Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast : Ep 39
TRANSCRIPT
It’s time to introduce the giants in your life to your God.
I want to talk about fighting the giants in your life and some things we can learn from David’s fight with the giant Goliath.
I know each of you have been fighting giants. They are not physical giants but they are giants of a spiritual nature that are coming against you trying to keep you from experiencing all that God has for you here in this life.
It used to be that giants were not as obvious. Today there are many giants and the giants are coming to you. They are attacking your life on a regular basis. That is why learning to introduce the giants in your life to your God is going to be more and more a vital part of our life with Christ. We used to recognize that there were giants in the world, but more of us felt like if we left them alone, they would leave us alone. Not true! The giants today are aggressively coming after us and we can no longer ignore them.
I am going to use the story of David and Goliath to encourage us as we fight our giants.
1 Samuel 17 – The highlights of the Story of David and Goliath
Now the Philistines gathered their armies together to battle, 3 The Philistines stood on a mountain on one side, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side, with a valley between them.
And a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
Then he stood and cried out to the armies of Israel, and said to them, “Why have you come out to line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and you the servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me.
And the Philistine said, “I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.” 11 When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.
And the Philistine Goliath drew near and presented himself forty days, morning and evening.
Then Jesse said to his son David, “Take now for your brothers an ephah of this dried grain and these ten loaves, and run to your brothers at the camp.- (that was the first Uber Eats.)
David saw and heard the taunting of Goliath and dismayed why no man was willing to go and fight him.
Then David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”
Then he took his staff in his hand; and he chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in a shepherd’s bag, in a pouch which he had, and his sling was in his hand. And he drew near to the Philistine.
Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 47 Then all this assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands.”
Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.
Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took Goliath’s sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it.-that is a bad day to have your head cut off with your own sword.
And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.
Gathered for battle at Socoh which belonged to Judah.
The enemy attacks us at places we already possess. Tries to take territory from us. The scripture says that the enemy comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Today he is boldly coming to take things that belong to you and he wants to see if you will fight for what is already yours, or if you will run from the battle and allow him to steal from you.
I believe we are in a season to see if we, the church of Christ, are willing to fight for what is rightly ours or not. The church is being attacked. The Kingdom of God and His righteousness are being openly attacked. What is evil is being called good, and what is good is being called evil.
Spirit of fear has been released and this fear has caused many in the body of Christ to shrink back and not fight the giants in our lives.
It is time for the church to draw a line in the sand and quit giving in to this spirit of fear and hopelessness. In the US, and I will bet it is the same around the world, we are being told to get back in our church buildings and stay there, to quit trying to influence culture.
It has become very obvious where people stand today. It used to be that someone could be neutral about their faith. Not anymore. The enemy is trying to take our influence away; influence that is rightly given to us by our Father God. Now more than ever we, the church, need to influence what is going on in our world.
The best way for the church to fight this battle is through prayer. This sense of fear and helplessness says to us that there is nothing we can do to change our culture, so why try. Just give up. Yet the scripture says that the weapons of our warfare are not of this world, they are not of flesh and blood, rather they are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
The first picture we have in the story of David and Goliath is of the army coming out for battle.
Verse 20 says: “And he came to the circle of the camp while the army was going out in battle array shouting the war cry. Israel and the Philistines drew up in battle array, army against army.”
This is a picture of what often happens in church. While we are in church during worship, our courage and faith are very strong. We are shouting the battle cry! But when the giants in our life come at us at 3:00 in the morning, we often find ourselves acting like the armies of Israel in the face of Goliath. In verse 24 Goliath came out and “When all the men of Israel saw the man, they fled from him and were greatly afraid.” They basically said, Have you seen the size of this man?
They were shouting the war cry until they came face to face with the giant.
Religion is a form of godliness but it denies the power of God. People today don’t need religion,they need something that is powerful and real. The gospel demands that we give the world the real thing. The real thing is not living a life of shouting the war cry in church on Sunday and then running away when the giants show up.
It is ok to recognize that the giants are big. I am not saying to deny the size of the giants. But we must choose to believe what God says about our situations over what we see in the natural. We are going to face giants, but our God is bigger.
