspective and a different posture. It's you on the hill that should have taken you out and still standing on deer feet you didn't know you had.
You can't choose the weight, but every morning of it, you get to choose whether you'll wait bitter or wait grateful. Wait complaining or wait expecting. Same delay, two different postures. And the posture you choose decides who you become on the other side of it.
The last decision we get to make is what Caleb made: we get to choose our persistence. We get to make a decision to keep going or to give up.
Caleb says again:
"Give me this mountain. For you heard in that day how the giants are there and that the cities were great and fortified. It may be that the Lord will be with me and I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said." (Joshua 14:12)
After waiting 45 years, Caleb says, "Give me this mountain." Joshua is handing out territory, and here comes the 85-year-old to collect on a promise God made him half a century ago.
At that point, he could have asked for anything. The easy request would have been to ask for a quiet valley, good soil, shade—to retire. Nobody in that camp would have said a word if the old man had pointed out the easy land. That's what most people would have done. That's what most people would have been expecting.
But that's not Caleb.
At 85, when he's supposed to be picking out a rocking chair, he points to the hardest, most dangerous piece of land in the whole region—the hill country, still crawling with giants—and he says, "Give me the hard one. Give me the fight nobody else wants."
Here's what exposes something in each and every one of us: Some of us discount what God could do with our lives because of our age, because of our season of life, because of our gender, because of our rap sheet and our mistakes, because of a divorce, because of a past.
And we become consultants for God. We say, "Hey God, let me just give you some advice. You don't want me, okay? You don't know what I did. You don't know what's been done to me. I already had my shot and I blew it." We're giving God our disqualifications.
But Caleb is exactly the age our culture tells you to sit down and be done. And he stands up and asks for the hardest thing in the land. He did not let his age write him off. He did not let 45 years in a wilderness convince him his best days were behind him.
To somebody who has been counting yourself out: Your age is not too far gone for God. Your past is not too dirty for God. Your season is not too late. Your rap sheet is not too long. And the same God who used an 85-year-old to take a mountain full of giants can use whatever you've written off as a reason you say He can't use you.
You know what's not looking for qualified people? God. If you read the Bible, there's only one qualified person in the whole thing: Jesus. Everybody else? Terrible. He's not looking for qualified people. He's looking for willing people—people who are just willing to raise their hand and say, "Give me this mountain."
But I want to talk to somebody who got a mountain they didn't ask for. A loved one passed away and it's hard to get out of bed. You didn't volunteer for it. It got handed to you.
A cancer you never saw coming. Medical bills you can't afford. A child with a chronic illness. A marriage that fell apart. Maybe you're the one having to take care of aging parents after they took care of you for so long. And you've been asking, "Lord, why me? Why this one? Why now?"
Can I offer you another way to see that? Maybe God gave you this mountain because He can see something in you that you cannot see in yourself. Maybe He looked at everyone else who could have carried this and He trusted you with it—not because you're the strongest, but because He knew what He put on the inside of you.
You might keep calling it a burden. God might be calling it an assignment. Don't miss out on the assignment that God has given you.
Here's the secret underneath Caleb's whole request. He doesn't say, "Give me this mountain because I'm strong enough to take it." He says:
"It may be that the Lord will be with me and I shall be able to drive them out."
His confidence was never in his own arms. It was in the God standing next to him. Caleb didn't say, "Give me this mountain because I'm strong." He said, "Give me this mountain because my God is."
And that's a prayer any one of us can pray. Not "God, I've got this," but "God, you've got me. So give me this mountain."
Most people pray for smaller mountains. Caleb prayed to a bigger God.
Maybe you walked in today standing in front of a mountain. Maybe it's a diagnosis. Maybe it's a new role that is overwhelming. Maybe it's a child navigating special needs, an addiction you're exhausted from fighting, or a financial crisis. You know exactly what your mountain is. You've been staring at it all week.
The world's advice would be to shrink it, avoid it, run from it. But I want to give you Caleb's advice instead: Don't waste your energy asking why me? Why this? Why now? Ask a better question: What if God chose me for this? Because He knows what He's building in me.
Maybe your prayer this week isn't, "God, remove it." Maybe your prayer becomes the four words an 85-year-old man taught us to pray today:
"Give me this mountain."
Because in the hands of God, mountains become testimonies and giants become evidence of His power, and weakness becomes the very place His power shows up.
You get to stand here today and say, "Though the mountain is still right in front of me, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. Yet I will trust Him. Yet I will keep climbing. Yet I know God who made the mountain is bigger than the mountain."
And I promise you, one day you're going to stand on the top of the very thing that once stood in front of you.
Faith doesn't make the mountain smaller. Faith reminds you your God is bigger.
We got choices today. We get to choose our perspective. We get to choose our posture. And we get to choose our persistence.
Keep charging the mountain when we feel like giving up.
