A fresh look at the story of David and Goliath

We’ve all heard the story about how a young shepherd boy defeated a huge Philistinian giant, and delivered God’s people from the clutches of the Philistines. The account of this epic battle is recorded  in 1 Samuel, 17. The Israelites were pitted  against  the Philistines. Both armies were encamped on 2 mountains on opposite sides of   the valley of Elah.

Running away from challenges: Goliath, was the tyrant used by the Philistines to bully the Israelites every day. This bullying did not happen   for 1 or 2 days but continued twice a day for 40 whole days.  Interestingly, every morning, God’s people followed the daily army drill. They dressed for the fight, picked up their weapons but when they heard Goliath’s challenge, they turned and fled away from the challenge.  And their leader –  king Saul – who was supposedly responsible for taking up the challenge sat fearfully in his tent.

Isn’t it interesting that Goliath never once attacked the Israelites, he just challenged them from afar but that was sufficient to scare the Israelites.

A common tactic used to demoralize your opponent is to create fear in their heart. If you succeed in doing this, they may give up  or even if they fight, they would  do so halfheartedly and eventually lose. So, in effect, you’ve won the battle with your words before it even began. Here Goliath was doing something similar. In fact, Goliath defeated the Israelites on basis of fear alone. The fight had gone out of the Israelites long before the battle began.

This is a significant strategy of that the devil uses against believers. For some of us the battle is over even before it begins.  The fight goes out of us when we are faced with a challenge- a bad prognosis, financial problems, challenges at workplace etc. What we need to keep in mind is that intimidation and creating fear is the most powerful tool of the enemy. Before we face any challenge, we must face our fear itself. John 1: 1 says ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. Today we have the scriptures with us, we have Jesus in our midst. Why should we be intimated?

Accepting the challenge: What about David? He was seeing the same Goliath, he was hearing the same threats, yet he was unmoved. One reason was that he was looking at Goliath through an entirely different perspective. He was not focusing on how big Goliath was, his focus was on the bigness of his God as compared to Goliath. The Israelites on the other hand saw only how big Goliath was. God was relegated somewhere to the background.

Also, David was not focusing on the threats of Goliath but on the faithfulness of a God, who had rescued him from difficulties earlier. David knew that the same God who delivered him from the lion and the bear would also deliver him now.

Second reason is in chapter 16 where we see how Samuel anointed David to be set apart for God. David was filled with the Spirit of God and so he could stand up to any intimidation.

 On the other hand, Saul who was the logical choice to fight with Goliath, was scared. At one time, he was a fearless leader who had led his people to victory many times.  But that was before the Spirit of the Lord departed from him. As the Spirit left Saul, his courage also left him.

Today, we are a people set apart for God. We have his Holy Spirit inside of us. Why should we then be intimidated?

The fight: This was not a fair fight at all. It wasn’t Goliath against David. It was Goliath against David and the Lord God of Israel. The battle was over for Goliath before it began. He was a dead man as soon as David accepted the challenge.

But David was wise with his words, “the Lord will deliver you into my hand.” David was bold, but his boldness was in God,  not in himself. He did not forget that this was not his battle, this was the battle of the Lord.

And poor Goliath – he had no idea what was about to hit him. Infuriated at David’s boldness, he advanced to kill him. But David didn’t run away like the other Israelites. Instead, David hastened to meet the Philistine.

Goliath with all his weapons of war  and David with just his staff and sling. David hurled a stone from his sling with all his might, and that was the end of the mighty Goliath.

I would close with some footnotes:

1.     Goliath never leaves if we don’t take up the challenge and fight back.  Here we see Goliath came back twice each day for 40 days until David finally went down to face him in the valley. Our giants are similar. They will never depart on their own. Until we stand on the Word and the promises of God and fight in Jesus’ name, they will never leave.

2.     David needed Goliath: Though he probably didn’t realize it, Goliath was good for David. David who was to become King needed to gain the confidence of the people that he was qualified to lead them. When David defeated Goliath, he proved a point.

We too need our Goliath’s or the challenges in our life so that we can grow in and through them. God uses every challenge we face to make us stronger. 

3.     There is some amount of doubt and some amount of belief in all of us. Faith is choosing to believe inspite of our doubts. Everyone knew that God was all powerful and well able to deliver them from their enemies.  Many times, we have head knowledge which we don’t put into practice. Anyone could have overcome  Goliath had they taken a step in faith. David kept his doubts aside and chose to act by faith and God honoured him.

