Taking The Mountains
Our theme for the month of August is “Taking the Mountains.”
Over the next few weeks, we will explore how the Lord will help us conquer these heights. Today, we are focusing on the Seven Mountains of Influence that we must reclaim as believers.Often, we miss out on what God has for us simply because we fail to recognize these spheres as mountains that need to be conquered.
đź“– The Pattern of Caleb: Faith vs. Fear
To understand this theme, we must look at the story of Caleb in Numbers 13:30 to Numbers 14:9.When the Israelites reached the edge of the Promised Land, twelve spies were sent out to survey it. Ten of them returned with a negative report that discouraged the entire congregation.
They complained about giants and refused to move, even though God had explicitly commanded them to go possess the land.Because of their fear and disobedience, the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
At the time of the initial scouting, Caleb was 45 years old.Forty years later, with Joshua now leading the nation, an 85-year-old Caleb stepped forward (Joshua 14:6–14). He reminded Joshua of the land promised to him decades prior and declared: “Now give me this mountain! My strength is just as it was then, and I will take it.”
Joshua allocated the land, and it became Caleb’s permanent inheritance. The Modern Danger of the “Grasshopper Mentality”When we read this story, we wonder how the Israelites could doubt God after everything He had done for them. Yet, many believers do the exact same thing today.
God hands us territories to conquer, but we sit back and make excuses:”My circumstances or finances won’t allow it.”” My background and education aren’t enough.”By saying “I can’t,” we repeat the tragic mistake of the wilderness generation. Caleb refused to see himself as a grasshopper.
He knew that with God on their side, the enemy would be easily defeated. God is challenging us this morning to break out of complacency, get up, and possess our mountains.
The Seven Mountains of Influence in Isaiah 2:2,
The Scripture prophesies that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow to it.
God has destined us to occupy the highest points of societal influence.If the church ignores these mountains, secular or unqualified forces will occupy them instead, passing laws that dictate how we live.
To spread the Gospel of the Kingdom to the ends of the earth, believers must actively engage and conquer the Seven Mountains of Influence:
1. Government (Politics and Governance)
2. Education (Schools, Academia, and Mindsets)
3. Media (News, Information, and Communication)
4. Family (The Foundation of Society)
5. Celebration (Arts, Entertainment, and Sports)
6. Religion (Faith and Spiritual Authority)
7. Economy (Business, Finance, and Commerce)
When we take these mountains, the Gospel moves rapidly. If we abdicate our post in government, for example, others will take it and write the rules—just like the recently proposed Federal Road Safety Act of 2026, which seeks to restrict our foundational freedoms.
Government, Politics, and “Taking the Mountain”
The proposal states that commercial activities will be banned inside any public commercial vehicle. This means no buying, no selling, and they have also included a clause banning preaching.
They are putting an end to bus evangelism, equating it directly with commercial hawking.Once a law is passed, it becomes a binding rule, even if we view it as an unrighteous decree.
They can pass it simply because they are the ones in government.Consider a lady who used to live in Lekki. She had a carpenter—or a tailor, one of the two—whose poor performance and lack of seriousness made her very unhappy.
Later on, she became interested in her local government and the issues affecting her neighborhood.When she made inquiries, she was told to take her concerns to the local government councillor representing her ward.
She did not know who her councillor was, so she did some research. She eventually discovered that her local councillor was actually her uninspired furniture maker! He was the person representing her in government simply because she and others had previously shown no interest.If you do not take the mountain, others will.
Those who take it will influence everything that happens. Imagine if there were true Christians in governance bringing godly principles into action within the state. What kind of government would we have? Politics is a mountain we need to take. People must get involved.
We may call politics a dirty game, but we must find a way to get into government. Otherwise, unqualified individuals will rule over us.
đź“š The Mountain of Education; Education transforms nations.
Countries making significant strides in growth and advancement have tackled the mountain of education.Chief Obafemi Awolowo made a crucial observation about Nigerian history several years ago.
He stated that in a country like Nigeria, where the population is growing at a rapid rate, education is vital.
Without it, the nation will become completely ungovernable. His point was simple: if you have a massive population of people who are uneducated and have nothing productive to do, they will eventually find destructive activities to occupy themselves.
People did not pay attention to his warning. When a vast number of children were not going to school—particularly in the North where the Almajiri system was widespread—people simply dismissed it, saying, “That is just how the people in the North live.”
Now they are bandits. Now some of them are insurgents, and we are struggling with this issue. In fact, some of them understand this concept and have entered governance.
One of the things you find is that when they arrest and lock up these bandits, they later claim to rehabilitate them and put them into the army.
Consequently, you have former bandits entering your police force and army. When we refuse to take a mountain, we leave it to others.
