Facing Your Giants: God Still Does the Impossible Read online

  In David’s good moments, no one was better. In his bad moments, could one be worse? The heart God loved was a checkered one.

  We need David’s story. Giants lurk in our neighborhoods. Rejec-tion. Failure. Revenge. Remorse. Our struggles read like a prize-fighter’s itinerary:

  • “In the main event, we have Joe the Decent Guy versus the fraternity from Animal House.”

  • “Weighing in at 110 pounds, Elizabeth the Checkout Girl will go toe to toe with Jerks who Take and Break Her Heart.”

  • “In this corner, the tenuous marriage of Jason and Patricia. In the opposing corner, the challenger from the state of con-fusion, the home breaker named Distrust.”

  Giants. We must face them. Yet we need not face them alone. Focus first, and most, on God. The times David did, giants fell. The days he didn’t, David did.

  Test this theory with an open Bible. Read 1 Samuel 17 and list the observations David made regarding Goliath.

  I find only two. One statement to Saul about Goliath (v. 36). And one to Goliath’s face: “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (v. 26 NIV).

  That’s it. Two Goliath-related comments (and tacky ones at that) and no questions. No inquiries about Goliath’s skill, age, social standing, or IQ. David asks nothing about the weight of the spear,

  * * *

  Giants. We must face them.

  Yet we need not face them alone.

  * * *

  the size of the shield, or the meaning of the skull and crossbones tattooed on the giant’s bicep. David gives no thought to the diplodocus on the hill. Zilch.

  But he gives much thought to God. Read David’s words again, this time underlining his references to his Lord.

  “The armies of the living God” (v. 26).

  “The armies of the living God” (v. 36).

  “The Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel” (v. 45).

  “The Lord will deliver you into my hand . . . that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (v. 46).

  * * *

  Are you four times as likely to describe the strength

  of God as you are the demands of your day?

  * * *

  “The Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands” (v. 47).4

  I count nine references. God-thoughts outnumber Goliath-thoughts nine to two. How does this ratio compare with yours? Do you ponder God’s grace four times as much as you ponder your guilt? Is your list of blessings four times as long as your list of complaints? Is your mental file of hope four times as thick as your mental file of dread? Are you four times as likely to describe the strength of God as you are the demands of your day?

  No? Then David is your man.

  Some note the absence of miracles in his story. No Red Sea openings, chariots flaming, or dead Lazaruses walking. No miracles.

  But there is one. David is one. A rough-edged walking wonder of God who neon-lights this truth:

  Focus on giants—you stumble.

  Focus on God—your giants tumble.

  Lift your eyes, giant-slayer. The God who made a miracle out of David stands ready to make one out of you.

  2

  SILENT PHONES

  OTHER EVENTS of my sixth-grade year blur into fog. I don’t remember my grades or family holiday plans. I can’t tell you O the name of the brown-haired girl I liked or the principal of the school. But that spring evening in 1967? Crystal clear.

  I’m seated in my parents’ bedroom. Dinner conversation floats down the hallway. We have guests, but I asked to leave the table. Mom has made pie, but I passed on dessert. Not sociable. No appetite. Who has time for chitchat or pastry at such a time?

  I need to focus on the phone.

  I’d expected the call before the meal. It hadn’t come. I’d listened for the ring during the meal. It hadn’t rung. Now I’m staring at the phone like a dog at a bone, hoping a Little League coach will tell me I’ve made his baseball team.

  I’m sitting on the bed, my glove at my side. I can hear my bud-dies playing out in the street. I don’t care. All that matters is the phone. I want it to ring.

  It doesn’t.

  The guests leave. I help clean the dishes and finish my homework. Dad pats me on the back. Mom says kind words. Bedtime draws near. And the phone never rings. It sits in silence. Painful silence.

  In the great scheme of things, not making a baseball team matters little. But twelve- year-olds can’t see the great scheme of things,

  * * *

  You know the pain of a no call. We all do.

  * * *

  and it was a big deal, and all I could think about was what I would say when schoolmates asked which team had picked me.

