A few months ago, my boyfriend told me he hated me. Well, actually, he said we should go hiking, but it\u2019s the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After work, we drove to the Manitou Incline in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Previously the trail was a railway used to carry building materials up to Pikes Peak, and the ties\u2014all 2,744 of them\u2014now form steps up the mountain. At the bottom, there is a sign encouraging hikers to pace themselves, because this hike is literally like climbing the Empire State Building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t feel like that at first though. It starts gently. Quickly, though, your legs start to burn. Soon you can smell smoke. Where is that coming from?<\/em> You look down and it\u2019s your thighs rubbing together like sticks of firewood. Now you\u2019re questioning all your life choices that led you to this moment and wondering, Have I made a will? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the trail turned vertical, I found the best strategy was to keep my eyes on the ground, putting one foot in front of the other. Over and over again. We zigzagged up the steps. It was boring. We huffed and puffed, but we kept taking on the mountain at six-inch increments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The task that was overwhelming as a whole became achievable, and completed, when broken down into what was directly in front of each person.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, to make progress\u2014spiritually, relationally, professionally\u2014you can\u2019t look at where you\u2019re going. You can\u2019t keep your eyes on the prize, because your faith just isn\u2019t that big yet. That business you want to begin\u2014you need an impossible amount of money. That family you want to start\u2014you can hardly bring yourself to pray for it. That person who hurt you\u2014they\u2019re unforgivable. So what do you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Nehemiah was tasked with rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, he had the priests make repairs \u201ceach in front of his own house\u201d (Nehemiah 3:28). The task that was overwhelming as a whole became achievable, and completed, when broken down into what was directly in front of each person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If God has given you a dream but it\u2019s overwhelming, scary, or ridiculous, try looking down. Do the next right thing. Don\u2019t put the future on a spreadsheet. Just focus on taking the next six-inch step. It\u2019s called the Christian walk<\/em>, not the Christian leap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe you will, like us, be rewarded at the end with a seat above the clouds and a fabulous sunset from a mountaintop. (OK, admittedly, our view was from two-thirds of the way up the mountain due to how late it was when we began. Don\u2019t judge us though; when was the last time you took 2000 steps at a 41 percent average incline?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few months ago, my boyfriend told me he hated me. Well, actually, he said we should go hiking, but it\u2019s the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/MU2301-Devotional.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-3Ce","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13902"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15466,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13902\/revisions\/15466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n