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Giants: Big and Little, Real and Imagined


            Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!”
            David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD'S, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (I Samuel 17:41) 

            A boy, with insignificant weapons taking on the champion on the enemy's armies. It's a classic tale that has been retold a million different ways. It's a story that is often used incorrectly, to say things it was never meant to say. Quite probably, my use is the 1,000,001th way. And yet... David stepped up in faith that God could do something using him, and he was right.
            I can't claim to have been a shepherd who fought bears and lions, but I've held positions that were as disrespected. I've been a nobody. I can't say I've faced down anything in my life, anything external, anyway. My "giants" and "demons" all seem to live inside my soul. They are part of me, not part of the world in which I live. They are strongholds (see II Corinthians 10:4) against which physical weapons have little power. They are like the moon, sometimes they wax large, and other times they seem to wane small only to return. There's a lesson in that which I should learn.
          Yesterday, I faced one of those strongholds. It shouldn't have been a big deal, I've been speaking in public for years, but this time my life seemed to hang in the balance. Am I following God's will? Am I pursuing yet another will-of-the-wisp that is luring me into a swamp of ego? Am I wasting time and money trying to do plug a hole in the dike holding back the small evil that threatens to flood us while everyone else is screaming about the big evils circling over our heads and breathing out smoke and fire? 
           I very much don't this to be all about me. I want to be invisible. But over and over in the Old Testament, God tested His servants. Some of the tests were huge, like Goliath. Some were small, like a collection of jars or the number of times someone struck the ground. Sometimes, they make no sense to us. I don't know what effect my talk yesterday had on anyone else. I know that I was obeying what I believed God wanted me to do. I stepped out of the boat and did what I could with what I had at the time. It may have been a worse "walking on water" performance than Peter's. I may have completely missed Goliath and his shield bearer and hit a plot of ground somewhere off to their left. If "Goliath" died yesterday, it  might have been by laughing himself to death. But the purpose of these trials is not for us to show how great we are, but simply for us to be obedient, and by so doing, show how great God is.
           Whether I crash and burn yet again in following my "dreams" - may He be glorified and be proven true.

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