The greatest tests we face in life will come in the form of discovering the skill of transforming challenges into victories. If God’s hand is in it will be inevitable that we will face great decisive and unexpected challenges which will determine if you will go down the path Godhas laid out.
How you face those challenges will determine if you will have the courage to fight your battle and see God bring about a mighty victory in your life. That courage is the first step in a long journey full of ups, downs, sorrow, joy, and total dependence on God.
If we look at David’s statement of faith in the Bible we see David’s arrival to the battlefield after he had been sent by his father to bring supplies to his brothers and their regiment.
David saw the hulking Goliath taunting the Israelite army into a champions battle to determine who would be subjected to who. David unlike many of the soldiers apparently, demonstrated a willingness to stand up against this giant and stand up for God and His people. At first David was laughed at and scorned by his brothers and passing soldiers but one person overheard David’s words and told Saul about them.
“When the words which David spoke were heard, they reported them to Saul; and sent for him. Then David said to Saul, ‘Let no man’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine’” -1 Samuel 17:31-32.
In 1 Samuel 17:34-37 David recounts to Saul his previous victories against a lion and a bear, battles fought in secret in the hills of Judah as David protected his flock of sheep. David speaks of how he killed a lion and pulled one of his sheep from its mouth and how he grabbed it by the beard and killed it, a surprising feat for any teenager. David didn’t attribute those victories t his own military prowess or his great skill of strength but rather David gave all the credit to God.
“The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine. And Saul said to David, ‘Go, and the Lord be with you!” -1 Samuel 17:37.
To David, God wasn’t an ideal to him but a living reality. God wasn’t some far off entity who occasionally checks in on creation to make sure he didn’t leave the light on. David saw God as an integral part of his daily life who was there to help. This is a truth that became even more entrenched in David’s life after he was anointed. David knew what he was called to be and from that revelation he trusted God to preserve him long enough to fulfill that calling (as long as he remained faithful of course).
David was ready to fight this battle, but the irony here is that it wasn’t his battle in the first place. Here the person who should have gone up against Goliath wasn’t a pint-sized teenage shepherd boy but the King of Israel Saul. Of all the people in the Israelite army Saul was the closest match for Goliath in terms of size, we know this because 1 Samuel 10:23 describes Saul as being literally head and shoulders taller than the rest of the people who are estimated to of had an aver height of around 5’3.”
Maybe Goliath’s taunting was to lure our King Saul to fight this battle, to have the largest Philistine (between 6 and 9’6”) and the largest Israelite fight for control under the watchful eye of each other’s gods to see where the true power in the region rested. Even after weeks of taunting and challenges King Saul was content to stay in his tent and hope someone else would fight this battle for him. The shackles of fear had tightened around the heart of the king following his abandonment of God’s anointing and how he was failing in his duty to protect God’s people.
On the other hand you had David who was ready and willing to step up and fight this batt against the people’s enemy. Here we can see how two people react to challenges in their lives.
At one point both David and Saul were anointed by God but only one of them remained faithful and was ready to work with God to bring about a victory. We have one person ready to take up arms and fight while we have another who is trying to pawn off their responsibility but still maintain the credit for the accomplishment.
If you look deeper that’s what Saul tried todo with David. After Saul agrees to send David to fight the Philistine Goliath he tries to arm David with his own royal armor. Maybe Saul was trying to trick the people into thinking he was fighting in the battle. Or trying to put his name on David and take the credit for a victory by proxy. Either way Saul was looking for an easy way out, he didn’t want to fight but he wanted the glory from the victory.
As you can imagine Saul’s armor was too large and cumbersome for David and he elected to go without it. David refused Saul’s armor, he didn’t need Saul’s covering or protection because God was with him.
How often do we trust other people’s armor or position of power in place of God’s in our lives. It’s a temptation because it’s easy to trust more in things we can see or seem to provide tangible protection.
After David refused Saul’s armor he goes outside and finds 5 smooth stones from a nearby brook (1 Samuel 17:41) Why 5? While some say it could have been one stone for Goliath and four more of his brothers, giant who were later killed during David’s reign as king (1 Samuel 21;15-22).
With a shepherd’s staff a sling and some stones David was ready for the battle. At first this may seem foolish but David had already shown that he could kill wild animals with his staff and the use of a sling was actually common in battle in that era. Judges 20:16 tells us that “among all these soldiers there were 700 chosen men who were left-handed. Every one of them could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.”
Now the pieces were set and David was ready to face off against Goliath a remnant of the giants that were driven out of Israelite territory by Joshua and into Philistine territory (Joshua 11:21-22). Israel failed to remove the Anakim from the land and now an old battle was about to repeat itself, but the players remained the same the forces of chaos would stand toe in toe with God and his covenant partner.
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.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. 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” – 1 Samuel 17:45-47.
After making that declaration David rushed towards Goliath and hurled a stone with his sling and knocked out Goliath the champion who dared curse and test God and His people.
But the account didn’t end there David went one step further and ensured that the battle was over.
“So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it” -1 Samuel 17:51.
How often do we fail to complete our spiritual battles, how often do we get a taste of victory and then go home without completing the battle? It is common today, we stick around just long enough for God to show up and begin to do something and then we think that it’s good enough and go home. We take progression and advantages which God has given to us but fail to see them through into victories and fulfillment of God intentions for our lives. We are content to knock our proverbial giants unconscious but are unwilling to do the “dirty work” and eliminate those giants from our lives.
Do we resemble Saul? The giant is knocked down so we can all go home, amen hallelujah. But, Saul failed in God’s eyes because he didn’t see things through according to God’s plans. Saul took short cuts, spared the lives of enemy kings, acted as a priest to expedite the beginning of the battle and so on.
We need to be more like David who completed the job without compromise. David ensured the victory was complete and left no room for chance, and even went as far as to use Goliath’s own sword to do it.
We cannot continue to settle for half spiritual victories, it’s not good enough for God to only answer a part of our prayer we need to see things through. God is ready to continue to work with and through us but we have to remain persistent and be expectant that there is more to a battle than just the battle, after the battle comes a victory and then comes the reward. Because if we are unable to convert our challenges into victories we’ve only succeeded at inviting more challenges into our lives.
David’s victory over Goliath was complete and led to an even larger victory for the rest of the people. As we see in 1 Samuel 17:51, “And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.” Because of the actions of one anointed and willing servant of God the entire nation enjoyed a victory that day.
It all begins with servant hood
David didn’t do any of this for his own glory but he instead did it to stand up for God and His people. From what can be told by the scriptures David never received the promised gifts of riches, tax/service exempt status for his family or Saul’s daughter in marriage. But what David did receive was recognition from God, as David graduated from the season of anointing and entered into the season of apprenticeship, the second stage of the 4 A’s Anointing, Apprenticeship, Activation and Announcement.
David took this victory as an opportunity to not claim the throne by force but to continue serving Saul and the people. Unlike most people who would have followed up killing Goliath by next challenging Saul to the same battle. David instead continued to serve Saul as both a commander and as the royal mistral (one who could sing and play a musical instrument). David didn’t take his victory as an invitation to fast-forward progression and suddenly go from being anointed to being announced as king. David took his opportunity to serve and was faithful to the point of annoyance in Saul’s eyes, but in the eyes of God and the people he was growing closer and closer into the manifestation of his calling.
1 Samuel 18:5 tells us, “So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and behaved wisely. And Saul set him over the men of war, and he was accepted in the sight of all the people and also in the sights of Saul’s servants.
From Pity to Praise 