A Higher CallingSample

God’s Dreams for You

I (Harold) remember it like yesterday. I was lying in bed at West Point, daydreaming and looking over my bucket list. Close to the top was “Become an American Soldier.” 

When I was young, we would go on family vacations to Washington, D.C., and visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Seeing those soldiers in uniform and learning about the selfless service the Unknown Soldier represented inspired me. So much so that in sixth grade, when given the prompt “Write About Your Hero,” my answer was obvious: an American Soldier. Since I would be commissioned as an Army officer when I graduated, I was almost ready to check this off the list. 

Also on my list: “Play baseball at West Point.” I could check that one off! While I didn’t write them down, the two most important items on my mental list were “Get married” and “Have a family.” One of those items was soon to have a check mark too. 

In bold at the very top of my list was “Climb Mount Everest.” As my eyes focused on this line item, I didn’t think about my zero climbing experience, nor that I was from the great state of Georgia, where our tallest mountain stands fewer than five thousand feet. But suddenly, I couldn’t get climbing Everest out of my head, even though I had always hated the cold and was terrible at running hills during PT in the Army. 

I knew it wasn’t a mountain for the inexperienced. It is a deadly beast. Although I would need a lot of training, I wanted to put myself in that extreme environment—in the death zone—to see what I was truly made of. I wanted to try to beat the thing I’m weakest at, and that’s why Everest was number one on my list. It was a mind-consuming idea that I just couldn’t ignore. 

I had an unshakable feeling God was speaking to me, and that burning desire only became stronger whenever I thought of Everest. I knew I had to go. 

So, what’s on your bucket list? Is God is speaking to you now through a desire to do something that doesn’t make sense on an earthly level? Spend some time in God’s Word, focused on Joshua 1:9. How would truly believing that God is with you give you courage to step out in faith?