From Jacob to Israel- Part 1

From Jacob to Israel- Part 1

There are so many lessons to be learnt from the life of Jacob- Simple practical principles, which we can apply to our daily life and be blessed. Today, I want to share a few of them with you and I hope it blesses you as much as it did me.

1.Descriptors : ‘What’s in a name ? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet’.  ‘That was William Shakespeare in his famous play Romeo and Juliet. But what do we make of a name like Jacob ? As a twin in the womb with Esau, Jacob was born grasping his brother’s heel.  The parents promptly named him Jacob, which meant Grabber of heels or supplanter. In Bible times, a name given to a child had a lot of importance. It was an adjective which described the child and very often defined the child’ s future. Take another name from the scriptures ‘Nabal ‘ which means ‘Fool’. Mindblowing !! I have been trying to figure out ‘why Nabal’. While today, naming children in such a manner is no longer a trend, some parents nevertheless brand their children with   descriptors such as ‘good for nothing, lazy, black sheep, etc. We knew a person who used to call his daughter ‘pain’ because she was very naughty ; but the more he addressed her such, the naughtier she became. It was uncanny. Word seeds which are sown during childhood take root in the heart of the child and produce fruit ; namely the character. The problem is that they may soon start living upto the name, either in sheer defiance or resignment.

We know that both Jacob and Nabal lived upto their names.

Scripture support-

Genesis 27 :36 And Esau said, Is he not rightly named Jacob ? for he hath supplanted me these two times. 

1 Samuel 25 : 25- Please pay no attention, my lord, to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name--his name means Fool, and folly goes with him. 

2. Favoritism : All of us have at one point or the other experienced the effects of partiality or favoritism either at home, school or work, and it certainly is not a pleasant experience. In fact, favoritism is highly destructive especially when the person playing favorites is in a position of authority. E.g. As in a parent child, student teacher or boss employee relationship. Scripture says that Esau, the hunter, was his father’ s favorite while Jacob was his mother’ s favorite, for their own reasons. So Isaac wanted to bless Esau, while Rebekah wanted Jacob to get the blessing. And that was how the trouble began.

3.Communication gap : Good communication is the foundation of a strong marriage wherein couples talk freely, they feel safe sharing their thoughts, ideas, experiences and advice. But in Jacob’s family, the communication lines between husband and wife were not open. Isaac did not know what Rebekah or Jacob were upto and if Rebekah had not overheard Isaac talking to Esau, she would have known nothing of Isaac wanting to bless Esau. Things would have been different if Isaac and Rebekah had sat down and talked things through.  

4.Lending a helping hand : Rebekah had received the promise concerning Jacob. However, rather than waiting for God’s perfect timing for its fulfillment, she decided to help God along.  When she heard that Isaac wanted to bless Esau, Rebekah encouraged Jacob to deceive his poor blind father and grab the blessing. Result ?? Jacob was in trouble with his father. His brother was ready to murder him and he was forced to flee   from his family, finally ending up with his uncle Laban. Little did he know that he was soon going to get a taste of his own medicine and have his heel grabbed by Laban. What’s more Rebekah never saw Jacob again. When we step out of God's timing, we can sometimes invite a disaster, we have to live with. We wrongly assume that when God puts a promise/desire in our hearts, He is ready to bring it to pass immediately. And rather than trusting him, we try to work things out ourselves in our own strength.  What ever it is, a new job, house, life partner, a financial breakthrough, we cannot rush God. We need to trust him as He knows the perfect time to bless us with the breakthrough.

5.Wrestling with God- Genesis 32

When Jacob was wrestling with God, Jacob holds on to him and says“I will not let you go unless you bless me.” ²⁷ And God says to him, “What is your name ?”

Fascinating !! Was God asking him for information, just like we ask someone his or her name. No, He is all knowing ; Why would he ask Jacob his name ? You see, many years ago, Jacob had asked his father to bless him using a false identity. Now he was asking God to bless him and God wanted to show Jacob what was in his heart.

