Sermon by Ps. Sunil Kumar
We all have heard the famous incident of David and Goliath. We too face a lot of Goliaths/giants in our lives and todays devotion is all about how we can fight them. Todays passage is 1 Samuel 17. Let’s explore and learn to fight well like David.
1 Samuel 17:1-3
We can understand that all our life’s battles don’t happen on the mountains but always in the valleys. For this battle Philistines came up with the idea of fighting one on one hence they appointed a champion named Goliath who was approximately 10 feet tall. Through Goliath’s victory over the Israelites, the Philistines wanted to capture the territory of Israel. This is what the devil also wants to do in our lives. He wants to take over the territory of our family, our children, our purity and everything that belongs to us.
1 Samuel 17:4-7
The moment we think about God, the devil brings a giant to us just as the Philistines brought Goliath and distract us or take our focus away from God. Though Goliath was a huge man his shield bearer was carrying his shield ahead of him. If Goliath was really big and powerful have you ever thought why he isn’t carrying his shield by himself? However big the giant is, we need to look to God and know that he is nothing in front of our big and powerful God.
1 Samuel 17:17-18
All of Jesse’s eight sons were recruited in the army except David. Of the eight, 3 of them were already present in the battle. Even though David was anointed as a king, he was still considered as nothing both by his own father and his brothers. Yet David chose to submit to his father’s authority and obeyed him in every way. Like David we too must always respect the authority that God has placed over us. Remember that if you desire to reach God’s destination, you have to learn to submit to the authority God has placed over us.
1 Samuel 17:25-27
If we kill the giants in our life, our destiny is definitely going to change. David had the courage and confidence because he depended on God.
• Your confidence to kill the Giant comes from how you see God.
• We need to see ourselves as what God says about us.
• We got to see our circumstances through God’s perspective.
We all might be having one or the other giants in our life but if we want to win them, we need to see those giants from heaven’s eyes or Gods perspective.
1 Samuel 17:28
Elias, David’s brother puts him down. Not everybody around us in our lives will offer encouragement to us. People will always remind us of our shortcomings and try to put us down. But David knew who he was because he knew whose he was. Just like David our security needs to be in God. Our identity is neither in this world nor in our past but it’s always in God. If you are going to kill a giant, then you need to know whose you are. When our own people criticise us it breaks our heart but remember God brings these people in our lives to prepare us and make us strong. Learn to thank God for both the people who stood with us in our tough times as well as for those who criticized us.
1 Samuel 17:37
If you want to kill the giants, you need to remember what God has done in the past. Here we can see that David remembers how God helped him in the past while protecting his sheep in the wild fighting against the lions and the wild bears.
1 Samuel 17:38
Saul offers his armour to David, but it was too big for him. God has made each one us an original masterpiece, so let us not copy other people but choose to remain and die original. Don’t compare yourself with anybody else but always be genuine. We can try to fake ourselves in front of people but God wants us to be sincere whether people are watching or not watching us.
The giants in our life wants to shut us up or silence our prayers, take away our peace and make us run away from God. But God has given each one of us the authority to talk back and rebuke the giant as He promised us that all our battles belong to Him and that He will fight it out for us. The God of angel army is our God too. The bigger the wait, the greater the victory. Be firmly rooted in the Word of God and speak to all the giants of your life and be victorious in your walk with the Lord.