We say, “We can’t do police work; it is dirty work.” So, bandits go there instead and become the ones who enforce the law.
We need to take all the mountains. We need to take the mountain of education. If you look carefully, you will see that God is already helping us take that mountain by default in Nigeria.
Several years ago, almost all the schools in the country were public. There were very few private primary and secondary schools, and no private universities.
Now, the institutions that are truly working are private nursery, primary, and secondary schools, as well as private universities—many of which are Christian universities.
You may not see it yet, but they are taking the mountain slowly. We need to wake up and identify the other mountains that need to be taken.There is a saying: if you give a man a fish, he will eat today, but tomorrow he will return to ask for more.
However, if you teach a man how to fish, he will not come back to you. In fact, he will train others.
He will take his knowledge and teach more people how to fish. That is how the mountain of education works; it transforms people and brings them into liberty.
Mountain Of Media And Information
We also need to take the mountain of media and information.
He who controls information controls the narrative. If people do things and no one hears about it, public opinion cannot form. It all depends on who controls the information.Someone once gave me a good analogy regarding sports.
Which is the most popular football league in the world? Without a doubt, it is the Premier League.
If people here watch football, they are watching the Premier League long before they watch La Liga, the Bundesliga, or League
1. Have you ever asked yourself why it is so popular? One of the reasons is how it is marketed. They understand the mountain of media. The marketing, publicity, television rights, and overall presentation of the Premier League are superior to any other league in the world. They master that mountain.
Similarly, when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 1990, I was relatively young. I remember Saddam Hussein bragging that it would be the mother of all battles.
That is why I was excited; I was following the news because I wanted to see how Saddam would disgrace the Americans. I watched CNN, but even when Saddam made an impact, they did not report it.
Consequently, we never heard about the Iraqis’ successes; we only heard about how they were being pummeled and blasted. Within a few weeks, the Americans thought the battle was over because they had overrun the Iraqis and controlled that mountain.
Mountain Of Celebration (Entertainment, Sports And Fashion)
A lot of people try to control that mountain through the narratives they pass around. When they want to promote a certain practice—like when they started pushing gay and lesbian narratives—one of the first places they introduced it was Hollywood. They would make a movie, include a little bit of that lifestyle, and make it look normal.
Today, a lot of our children watch cartoons. When you look at what they are watching—like the friendly ghost, the friendly witch, or the friendly wizard—you realize creators are pushing a narrative through the arts. They package it correctly to make it acceptable to you.
This happens on the mountain of celebration, which includes entertainment, sports, and fashion.
For example, I have a friend who has two sons. After a while, I noticed the first son had weaved his hair. His brother, on the other hand, was highly intelligent and graduated with a first-class degree. At the time, his hair was normal,
Recently, however, I saw a picture of him from a few days ago, and he has now weaved his hair as well.
And who are they copying? They are copying some misinformed person who is trying to find his roots. You know, somebody who is maybe in the Caribbean or in the UK who says, I want to connect to my African roots, and he knows African, they tie their hair. He knows that some people, they wear rings.
So he started tying his hair, started putting rings, putting, he didn’t know why they were wearing those things. And we that know the truth, we are copying them. Why? Because media is covering it.
Because people are controlling mountains that are influencing us to accept the abnormal as normal. So there’s the mountain of media, there’s a mountain of celebration. And again, you will see that slowly, Nigeria is getting there, slowly.
I remember when I was growing up, the music we used to listen to—Michael Jackson, Brothers Johnson, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, George Benson, Sadao Watanabe, all these—those are the people we used to listen to when you went to parties.
The music they played was foreign music. In fact, those days, if they caught you wearing traditional attire, it was like, “What is wrong with you? You are not with the program.
“Those days, we would either wear those baggy clothes, or later on, it became the fitted style with stilettos, with gold, and all those things.
They were things brought to us from abroad because we thought they were good. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it has reversed.When you go out now, people are watching Nollywood movies. They are wearing Nigerian clothes. They are playing Nigerian music.
At the last World Cup, it was Burna Boy and Shakira who sang at the opening ceremony. We are slowly taking that mountain.The only problem sometimes is, who are the Nigerians taking the mountain? “Last Last” and Shayo—what was that song? Something and Shayo. That is what they are exporting. But we have our own people who are going too. Minister Dunsin Oyekan is going. Pastor Nathaniel Bassey is going. They are taking the mountains.
So, we ourselves need to identify the mountains and begin to take them because there is no vacuum. If we don’t take the mountains, somebody else is going to take them.
So, there is a mountain of celebration. There is a mountain of family. Values are changing. They are trying to get us to begin to accept family values that didn’t make sense before—where a man can decide he is a woman, a woman can decide she is a man, or a man can marry a man.