  You know the feeling. The phone didn’t ring for you either. In a much grander scheme of things, it didn’t. When you applied for the job or the club, tried to make up or get help . . . the call never came. You know the pain of a no call. We all do.

  We’ve coined phrases for the moment. He was left “holding the bag.” She was left “standing at the altar.” They were left “out in the cold.” Or—my favorite—“he is out taking care of the sheep.” Such was the case with David.

  His story begins, not on the battlefield with Goliath, but on the ancient hillsides of Israel as a silver-bearded priest ambles down a narrow trail. A heifer lumbers behind him. Bethlehem lies before him. Anxiety brews within him. Farmers in their fields notice his presence. Those who know his face whisper his name. Those who hear the name turn to stare at his face.

  “Samuel?” God’s chosen priest. Mothered by Hannah. Mentored by Eli. Called by God. When the sons of Eli turned sour, young Samuel stepped forward. When Israel needed spiritual focus, Samuel provided it. When Israel wanted a king, Samuel anointed one . . . Saul.

  The very name causes Samuel to groan. Saul. Tall Saul. Strong Saul. The Israelites wanted a king, so we have a king. They wanted a leader, so we have . . . a louse. Samuel glances from side to side, fearful that he may have spoken aloud what he intended only to think.

  No one hears him. He’s safe . . . as safe as you can be during the reign of a king gone manic. Saul’s heart is growing harder, his eyes even wilder. He isn’t the king he used to be. In God’s eyes, he isn’t even king anymore. The Lord says to Samuel:

  How long will you continue to feel sorry for Saul? I have rejected him as king of Israel. Fill your container with olive oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse who lives in Bethlehem, because I have chosen one of his sons to be king. (1 Sam. 16:1 NCV)

  And so Samuel walks the trail toward Bethlehem. His stomach churns and thoughts race. It’s hazardous to anoint a king when Israel already has one. Yet it’s more hazardous to live with no leader in such explosive times.

  One thousand BC was a bad era for this ramshackle collection of tribes called Israel. Joshua and Moses were history-class heroes. Three centuries of spiritual winter had frozen people’s faith. One writer described the days between Joshua and Samuel with this terse sentence: “In those days Israel did not have a king. Everyone did what seemed right” ( Judg. 21:25 NCV). Corruption fueled disruption. Immorality sired brutality. The people had demanded a king—but rather than save the ship, Saul had nearly sunk it. Israel’s first monarch turned out to be a psychotic blunderer.

  And then there were the Philistines: a warring, bloodthirsty, giant-breeding people, who monopolized iron and blacksmithing. They were grizzlies; Hebrews were salmon. Philistines built cities; Hebrews huddled in tribes and tents. Philistines forged iron weapons; Hebrews fought with crude slings and arrows. Philistines thundered in flashing chariots; Israelites retaliated with farm tools and knives. Why, in one battle the entire Hebrew army owned only two swords—one for Saul and one for his son Jonathan (1 Sam. 13:22).

  Corruption from within. Danger from without. Saul was weak. The nation, weaker. What did God do? He did what no one imagined. He issued a surpri
se invitation to the nobody from Nowheresville.

  He dispatched Samuel to Red Eye, Minnesota. Not really. He sent the priest to Sawgrass, Mississippi. No, not exactly. He gave Samuel a bus ticket to Muleshoe, Texas.

  Okay, he didn’t do that either. But he might as well have. The Bethlehem of Samuel’s day equaled the Red Eye, Sawgrass, or Muleshoe of ours: a sleepy village that time had forgotten, nestled in the foothills some six miles south of Jerusalem. Bethlehem sat two thousand feet above the Mediterranean, looking down on gentle, green hills that flattened into gaunt, rugged pastureland. Ruth would know this hamlet. Jesus would issue his first cry beneath Bethlehem’s sky.

  But a thousand years before there will be a babe in a manger, Samuel enters the village, pulling a heifer. His arrival turns the heads of the citizens. Prophets don’t visit Bethlehem. Has he come to chastise someone or hide somewhere? Neither, the stoop-shouldered priest assures. He has come to sacrifice the animal to God and invites the eld-ers and Jesse and his sons to join him.

