By GRAHAM TUCKER

One of my favorite stories in the bible is also the favorite story of many children and adults, also. The story is found in First Samuel, Chapter 17. It is the story of David and Goliath. It is a long story that includes the story of David killing a lion and bear.

David was not boasting of his accomplishments … rather, he was telling of the power of God when we let him control our actions. Part of this story deals with David’s answer to the Philistine, Goliath. Part of the story deals with the preparation of David done by the king.

Many times we get caught up in allowing others to prepare us to do God’s will. We frequently get caught in allowing others to do the planning to do God’s will. This gets in the way of God’s will in our lives, and certainly they do not know how to accomplish God’s will. We must plan for God to accomplish his will in our lives, because God’s will is a personal matter between us and God, and we must let him – and him alone – arrange our thinking.

You see, the king was so appreciative of what David had offered to do that he wanted to prepare David for what David had to do, and of course, since the king was trying to make the preparation for David to fight the giant, he was trying to do it his way. The king did not know what God’s will was nor did he know what God’s way would be.

When David realized what was happening, he told the king he could not use the king’s armor because it was not God’s way. Then David without the king’s armour went out to meet Goliath, which included only a sling and some stones from the brook by which he was standing.

When David, under the direction of God, put one stone in his sling, and with God controlling the sling in David’s hand, David released the stone from the sling, and it went straight to its target in Goliath’s forehead. With the blow of the stone, Goliath fell to the ground, and David took Goliath’s sword and cut Goliath’s head off.

The main lesson from this story is we all have giants in our lives with which we have to deal. The giants in our lives are different in each life, and this is the reason that God must dictate the methods for dealing with the giants in our lives, and our lives will be successful.

What about giants in yor life? How do you deal with them?

 

The Rev. Graham Tucker is a retired minister and long-time police chaplain.