A woman can marry a dog. You know what I mean? Lots of things. But they normalize it. And if you speak against it, because they have taken the mountain of governance, they will brand you a hater.
They will make the full force of the law come against you because they are the ones controlling the mountain. So, we need to wake up and begin to take—begin to take our mountains.
Values are being eroded. In Nigeria today, it is not unusual for you to write exams where cheating is standardized. School starts—secondary school, and I mean those of us in education, they will tell us—you go and you write exams, and they will have bought the exam paper before the exam.
If they have not bought the exam paper, they have bought the invigilator. So, the invigilator will come in and be telling you, “Number one, A; number two, B; number three, C.”
I recall one experience that my mom told me about.
My mom used to be the director at the Ibadan Polytechnic. My dad used to be a professor in Ibadan. So, you hear some of these stories about the educational sector.
There was a lady who was trying to get her son admitted. The son did not make the cut-off mark. She wanted him—for the sake of argument, let’s say she wanted him to study medicine.
They said the cut-off was 280, but he had 260. So, the registrar was telling her, “Sorry madam, there is nothing we can do really because the cut-off for this course is 280 and your son has 260.”Right there in the presence of the registrar, the woman started abusing the child.
She said, “What is the matter with you? So, you knew you wanted to do medicine and the cut-off was 280. Why didn’t you tell us that it was 280? We went and paid for the one that is 260! Now they say you cannot enter. You are just making us waste our money.” She said this in the presence of the registrar of the university.
She apologized to the registrar and left. After one week, she was back. She said, “Sir, we have 280. We have 280.” They had gone to buy a 280 score.
The values have been eroded. Then we wonder why we are having problems in the country. You know, I keep saying, when I was growing up, one of the things my parents taught me was that you don’t beg for anything.
You don’t ask people for anything. It wasn’t out of pride, do you understand what I mean? But it was the principle that you work for what you get. If your parents can’t give it to you, that’s it.
The other day, I got a ride—a Bolt—that brought me here. That brought me from the Island. I can’t remember exactly how much it was, but it was almost like seventeen thousand seven hundred from Lekki to here. When I took that ride, because we were coming to church, I needed to pick my wife up somewhere. So, I first set the ride to somewhere in Lekki where my wife was.
Then, when we were on the road where my wife was, I changed the destination. I told the driver I would do it, and he accepted. He would take it. So, I changed the destination to now come to Morrison from Lekki, and he accepted. From the moment he accepted, while my wife and I were coming, the guy was just grumbling.
Then, when we got here, I asked him how much it was. He said, “Seventeen thousand seven hundred.” Then he said, “Oga, show me some love. You show me some love.” I said, “Which love? You didn’t show me any love when I was coming. You abused me and made me feel like I wasted your time.
Then I got here, and you felt you should ask me to show you some love? They didn’t train you well.”Values are eroding. We need to take hold of that mountain before it destroys us. So, the mountain of family is being eroded.
The mountain Of Religion And The Mountain Of Economy—
Those are the two other mountains. Religion and family. Again, you will see, even though they are bastardizing it, man is spirit, soul, and body.
But almost the whole world is only looking after the body. They have forgotten the spirit and the soul. People are not paying attention to the spirit and the soul. But the church is waking up.
And I thank God—people abuse us, but the truth is, Nigeria is exporting the church to the world. We are exporting the gospel. Even though we have a lot of fakes and a lot of funny things happening, at least we are trying to take that mountain.
We are a trigger point for the taking of that mountain—the souls of men. It is important that we handle that spiritual dimension. It is a mountain that needs to be taken.And then finally, the economy.
I mean, we need to make money. People need to be productive. People need to be empowered. Anyone who has tried to manage any form of ministry knows that when there is no money, it is a challenge.
It is a real challenge.Yesterday, after the meeting, we had a meeting of resident pastors and district pastors in the Life-Changing Room.
We were talking about planning for an event coming up in two months’ time. When we were looking at the plans, people were like, “Yeah, we are ready to go
We are ready to go!” But there was no money to fund it. Many people couldn’t fund what they wanted to do.
Then at a point, somebody just made a statement and said, “Sir, it is not that we are not willing. It is just that we don’t have what will move us—the resources to move us into this work.” So we started joking about it.
It is not as if you are not willing and obedient; we are willing and obedient, it is just that we have not yet seen the good of the land! We all had a good laugh. But the point was, when you don’t have economic power, it is a major challenge.
In Conclusion,
Get Up And Take The Mountain!
“Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it”– Zechariah 4:7
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us”, – Ephesians 3:20
“The mountain of the Lord shall be exalted above every mountain” – Isaiah 2:2, Micah 4:1
To watch the full sermon, click on the link below:
