I heard a great
line from another
preacher who said,
“We shouldn’t be
telling God how big
our problems are, but
we should be telling
our problems how
big our God is!”
army. They were terrified. The Philistines
were far more powerful. King Saul was
despondent, and didn’t know what to do.
When David arrived at the battlefield,
he learned that the Philistine warrior,
Goliath, had been taunting the Israelites
from across the valley, challenging them to
a one-on-one fight to determine the victor.
The losing nation would become the slaves
of the other. On the surface, it isn’t a pretty
picture.
But David didn’t fear Goliath. Why?
Because he had mastered the fundamental
principle: the battle is the Lord’s. (1
Samuel 17:47) How many of us act like the
Israelites, captivated by fear and doubt, when the battle is the Lord’s?
Some of you will nod your heads, yet think, “Yes, but my problems are
different.” Nonsense. I heard a great line from another preacher who said, “We
shouldn’t be telling God how big our problems are, but we should be telling
our problems how big our God is!” He’s exactly right. That is mastery. It’s a
very basic principle: the Lord is infinitely powerful. Therefore the forces for
good are infinitely more powerful than the powers of darkness. It really is that
simple.
How do you put that teaching into practice in your life? David illustrates
it when he chooses his weapon to use against Goliath. If Hollywood were to do
this story, the Israelites would have had some untested, super-secret weapon to
unleash on the Philistines. It would be like the Karate Kid movie in which one
of the 10,000 punches that was practiced once brought the victory.
The Word tells us that victory in reality comes by a different means. It
comes from mastery; it comes from the one punch practiced 10,000 times.
David, a shepherd boy, goes to the skill he’s mastered: using the slingshot.
When he’s had to fight off bears and lions to protect the sheep, it is his expertise
with the slingshot that has netted him victory in the past. He knows that the
battle is the Lord’s, but that he also needs to do his part.
We know what he does next: he gathers five smooth stones. Dr. William
Kinter describes them like this in a 1985 New Church Life article, Written by
the Finger of God:
[T]hese stones were not taken from a desert or from a wall or from a stagnant pool,
but from a brook. The selected stones signified truths not of the memory alone,
not merely from tradition nor from a persuasive faith; but truths perceived in the
Word when this is looked to as a source of living intelligence and inspiration –
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