I was reading the story of Caleb in the Old Testament and saw something I wanted. Against all the odds, Caleb believed God’s promise and refused to conform to the majority opinion of fear and unbelief, or become part of a culture of cynicism, self-pity and recrimination. More impressive still is that he kept his heart hopeful and faithful despite having to endure the consequences of the rebellion of others – more than forty years of wandering in the wilderness, until he finally inherited the promise and stood victorious on the mountain of the promise, miraculously as strong in body and spirit as he had been all those years before. I wanted to take up the same cry: ‘Give me this mountain’[the way the KJV expresses it] and reinforce that attitude and spirit in my own heart, and singing out that phrase became the starting point for the song. As often is the case I went through a couple of versions of the song before settling on the final one, and honed the words and tune by ‘road-testing’ it in several live situations.

It is proving to be a cry that lots of people identify with, as we face the circumstances that tower above us and seem impossible to conquer until we see how much greater our God is.

Caleb received a promise and approval from God: ‘But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it’ [Numbers 14:24 NIV], and as the story unfolds this becomes God’s verdict on his life – something for all of us to aspire to be: ‘wholehearted’.

Read the whole story in Numbers 13 and 14, and Joshua 14: 6-15.