Jeremiah 17 :9, 10  says "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately wicked; Who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind ‘, 

When God asked him his name, Jacob was compelled to reveal his name and in so doing, he was not just saying his name, but confessing it, before God-‘ Deceiver 'heel grabber,' 'supplanter’, and as soon as he had confessed, God gave Jacob a new identity, Israel interpreted as “May God rule.”  Jacob, who had earlier stolen a blessing from his father illegetimately, now received a blessing from God legitimately. 

Deuteronomy  8 :2 says “You will remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness  these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, 

God is interested in the condition of our hearts and wants us to be clear with him. Just like Jacob we have our own shortcomings and failures. And what we need to do is what Jacob did. Confess our weaknesses and face God.

And when we do that we leave our “Jacob” identity behind and step into a brand new identity ready to receive God’s blessings.

Preetha Paul

A Prayer, a Pledge and a Belief

A prayer, a pledge and a belief

Before I share the text for today, I want to share something lighthearted with you.....

A little boy wanted a bicycle but he did not know best how to pray for one. So as he was watching a church television program, a very traditional service, he saw how the minister prayed. At the end of the day, the lad got on his knees and said: "Lord, if it is in Your Sovereign will and in Your Eternal plan that I can get myself a bicycle - in your time and according to your will - would you please get me a bicycle In Jesus name I pray. Amen."
        Two days later, there was still no bicycle; so he began to think he needed a different prayer. He turned on the television again to watch another type of ministry in operation. And at the end of the day, he got on his knees and said: "Lord, I declare my need for a bicycle! And I declare that it will be a nice blue-colored bicycle and delivered to my home within 24 hours. I lay claim to it, Amen!"
        After several days and still not having received a bicycle.  As he was passing through the hall he saw a statue of the Virgin Mary there on one of the shelves.  He took the statue off of the shelf and disappeared somewhere. His mother was observing him all the time. Later that night as he got ready for bed, the little boy got down on his knees and said, "Dear Jesus, if you ever want to see your mother again..." 

It was Dr. Ravi Zacharias who asked this very profound question of his audience at one of his meetings « If a non-believer were to base their understanding of God and Christ and the Christian faith on what they witness of our life in general and our devotional life in particular, what conclusion would they come to?

The text that I want to share is from 1 Samuel 1- verses 1 onwards which the story of Hannah is. As we read the story we observe 3 things happening   in Hannah’s life.  A Prayer, a pledge and a belief

The Prayer

Very briefly the story goes like this

There lived a man called Elkanah who had two wives; Peninnah who had children, and Hannah who didn’t have any. Over the years, Hannah had become an object of ridicule due to the fact that the Lord had shut her womb and Peninnah never missed an opportunity to mock her regarding this.

Year after year after year Elkanah and family went up to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh, the place which was considered to be the religious hub of the nation. We don’t know how long Hannah had gone through this annual routine; whether she went out of a sense of duty, compulsion or simply because it was a tradition.

For, though Hannah was physically present at Shiloh, she was mentally far away, her mind weighed down by the misery and shame she was experiencing.

You see sometimes we do things for God, with the wrong attitude. It is very easy to get bogged down by our circumstances and settle down into a kind of monotonous routine. As a result, our worship becomes routine, our prayer life becomes routine and spending time with the word becomes routine.

But one year, Hannah decided to get out of the monotony, she came into God's presence with a specific powerful prayer. Verse 9 and verse 10, tells us that Hannah went to the Tabernacle to pray and weep bitterly before the Lord.

The Pledge

In verse 11, Hannah made this vow to God: "O Lord Almighty, if you will look down upon my sorrows and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you ".

What an incredible pledge! She had by faith, just promised to give God something that she had desired to have the most in her life, something of infinitely more value than gold, silver or money, the very child that she had waited so long for.  

And as Hannah was faithful and gave up her child to God, God blessed her with 5 more children, three sons and two daughters.

There is a very important principle here. When we sow out of our areas of lack by faith, God is faithful to bless us in that area.

The Belief

The facts were against her. After all the Lord had shut her womb. What chance did she have to bear a child? Yet she chose to place her trust in the Lord and believed what Eli, the priest, had told her. In fact the word says, she was at peace. She was no longer troubled.

Today we have Jesus as our High Priest sitting on the right hand of the Father. When he says “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do,” no matter what the odds are, no matter what the facts tell us, we need to choose to believe what Jesus says to us. We need to believe it is done.

