Facing Storms of Life With Confidence

David answered, "You are coming against me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty,  the God of the Israelite armies, which you have defied.          

Prayer

A story I heard about a giant 400-year-old tree came crashing down one day and no one knew why. It had had survived four centuries of storms, lightning, and earthquakes. What natural force could possibly be so strong as to drop the tree so suddenly?

The answer? Beetles! The tiny insects had found their way inside the trunk of the giant tree and had slowly eaten away at the tree’s fibers, destroying it in bit by bit from the inside out. It’s amazing that something so small could destroy something so big.

The Bible has its own stories of the small standing up to the big. The armies of Israel trembled before the giant, Goliath. The writer of this story takes his time telling us just how big this man was. He was about 3 meters tall and wore bronze armour that weighed almost 60 kilograms as well as bronze armour on his legs, a spear and shield.

Goliath, is a big man, there are no two ways about it. He knows that there is no one who could match his size and strength. “Give me a man that we may fight together,” Goliath taunts the Israelite army.

And up pops little David. Goliath demanded a man; he got little David. The contrast between the heavily armoured giant Goliath and the little boy with his brothers’ lunchbox (David was delivering food to his brothers) couldn’t be greater.

King Saul emphasized that little David had no chance against the giant. “You’re just a child! Goliath will make mince meat out of you!” David says, “Your Majesty, I take care of my father's sheep. Any time a lion or a bear carries off a lamb, I go after it, attack it, and rescue the lamb. … The Lord has saved me from lions and bears; he will save me from this Philistine” (1 Sam 17:35-37).

Note that this is the first time God has been mentioned in this story. Something more is going on here than in the brave shepherd boy. David calls out to the giant, “You are coming against me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty”.

He picks up five stones, puts one his slingshot, and strikes Goliath. The giant falls. Let’s be clear. This isn’t a story about some smart, cheeky boy who doesn’t know when enough is enough.

This isn’t a story about a boy with a slingshot who just happened to have had a lucky shot hitting the giant in a vital spot to bring him crashing down. And it’s not a story about a big bloke who was so arrogant and rude he didn’t see that it was possible that a young kid could cause him any harm.
It’s a story about God.

It’s a story about a young boy who kills a huge man, not with armour, a helmet, sword and shield, but with a slingshot and God.

I don’t know how frightened David was as he stepped out from the safety of the Israelite trenches and stood in front of Goliath. If he was anything like you and me, I’m sure he would have been afraid.

After all Goliath was a fierce man threatening to feed David’s body to the wild animals. But his fear didn’t stop him. He was coming against Goliath “in the name of the Lord Almighty.” God was on his side. He was small – Goliath was big but with God on his side, size didn’t make any difference.

My young friends, my guess is that you won’t ever have to face a giant man like Goliath armed with a stone and a slingshot, but I would guess that during your lifetime you will face giants of all kinds that will jeopardize your happiness and safety. This is where this story about David’s victory with the help of God has a very important lesson for all of us.

Giants generally get some pretty bad press. They have a mean reputation and evil streak not only in the Bible but also in fables and fairy tales. Let’s look at some of the mean giants that threaten our safety and happiness.

David was standing in front of the most fierce, dangerous and life-threatening giant imaginable. The most dangerous giant that confronts us is called “Sin”. Sin – your words, my words, thoughts and actions that are so harmful not only to others but also to yourselves. Sin causes us to feel bad about yourselves. You know what I mean. We have had a bad day and it seems we can’t help but be horrible to the person closest to us. We say and do things that are unkind and hurtful.

When we calm down, you realize that we have been so unfair and unkind. We feel bad. There is no excuse. God’s expectation that we should live good and upright lives and we know we can’t, and add these our lack of commitment and slack attitude to the church and being a true follower of Jesus; we can see that this is a terrifying giant who threatens your happiness and eternal well-being.

The giant called “Sin” is a huge giant. He seems unbeatable. We sin and there seems to be nothing that we can do about it. The odds that we will ever get it right are very slim.

Like David, we are standing in front of a threatening and dangerous Goliath. He has the power to kill. Goliath threatened to slice David up into little pieces and feed him to wild animals. The second giant threatens our happiness by attacking our bodies.

There is the possibility that injuries, sickness, permanent disability will put our comfort, and happiness at risk. Or something might happen that will affect us for the rest of our lives. Ask many of us here how this giant can loom over us and gives us a hard time.

This giant certainly messes up our well-planned lives. It can lead us to believe that we are in a hopeless mess and there is little to look forward to in the future. As David stood in front of Goliath, he had every reason to be afraid. He was staring death in the face.

Goliath tried to mess around with David’s feelings about himself and his ability to be a giant killer. He abused him, treated him with scorn because he was just a boy. The giant in our lives has the ability to screw around with our feelings about ourselves. When we should be feeling good about ourselves we rather feel small and insignificant.

David couldn’t help but feel small and all alone as he stood before Goliath. His smallness could have caused him to turn around and head for cover. We too can be led to feel small because we believe that no one cares about us, or we think that we’re useless and can’t do anything, or we believe that we are all alone.

We feel upset because we believe that we are total failures, or we are miserable because there are too many problems in our lives and we can’t cope. In fact, this giant can grow to such huge heights in our lives that we can’t see the truth anymore.

We know how the giant finished up in our Bible story about David and Goliath. There can be no happiness and victory unless we face our giant with confidence, not only in ourselves, but with God’s help. 

David killed the giant not because he was skilled with the slingshot but because God was on his side. He said to Goliath, “This very day the Lord will put you in my power; I will defeat you…”.   

This provides us with the answer to how we can face and defeat the giants that threaten us. God has dealt with sin. He has sent Jesus to be our Saviour, to defeat the power of sin to condemn us. He has overcome the power of evil to drag us away from God’s love, and kingdom, and God has overcome the power of death to have the last say when we die.

I believe, that life without facing giants and storms would be very uneventful and boring life. Facing difficult circumstance creates godly character. When we are facing difficult times whether bad health, jobless, accidents, a disability, loneliness, marriage problems, security such as bad feelings about what others think of us, what we think of ourselves, remember that Jesus the giant killer Jesus the storm calmer is your friend.

·        He is the kind of friend that will die for you.

·        He is the kind of friend who promises to always be with us, even in the toughest times.

·        He is the kind of friend who has the power to help, and strengthen us, and to answer our prayers.

·        He is the kind of friend who will always be our friend and won’t ever give up on us.

He promised all this at our baptism. Baptism is the starting point of our trust relationship with God. He is the only one who has the power to defeat any giant and calm any storm that will come our way not just now but right through our life.

Let his words to us morning remind us that God loves us very much and wants us to call on him and his power when the giants and storms of life threaten our comfort, safety and happiness. He says to us,

“Do not be afraid – I am with you! I am your God – let nothing terrify you! I will make you strong and help you; I will protect you and save you." Just be still and know that I am God.

Amen.