November 2015 - Jacqueline G Wallace.com

The last few pieces I posted here dealt with “lions and bears” and “Goliath.” As I read the passage (1 Samuel 17) for our women’s Bible study, I saw a metaphor for realities in our own lives.

I likened lions and bears to enemies that attack us personally: illness, disease, losses of all kinds–from jobs to death of loved ones–and more. Whatever can come into our lives and turn them upside down and inside out, I consider a lion or bear type of enemy.

We are all subject to lions and bears. In my book, Brokenness to Beauty[1], I deal with these enemies and share how we can successfully fight them, becoming stronger and better for having gone through the attack. Like David, we can learn to wield our weapons—prayer and praise and the Word of God—gaining spiritual strength, growing in faith and in the knowledge of God. We can bring glory to the Lord by our lives as we go through our personal struggles.

But who or what is Goliath? The more I read the 1 Samuel 17 passage, the more clear it became to me that Goliath is anything that directly attacks and defies the Living God on a larger scale, not just a personal one. I imagined the evils in this world as Goliath, evils that challenge us, God’s people, to stand and fight in and for his Name.

Fighting Goliath definitely will take us out of our comfort zone. It certainly challenged Saul and his entire army. Goliath’s challenge scared them spitless. So they didn’t answer it. They didn’t stand up to Goliath; they quaked in their sandals and ran backwards.

There are Goliath’s in our world to fight and based on Jesus’ words, he expects us to fight them (John 14:12-17).

A small group of women here in Bakersfield are taking up the challenge. They are one example of standing up to Goliath in the name of the Lord of Hosts. Since I am part of that group, I’ll speak of them as “we.”

We have taken up a big challenge to fight against poverty, abuse and neglect of girls and women, ignorance, slavery of all kinds including sex slavery, illiteracy, and oppression. We are doing this on behalf of women in India whom we have not met, yet because other believers are on the front lines of this war, and we have heard the challenge, we have declared we would join the fight. The Bakersfield SIS Advocacy Group are the supply troops, if you will.

So we prayed about our next plan. And we had a yard sale.

The mighty weapon of a yard sale!

Well, no. Our weapon is prayer. And hard work. The yard sale is a strategy.

And God blessed it.

We in turn blessed 11 women in India to become part of a Transformation Group where they will learn skills, work as a group, gain confidence and the ability to become self-sufficient, be given a voice to stand up for themselves… and learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now that’s life transforming.

We only have 151 more women to bless at $10 a month for one year.[2] Ten dollars a month. Two cups of Starbucks coffee. For one year. Imagine that.

We few, we band of sisters in the Bakersfield She Is Safe Advocacy Group,[3] are learning to stand and fight Goliath–with prayer, hard work, and yard sales and bring glory to the Name of the Lord of Hosts.

Do you hear the challenge? Want to join us?

[1] Brokenness to Beauty: Transforming Your Brokenness into a Beautiful Life is almost out! Expect it early next year! More on that later.

[2] Want to join us? Contact me at jacquelinegwallace@gmail for info on how to bless one or more Indian women … for life and eternity.

[3] Learn more about She Is Safe and their opportunity to fight Goliath through an Advocacy Group at SheIsSafe.org

Picking up with the topic I started before my last post, Interlude of Fun in the Twilight Zone: David was faithful in his everyday, ordinary life as a shepherd, guiding and guarding the sheep, sometimes at great personal risk fighting lions and bears. It was there, in his everyday life that he grew strong wielding the weapons of his trade–the staff and sling and stones–and he grew strong in faith in God. He knew God and could confidently say, “the LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear …” (see I Samuel 17).

We too live ordinary, everyday lives. We too face our lions and bears, those trials and difficulties that come into our lives, perhaps threatening our livelihood, our families or even our very lives with health problems. These are the enemies that come to defeat us, enemies that threaten to destroy us.

Are we being faithful to fight them with the weapons given us—prayer and praise and the Word of God? Are we becoming adept in their use and growing in strength, growing in our trust in God? Can we say as David did, “the LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear …”

It is only in our ordinary, everyday lives faithfully facing the enemies that would destroy us—our lions and bears—that we learn to fight, becoming skilled and strong.

Ordinary life is where we learn to know and trust the LORD, bringing him glory as we fight our personal enemies. This, too, is where we learn to recognize another kind of enemy: Goliath.

Goliath wasn’t David’s personal enemy and he isn’t ours, though most of us have heard the story in those terms. Goliath is not our personal lion or bear. Oh no. He is a different enemy. Goliath, to be consistent with the text, in I Samuel 17, comes against and defies the armies of the living God; he defies the LORD of Hosts, the Lord Almighty.

Goliath is anything that is contrary to the person and purposes of God and he must be fought with weapons, not of this world, but weapons that have “divine power to demolish strongholds … and everything that sets itself up against the knowledge of God …” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

Prayer and praise and the Word of God. These are the powerful weapons that we only become skilled at using in our ordinary, everyday lives fighting our lions and bears. The power of these weapons is spiritual, not of our flesh or the world, not originating with us but with God’s Spirit who lives in us.

When Jesus was on earth he fought many Goliaths. When he was about to leave and return to his Father in heaven he said to his disciples, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. … And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. … for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:12-17, NIV, emphasis added).

Jesus obviously expected that we too would fight Goliaths, all over the world. Else what did he mean by saying, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV)? (Notice the triple “and,” not “or.”)

Or this, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20, NIV)?

The Spirit was given for specific purposes, as we read from the above verses.

The questions we must ask ourselves are:

Do I recognize Goliath when I see him?
When I do see him, do I have the spirit of David that says, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
And do I have the chuztpah to reply to the naysayers as David did, drawing on his experience of trusting God and and finding him faithful to deliver, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine (1 Samuel 17:34-37, NIV, emphasis added).”
Do I have the jealousy for God’s Name that makes me willing to put “skin” in the game, my skin, for his Name and glory?

The greater works we are to do, that Jesus expects us to do, are waiting to be done. They are there waiting for us to step forward, as David did, in the name of the Lord Almighty, that the Father may be glorified in the Son—through us.

“David said to the Philistine, ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, … and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands’”(1 Samuel 17:45-47).

Let us get stronger every day wielding the weapons of our warfare—prayer and praise and the Word of God—fighting our everyday lions and bears so that we may be strong in the Spirit and fit to recognize and fight Goliath–doing those greater things–for the sake of his Name, for the glory of the Father.

Let us fear God more than men.

How have you fared with your lions and bears? Have you discerned the Goliath that you should be challenging for his Name sake? How is it going? Send me your questions and comments about this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

New International Version (NIV)

Month: November 2015

Stones, slings and … a yard sale?

Goliaths and Greater Things