I’ve spent the last while climbing.

Getting my health under control. Getting stronger in my marriage. Getting stronger in my faith. All of it is necessary — I’ve written before about the health scare that started pulling a lot of this into focus. I stepped back from close friendships for a season, and I still believe that was necessary.

But I’ve had a conviction building for a while now, and it hasn’t come from one conversation or one moment I can point to. It’s just been sitting there, getting louder. Getting stronger for myself was never supposed to be the whole plan. It was step one.

Up the Mountain

In Matthew 17, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain, and something incredible happens. Jesus is transfigured in front of them — dazzling, glorified, unmistakably who He is. Moses and Elijah show up. Peter wants to build shelters and stay right there in that moment.

Who wouldn’t?

But Jesus doesn’t leave them on the mountain.

He takes them back down. And waiting at the bottom is a father with a son who’s suffering, and a crowd, and a need Jesus’s own disciples couldn’t meet on their own.

That’s the part I keep coming back to. The mountain wasn’t where they were meant to stay. They still had to go back down to where people were hurting.

Maybe some of the mountains God brings us through aren’t places we’re supposed to stay either.

Getting Strong Was Never Supposed to Be the Finish Line

I think it’s easy, especially in faith, to treat your own growth like the goal. Read more Scripture. Pray more. Get more disciplined. Get healthier. Get more stable. All good things. I needed every bit of it.

But if all that growth just leaves me standing a little higher, looking a little more put-together than the people around me, I’ve missed the entire point of it. Christian maturity isn’t supposed to make me impressed with myself. It’s supposed to make me useful to somebody else.

Maybe God didn’t bring me this far so I could look down at people who aren’t where I am. Maybe He brought me this far so I’d know how to reach back for them.

I have friends who want more of God in their lives — I know it, even when they never say it directly. And I’m part of a church full of people who, just like me, need other believers willing to walk beside them. Jesse’s been that for me — direct, honest, present, willing to pray over me before I even ask. I didn’t get stronger so I could hold that kind of friendship for myself. I got stronger so I’d have something to hand off.

What Coming Back Down Actually Looks Like

It’s not a program. It’s not me suddenly becoming the guy with all the answers.

It’s reaching back toward the friends I stepped away from — not to undo that season, but because the season’s done its work now. That means connecting people to others who can walk with them the way Jesse’s walked with me, instead of trying to be everything to everybody myself. And it means kneeling down next to people instead of standing over them explaining where they’re falling short.

The same Jesus who stood glorified on that mountain also knelt with a towel and washed His disciples’ feet in John 13. Glory didn’t make Him too important to kneel. If it didn’t make Him too important, it shouldn’t make me too important either.

Not About Being Better

I want to be careful here, because this could easily turn into something it’s not supposed to be. This isn’t me deciding I’ve arrived and now I get to help everybody else catch up. Philippians 2 tells us to be humble, to consider others better than ourselves, to have the same attitude as Christ. That’s the standard, and I’m nowhere close to finished with it myself.

I don’t have this figured out. I still have days my first reaction isn’t grace, days I’d rather hold onto being right than let something go. But climbing for my own sake was never supposed to be the whole story, and I don’t think I can keep pretending it was.

Coming Down

I’ve gotten stronger. I’m nowhere near done growing, but I’m far enough along that I can’t keep using my own growth as an excuse to stay on the mountain.

Now I think God’s asking a different question. Not “are you strong enough yet?” but “who are you going to reach back for?”

I don’t have a program for that. I just have people — friends who want more of God than they currently have, a church full of people walking through their own struggles, and a friend like Jesse who’s already living out the kind of faith I want to help pass along.

Jesus didn’t stay on the mountain.

I don’t think I’m supposed to either.