Excerpted from Make it Your Ambition: 7 Godly Pursuits for the Next Generation by Jeremy Writebol. ©2025 Jeremy Writebol. Used by permission of The Gospel Coalition.

If you had water, would you give it to a person dying of thirst? If you were a trauma surgeon, would you oper­ate on a person dying of a fatal wound? If you were a firefighter, would you go in and rescue the child caught in the burning building? If you were a skilled swimmer and lifeguard, would you jump into the pool to save the drowning child? Apart from the nuances that may or may not condition each of these scenarios, I’d like to be­lieve you’d be eager to help and assist those suffering in some way or another. Most likely, you’d be quick to serve and give a hand to do what you could to keep another person in peril alive. Unless, perhaps, you were climbing Mount Everest.

There’s a region above 26,000 feet on the Everest climb known as the Death Zone. Up at that elevation, your body cannot get enough oxygen to operate correctly. At this altitude, breathing is laboriously difficult. Most climbers require the use of supplemental oxygen tanks to enable them to make the push to the summit. The alti­tude isn’t the only barrier to reaching the top. The climb demands a significant level of physical fitness and moun­taineering capabilities. If you go for the summit from the south side of the mountain in Nepal, you have to make multiple crossings over a section of glacier known as the Khumbu Icefall. It’s a perilous maze of crevices, moving ice, and treacherous steps that require a group of moun­taineers known as Icefall Doctors to place fixed ropes and ladders through to assist their clients in getting up it. If you come at the summit from the north on the Ti­betan Plateau, you must ascend steep, sheer walls of rock at the highest altitudes. Making the summit of Everest is no sure thing.

Apart from the climb’s physical toll, you also commit to a substantial financial investment. A good guide com­pany typically hires Sherpa porters to guide the climb, prepare meals, and help haul the gear so you have the best shot at standing on the top. This costs anywhere from $70,000 to $85,000. Plus, it involves months and months of training, travel, and actual climbing. The personal, physical, and financial investment required to reach the top is astronomical.

These factors explain why, if you were climbing Ev­erest, you might be less inclined to help someone in trou­ble. You would’ve worked too hard, paid too much, and given up too much to make it to the highest point on the planet.

This scenario plays out every year. Mark Synnott, in his book The Third Pole, talks about the dead bodies lying on the summit routes of Everest, frozen in place. It’s too expensive, difficult, and dangerous to retrieve their bodies for burial elsewhere. When climbers come across someone in trouble from hypoxia or overexertion, they have to make a choice. To assist someone in distress is to give up your attempt to reach the top. Most pass by, say a prayer, and hope for the best. Synnott tells of one climb­er in recent years who was in distress and was ignored by climbers going up and down. No one helped him, and he perished not far from the summit.

When you evaluate the motives of why an able person would or wouldn’t save someone in distress on Mount Everest, one answer becomes clear: most of us would help someone in trouble if it didn’t also imperil us. The ethical algorithms of our hearts would be quick to help someone in need if it didn’t come at the cost of our own lives. This philosophy would cause us to retreat into self-preservation mode if it meant we’d end up losing our lives or missing out on our goals.

Here’s my question: Why do we often treat the spir­itual condition of those around us as if we’re climbing Mount Everest and would be putting ourselves in danger if we helped them? Why don’t we rather see their danger and need, and then reach out to help? Why—when we consider our friends, roommates, fellow students, even coworkers—do we balk at sharing the only hope of life instead of caring for them by sharing the gospel?

I want to encourage you and your generation to see the desperate need of those around you—the spiritual peril of sinners headed to an eternity of judgment—and having embraced the gospel by faith, I hope you’ll be ea­ger and active to share it with those who need Christ. I want to challenge you to make it your ambition to share the gospel.

Ambition for Life

If you see the desperate need of those around you for the gospel and lean into being an ambassador of reconcilia­tion on Christ’s behalf, you’ll find sharing the gospel is part and parcel of your life. You’ll faithfully commend God and his grace to the lost and dying. Instead of ig­noring or overlooking those in need in your pursuit of whatever summit you’re climbing, you’ll stop and offer aid to a whole planet that lives in a spiritual Death Zone. I don’t know of any more significant or higher ambition a person can have than to share the gospel.

Do you have this ambition in your life? Maybe by making you aware of the great need and our responsibil­ity as Christians, I’ve planted this calling in your heart. Perhaps it was already there, and this chapter has been the rocket fuel you needed to propel you forward. What­ever the case, if this ambition is in your heart, I want to drop a further idea in your head that I’ll develop later.

Many Christians I know who are zealous, faithful, and competent in sharing their faith have ventured into serving in vocational Christian ministry. Many work vo­cationally as cross-cultural missionaries, campus minis­try staff, or in church contexts as pastors, ministers, or staff. It’s not a complete parallel that you must go into vo­cational ministry if you have this ambition. Still, if you’re eager, engaged, and effective in proclaiming and sharing the gospel, you could be called to vocational ministry.

Of the seven “godly ambitions” I want you to em­brace, six are ambi­tions every Christian should embody. This includes the ambition to share the gospel. However, a deeper passion and ability to share the gospel effectively indi­cates a competency not every Christian possesses. If you do have that desire, let me drop the hint that you should give thought to pursuing a vocation in Christian ministry.

When Jesus saw the spiritual plight of the multi­tudes in the Death Zone, “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep with­out a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36, NIV). He helped his disciples to see that the harvest was big and ready. Yet he said, “The laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (vv. 37–38). You’re one of those laborers God is sending into his harvest. Make it your ambition to share the gos­pel with everyone you can.