THE PERFUME

^{THE PERFUME} 

Today, I want to share on the topic of giving and for that I’ll first share a story and then a text from the Bible. A man goes to his pastor and says “Pastor, you have got to pray for me. I am really struggling in the area of tithing”. Why? What seems to be the matter? Asked his Pastor. “You see, there was a time  when I was earning 50 dollars a week and I was tithing 5 dollars No big deal, it was cool, then my salary became  500 dollars a week and I had to tithe 50 dollars, which was also ok. But now, I am earning 5000 dollars a week and tithing 500 dollars is too much. His pastor began praying for him” God, you have got to help this brother here who is struggling to give his  tithes, so I pray that you would decrease his salary so that the amount he has to tithe would also become less and it would be easier for him to pay his tithes.

Humour apart, when it comes to giving, people do all kinds of peculiar calculations in their head and come up with reasons on why they cannot give. Seriously how does addition of one more 0 matter?  It’s the principle that matters.

The text that I want to share is  from John 12- Verse 3 onwards, It is a graphic  story which  basically looks into the  hearts of 2 people Mary (generous heart) and Judas (selfish heart).

³ Then Mary took about a pint^[a] of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

⁴ But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ⁵ “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages” ⁶ He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

In those times, one Denarius was one day’s wages, so ANNUAL INCOME of an ordinary person would be around 300 denarii. Now nard or spikenard was a costly perfume which most probably had originated from India, China or Nepal and Mary would have paid around 300 denarii for jar of the perfume.

To really appreciate this story, you need to imagine it in today’s context.  So Mary enters Shoppers Stop, goes upto the perfume counter and says “Look I want to buy the most expensive brand of perfume that you have”. The salesman says “ok here you are, 1 ounce bottle that would be Rs.50000”. And Mary replies “I don’t need just 1 oz. I need one pint .I need 16 oz. Here is my entire years’ salary. Wow! Just think about it.

Makes me wonder, why did Mary do it? She was not rolling in money. She was an ordinary person with an Average income like you and I. Then what motivated her? The answer may be found in the previous chapter. Lazarus had just been raised from the dead and they were having a small party on that day with Jesus and his disciples. Mary was obviously grateful. Not only that, she loved the Lord with all her heart. And it was this love and gratitude that led to her incredibly lavish gift. So here we have the picture of the generous heart. A person  living life with an  open hand, which says God nothing matters more to me  than you and  all I have, my finances, my talents, my time, my resources are  yours.

Now look at Judas. He was so concerned about the money (which incidentally was not even his).  What was his motive? Concern for the poor was the last thing on his mind; it is very clear that Judas was only seeking to gratify his needs.

He was the treasurer and He was pilfering with the offerings. He was literally robbing Jesus. It says here- he was a thief.

You may wonder- Didn’t Jesus know what was going on? Didn’t he know Judas’s nature? Then why did he place him in such a responsible position? God knows everything about us including our weaknesses and he sometimes deliberately places us in areas of our weaknesses, to make us strong in those particular areas. In Judas we have the picture of the selfish heart. A person living life with a closed fist, which says nothing matters more to me more than my finances, I will grab whatever I can and hold on to whatever I have.

This is a pretty good analogy of our lives. The spirit of generosity (the Mary spirit) and spirit of selfishness (the Judas spirit) coexist in all of us, maybe in different areas and like everything else in our life the battle between the 2 is in the mind. And every time the battle begins, we need to make a choice, the choice either to be generous or obey God or the choice to be selfish and gratify self. Making right choices every time leads to the formation of right habits. And forming right habits leads to creating right lifestyles. So if we are generous every time, it leads first to a habit of generosity and then to a lifestyle of giving. And vice versa is also true.

Before I close, I want to share an interesting statistic with you.  The word "Give" appears 921 times in the Bible, almost as many times as "Faith" (270), "Hope" (165), and "Love" (541) put together. God is repeatedly exhorting us to be generous because he knows perfectly well that most of us struggle with this discipline. 2 Corinthian 9: verses 6-11, particularly verse 11 are powerful scriptures on generosity. I particularly like Verse 11 which says

¹¹ You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

God enriches us so that our generosity achieves two basic purposes:

·         God's name will be thanked and praised by people whose lives we impact.

·         God's people will have their needs met.

And as we step into the New Year, let us try to have a lifestyle of giving so that our offerings would be used to impact lives here and round the globe...