  The scene has a dog-show feel to it. Samuel examines the boys one at a time like canines on leashes, more than once ready to give the blue ribbon, but each time God stops him.

  Eliab, the oldest, seems the logical choice. Envision him as the village Casanova: wavy haired, strong jawed. He wears tight jeans and has a piano-keyboard smile. This is the guy, Samuel thinks.

  “Wrong,” God says.

  Abinadab enters as brother and contestant number two. You’d think a GQ model had just walked in. Italian suit. Alligator-skin shoes. Jet-black, oiled-back hair. Want a classy king? Abinadab has the bling-bling.

  * * *

  God does not see the same way people see.

  People look at the outside of a person, but the Lord looks

  at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7) NCV

  * * *

  God’s not into classy. Samuel asks for brother number three, Shammah. He’s bookish, studious. Could use a charisma transplant but busting with brains. Has a degree from State University and his eyes on a postgraduate program in Egypt. Jesse whispers to Samuel, “Valedictorian of Bethlehem High.”

  Samuel is impressed, but God isn’t. He reminds the priest, “God does not see the same way people see. People look at the outside of a person, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7 ncv).

  Seven sons pass. Seven sons fail. The procession comes to a halt.

  Samuel counts the siblings: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. “Jesse, don’t you have eight sons?” A similar question caused Cinderella’s stepmother to squirm. Jesse likely did the same. “I still have the youngest son. He is out taking care of the sheep” (16:11 ncv).

  The Hebrew word for “youngest son” is haqqaton. It implies more than age; it suggests rank. The haqqaton was more than the youngest brother; he was the little brother—the runt, the hobbit, the “bay-ay-ay-bee.”

  Sheep watching fits the family haqqaton. Put the boy where he can’t cause trouble. Leave him with woolly heads and open skies.

  And that’s where we find David, in the pasture with the flock. Scripture dedicates sixty-six chapters to his story, more than anyone else in the Bible outside of Jesus. The New Testament mentions his name fifty-nine times. He will establish and inhabit the world’s most famous city, Jerusalem. The Son of God will be called the Son of David. The greatest psalms will flow from his pen. We’ll call him king, warrior, minstrel, and giant-killer. But today he’s not even included in the family meeting; he’s just a forgotten, uncredentialed kid, performing a menial task in a map-dot town.

  What caused God to pick him? We want to know. We really want to know.

  After all, we’ve walked David’s pasture, the pasture of exclusion.

  We are weary of society’s surface-level system, of being graded according to the inches of our waist, the square footage of our house, the color of our skin, the make of our car, the label of our clothes, the size of our office, the presence of diplomas, the absence of pimples. Don’t we weary of such games?

  Hard work ignored. Devotion unrewarded. The boss chooses cleavage over character. The teacher picks pet students instead of prepared ones. Parents show off their favorite sons and leave their runts out in the field. Oh, the Goliath of exclusion.

  Are you sick of him? Then it’s time to quit staring at him. Who cares what he, or they, think? What matters is what your Maker thinks. “The Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the out-ward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (16:7).

  Those words were written for the haqqatons of society, for misfits and outcasts. God uses them all.

  Moses ran from justice, but God used him.

  Jonah ran from God, but God used him.

  Rahab ran a brothel, Samson ran to the wrong woman, Jacob ran in circles, Elijah ran into the mountains, Sarah ran out of hope, Lot ran with the wrong crowd, but God used them all.

  And David? God saw a teenage boy serving him in the back-woods of Bethlehem, at the intersection of boredom and anonymity, and through the voice of a brother, God called, “David! Come in. Someone wants to see you.” Human eyes saw a gangly teenager enter the house, smelling like sheep and looking like he needed a bath. Yet, “the Lord said, ‘Arise, anoint him; for this is the one!’” (16:12).

  God saw what no one else saw: a God-seeking heart. David, for all his foibles, sought God like a lark seeks sunrise. He took after God’s heart, because he stayed after God’s heart. In the end, that’s

  * * *

  God examines hearts.

  When he finds one set on him, he calls it and claims it.

