The Mountain You’re Actually Called to Climb
There’s a mountain almost every creative is trying to climb. Call it platform, audience, influence, name recognition — the visible markers that say you’ve made it, that your work matters, that people are paying attention.
It isn’t wrong to want your work to be seen. But in his session at The Creative’s Intensive, Ps. Matt Wakefield offered a reframe that’s easy to agree with in theory and much harder to actually live: culture tells you to build a platform. Heaven tells you to build an altar.
There is a mountain of influence. And there is a mountain of God. Most of us are climbing the wrong one first.
Encounter comes before influence. Scripture has a consistent pattern worth noticing. Moses didn’t meet God in Pharaoh’s palace — he met him on Sinai. Elijah didn’t encounter God in Jezebel’s court — he met him on Carmel. Peter, James, and John didn’t recognize the full glory of Jesus in the marketplace — they saw it on the mountain of Transfiguration. In each case, encounter came first. Influence came after — and it came because of the encounter, not instead of it. That ordering matters. It’s tempting to believe that if you can just gain enough visibility, enough of a following, enough proof that your gift is worth something, then you’ll have the platform to actually make a difference. Scripture suggests the opposite sequence: you have to be marked by God before you can meaningfully mark culture.
The actual qualification for ascent. Psalm 24 asks the question directly: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” And it answers with four things — clean hands, a pure heart, a soul not lifted up to an idol, and a life that doesn’t swear deceitfully. Notice what’s not on that list. Not talent. Not reach. Not a portfolio or a following. The qualification for ascending isn’t your skill — it’s your character. That reframes idolatry, too. Idols aren’t statues most of us will never be tempted to bow to. They’re recognition. Followers. Awards. Answered dreams. Acceptance. The honest question isn’t “do I worship idols” — it’s “what can I be bought by?”
A gift only comes alive when it’s surrendered. The teaching leans on the story of Moses and his staff. For forty years, it was just a stick — useful, familiar, and utterly ordinary. Then God tells Moses to throw it down, and it becomes a serpent. From that moment, it’s known as the rod of God: the same object, but now carrying power it never had while it stayed in Moses’ hand alone. The point isn’t subtle. A gift held onto is just talent — natural, limited, eventually exhausted. A gift actually submitted becomes something else entirely. Not more skilled. Supernatural. Many of us are waiting for God to use our gift while quietly still holding onto it. The question worth sitting with isn’t “when will God use what I have,” but “have I actually put it down.”
Compromise rarely happens all at once. When Wakefield turns to the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4 — the devil offering the kingdoms of the world for a single act of worship — the application isn’t really about grand, dramatic falls. It’s about footholds. The enemy isn’t usually trying to get all the way. He’s trying to get a foothold — one small compromise, one door left slightly open, because he’s willing to work with that little by little. The same pattern that drove Israel’s enemies out of the promised land gradually rather than all at once cuts both directions: God’s process is patient because sudden isn’t always sustainable, and the enemy’s process is patient because he’s not looking for one big yes — he’s looking for a habit of small ones.
Resistance is often a sign you’re actually ascending. Anyone who’s climbed to a higher elevation knows the air gets thinner and breathing gets harder. The body’s instinct is to read that as a signal to turn back. Spiritually, the same thing happens. As you go deeper — in prayer, in surrender, in an unfamiliar environment God has actually called you into — resistance increases. Your flesh will tell you to stop, to go back to what’s comfortable and familiar. That resistance isn’t necessarily proof you’ve made a wrong turn. It can be the ordinary cost of altitude. And ascent isn’t a solo climb. The higher the calling, the more real your dependence on the Holy Spirit has to become — not less.
Faith is cultivated, not fixed. The message returns to its text: the disciples couldn’t cast out a demon, and Jesus attributes it to “little faith.” Not unbelief that it was possible — faith that ran out before the moment required it to hold. That’s the picture behind the mustard seed teaching that follows: faith isn’t a quantity you either have enough of or don’t. It’s a living thing — planted, watered, weeded, cultivated over time. The size of your faith today isn’t the ceiling. It’s a starting point.
Every discipline is called to speak to its mountain. The most direct application for AXL: filmmakers are called to speak to their mountain. Musicians to theirs. Actors, writers, dancers — each called to speak to the sphere they work in, not bow to its values in exchange for a way in. That’s the difference between climbing the mountain of influence and being sent to it. One is chasing acceptance from the mountain. The other is carrying something into it.
The invitation isn’t to abandon ambition for your craft or your career. It’s to ask which mountain you’re actually climbing first — and to notice that the order matters more than the effort.
This teaching draws from Ps. Matt Wakefield’s main-stage session at AXL Creative Co.’s The Creative’s Intensive.