Ever Ready
1 Samuel 17: 50 (NIV)
So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
I’m sure we are all familiar with David and Goliath, a story of a 7ft giant being defeated by a scrawny kid and his slingshot. But what we may think of as a Sunday school story is so applicable to our lives today.
David defeated Goliath with stones he carried in his bag. Taking those stones as an analogy, If we think of them as the words of Scripture we carry, that we have ‘collected’ over the years, God wants us to know that they will always be useful and powerful; we need to be ready to use them when we too are faced with seemingly overwhelming odds.
Goliath was not David’s personal problem. David was only running an errand to his brothers – Goliath was confronting the whole army of Israel. Sometimes what we confront is not our personal issue; it might be a global problem (a prayer for a nation, or a pandemic) or it might be someone else’s challenge that they have asked you to pray for - we have the ‘stones’ to win a victory…
Therefore, like David, we always have to be ready. The Bible says be vigilant for the enemy is roaring like a lion looking for whom to devour (1 Peter 5:8). This might sound scary, but the good news is with God we are fully capable of overcoming him. We do this with the Word (Jesus), the words of Scripture and the words of our testimony. Revelation 12:11 says: with the blood and the word of our testimonies. David had a testimony, he had previously known God’s enabling when he fought with and killed attacking bears and lions - this is why he saw Goliath as just another beatable problem!
Our testimonies will cause us to claim for ourselves the confident words in Zechariah 4:7 ‘Who are you, great mountain? Before Abigail (insert your name) you will become a level plain.’ Yes!
Let’s be ready: let’s fill ourselves with the scriptures, remember our testimonies and those of others, ready to use them to defeat any Goliath-sized challenge.
Prayer- Lord thank you for giving us what it takes to overcome the challenges that come our way. Lord, we pray for another level of faith like David had.