  * * *

  all God wanted or needed . . . wants or needs. Others measure your waist size or wallet. Not God. He examines hearts. When he finds one set on him, he calls it and claims it.

  By the way, remember how I waited for the phone to ring that night? It never did. But the doorbell did.

  Long after my hopes were gone and my glove was hung, the doorbell rang. It was the coach. He made it sound as if I were a top choice and he thought an assistant had phoned me. Only later did I learn the truth. I was the last pick. And, save a call from my dad, I might have been left off the team.

  But Dad called, and the coach came, and I was glad to play.

  The story of young David assures us of this: your Father knows your heart, and because he does, he has a place reserved just for you.

  3

  RAGING SAULS

  SHARON CHECKS her rearview mirror . . . again. She studies the faces of other drivers . . . again. She keeps an eye out for him, S because she knows he’ll come after her . . . again.

  “Nothing will keep me from you” was the message Tony had left on her voice mail. “I’m your husband.”

  Her ex-husband’s paroxysms of anger and flying fists and her black eyes had led to divorce. Still he neglected warnings, ignored restraining orders, and scoffed at the law.

  So Sharon checks the rearview mirror . . . again.

  Down the road, around the corner, an office worker named Adam does some checking of his own. He peeks in the door of his boss’s office, sees the empty chair, and sighs with relief. With any luck, he’ll have an hour, maybe two, before the Scrooge of the dot-com world appears in his doorway, likely hungover, angry, and disoriented.

  Scrooge Jr. inherited the company from Scrooge Sr. Running the business frustrates Junior. He reroutes his stress toward the employees he needs the most. Such as Adam. Junior rants and raves, gives tongue-lashings daily, and compliments with the frequency of Halley’s comet.

  Sharon ducks her ex, Adam avoids his boss, and you? What ogres roam your world?

  Controlling moms. Coaches from the school of Stalin. The pit-bull math teacher. The self-appointed cubicle commandant. The king who resolves to spear the shepherd boy to the wall.

  That last one comes after David. Poor David. The Valley of Elah proved to be boot camp for the king’s court. When Goliath lost his head, the Hebrews made David their hero. People threw him a ticker-tape parade and s
ang, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Sam. 18:7).

  Saul explodes like the Vesuvius he is. Saul eyes David “from that day forward” (18:9). The king is already a troubled soul, prone to angry eruptions, mad enough to eat bees. David’s popularity splashes gasoline on Saul’s temper. “I will pin David to the wall!” (18:11).

  Saul tries to kill Bethlehem’s golden boy six different times. First, he invites David to marry his daughter Michal. Seems like a kind gesture, until you read the crude dowry Saul required. One hundred Philistine foreskins. Surely one of the Philistines will kill David, Saul hopes. They don’t. David doubles the demand and returns with the proof (18:25–27).

  Saul doesn’t give up. He orders his servants and Jonathan to kill David, but they refuse (19:1). He tries with the spear another time but misses (19:10). Saul sends messengers to David’s house to kill him, but his wife, Michal, lowers him through a window. David the roadrunner stays a step ahead of Saul the coyote.

  Saul’s anger puzzles David. What has he done but good? He has brought musical healing to Saul’s tortured spirit, hope to the enfeebled nation. He is the Abraham Lincoln of the Hebrew calamity, saving the republic and doing so modestly and honestly. He behaves “wisely in all his ways” (18:14). “All Israel and Judah loved David” (18:16). David behaves “more wisely than all the servants of Saul, so that his name became highly esteemed” (18:30).

  Yet, Mount Saul keeps erupting, rewarding David’s deeds with flying spears and murder plots. We understand David’s question to Jonathan: “What have I done? What is my iniquity, and what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life?” (20:1).

  Jonathan has no answer to give, for no answer exists. Who can justify the rage of a Saul?

  Who knows why a father torments a child, a wife belittles her husband, a boss pits employees against each other? But they do. Sauls still rage on our planet. Dictators torture, employers seduce, ministers abuse, priests molest, the strong and mighty control and cajole the vulnerable and innocent. Sauls still stalk Davids.