How David Beat Goliath (And How You Can Beat Your Goliath, Too!)

I have always always hated running. I’m slow. It stems back to running the mile in fifth grade. The athletic boys could run a 6 or 7 minute mile. The more athletic girls ran a solid 8-9 minute one.  I pulled up the rear, running anywhere between a 12-15 minute mile. Over the next 7 years, I never beat 11 minutes.

I felt shame about that. I hated that people would be able to see me. That people would lap me, sometimes more than once, on the track. I dreaded when my PE teacher announced that it was mile-running week. Immediately, when it was announced, in my head I would hear: if you can’t run fast, no one will want to be your friend. If you can’t run fast, everyone will laugh at you. Your worth is determined by the number on the stopwatch when you cross the finish line. If you don’t run at least a nine-minute mile, you’re a failure. You’ll never be a good runner; you can’t do this; you’re incapable.

Here’s the thing. Those were LIES. This is the process through which Satan takes our hearts captive. He enslaves us by whispering these lies into our hearts, and we feed them, fearing that they’re true. They make us question what we believe about God, what God says to us in his word.

I still hate running, but the mile hasn’t defined my life. Being a slow runner may have impeded my ability to get a cross-country scholarship to college, but it didn’t stop me from getting in. If anyone made fun of me for running slow, I don’t remember it now. I worked myself up into a panic over things that just weren’t true.

At the Passion Conference, Christine Caine spoke about how Satan’s only tool is lying. And he lies to us by asking “Did God really say….”

And I find myself asking, did he? What if I got it wrong? What if I’m not capable? What if my worth DOES depend on how fast I can run? What if this means I AM a failure?

Y’all, this is bondage. And we weren’t meant to live trapped inside those thought cycles.

Let’s look at the story of David and Goliath (1 Sa.muel 17)

When David shows up to the battlefield, he is being obedient. His father had told him to deliver dinner to his brothers and check on them (v.17-20). However, when he shows up, his brother calls his conceited and wicked (v. 28).

When David says that he will fight Goliath, he is told he is too young and ill-equipped and incapable (v. 33). Yet we know how the story ends. David takes Goliath down with a slingshot and a stone (v. 49). That’s it.

And you wanna know how he does it? By believing in God. He repeats, despite the lies being hurled at him, that he believes that God will win this battle. He tells Goliath, "This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand...that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand" (v. 47). 

We are not asked to fight Goliath on our own. We are asked to step forward, believing that God will fight for us. 

When he gets ready to fight, David dons a suit of armor given to him by King Saul. Right before heading into battle, verse 39 tells us that David "tried in vain to go" while wearing the armor. He then tells Saul, "I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them." To me, this suit of armor represents how lies weigh us down. When we believe what the world, what others, what Satan tells us about ourselves, we are so worn down and burdened by our shame and disbelief that we can’t run the race God has set before us. We have been sent on a Godly mission, to spread His name through the nations. We cannot do this if we are unable to move.

So instead of fighting with the armor, something that would be difficult and awkward and most likely unsuccessful, David takes it off. In that action, he says that he believes that God will protect him. He doesn’t need the lies, or accolades, of man. He just needs the Lord.

Sometimes, we focus so much on taking Goliath down that we don’t stop to think about why we can’t beat him. What we need is an unshakable belief that God will fight for us; an unshakable belief that the gospel is for us as individuals; an unshakeable belief that God has already claimed victory over Satan, that his lies cannot hold us. And most of all, we need an unshakable belief that we really are who God says we are. Otherwise, we’ll remain stuck in place, unable to run.