Twice a day for 40 days Goliath shamed the armies of Israel. Who are you to come against me! Notice that the tactic of this giant was fear and intimidation.
The Devil does that same thing to us all the time. He uses fear and intimidation to shame us. Who are you to think you can do something great?
Shame is a powerful weapon that is used against the church. Shame is that message that there is something wrong with you. And it comes at us in various forms and from various sources.
We sometimes buy into shame-based lies that some are chosen to be level 10 Christians and I am only a level 3 Christian.
If we are not careful we can spend more time agreeing with the enemy through our ‘self-talk’, than we spend talking to and agreeing with God.
David’s own brothers tried to shame David in verse 28 – “Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.” Little shepherd boy. You didn’t come here to do any good. You just came here to watch real men fight.
The reason David had the courage to fight Goliath was that David had no shame. David spent his days tending sheep and talking to God. David would worship while tending sheep. He had no other way to connect with God than through personal worship and talking to God.
- He had no Bible. Sometimes the Bible might actually get in the way. Many times we disconnect our Bible reading from connection with God. We think that by reading the scripture, we are connecting with God when all we are doing is checking a box. Bible reading…..check.
- He had no internet and the hundreds of Christian things on the internet. Not to mention the hours we can waste on social media.
- He had no TV
- He had no online podcasts or YouTube. Although it is OK to listen to this podcast of course!
Only thing David could do was play his guitar and worship and pray. That might be why he had no shame.
Notice also that when David volunteered to fight Goliath, the King tried to put his armor on David. It obviously didn’t fit.
We can’t wear someone else’s armor. Wearing someone else’s armor is like trying to live the Christian life using someone else’s anointing. You don’t need someone else’s anointing. You are anointed by God to fight the battles He places before you. Can you benefit by joining your anointing with others anointing? Yes, most definitely. There is power in the church linking arms and coming together to fight the giants. Can you receive extra anointing by placing yourself under anointed leaders in the body of Christ? Absolutely. The ministers of RTF receive an impartation from the anointing carried by Chester and Betsy Kylstra that flows down to all of us. But you can’t fight using someone else’s anointing.
Notice in verse 48 “Then it happened when the Philistine rose and came and drew near to meet David, that David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine.” How could David run toward the battle when all of the rest of the Israelite army was running away?
David knew 2 things. He knew who he was, and he knew that God was on his side.
David knew who he was – vs 33-36 “And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are a youth, and he – a man of war from his youth.” 34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep his father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, 36 Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.”
David says I know who I am. That is not arrogance, it is a God given confidence in who God has made you to be.
Once again we see that David was not affected by shame. Shame wants to tell you that there is something wrong with you. As Chester Kylstra says, Shame is being uniquely and fatally flawed.
Brene Brown says “Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.”
Our identity as believers is such an important thing. That is why the enemy goes to such great lengths to get us to believe lies about our identity. Like David, when we know who we are, the size of the giant does not matter.
One of the lies the enemy uses is that for us to be confident in who we are and what we are called to do is being arrogant. In 1 Corinthians 4:16 Paul says, “Therefore I urge you, imitate me.” That is either the statement of a totally arrogant man, or the statement of a man who is confident in who he is as a child of God. His confidence is not in himself, but in Christ who dwells in him. You can imitate me as I follow Christ. It is not pride or arrogance to be rightly aligned with God and be confident in that alignment. I know who I am. I know the power I have. I know I am going to do great things for the Kingdom of God.
Paul’s confidence came because he knew where his life came from. Paul knew that Christ was living His life in and through Paul by the Holy Spirit.
We have a part to play in bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. That is an amazing identity. It is amazing that God would choose to live His life through us here and co-labor with us to see the Kingdom of God come to earth.
Not only did David know who he was but he also knew that God was on his side – “Moreover David said, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”
What are the giants in your life? Finances, health, family, a sin issue? Some of you will need help getting rid of the giants. The integrated approach – holding the giants in place.
My concern in coming out of the season we have just gone through is we have adjusted our expectations to a new reality.
Our reality has nothing to do with Covid or the war in Ukraine or the political climate. Our reality has always been and continues to be Christ crucified. It is bringing His Kingdom to earth. Our reality is making our expectations and decisions line up to the Truth of God’s Word and His Kingdom come to earth.
