Key scripture – “A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.” (1 Samuel 17:4-7).

Are you facing a giant in your life?

Giants are just as big a problem today as they were when David faced Goliath, they just take a different form today. You know when you are facing a giant when something looms so large that you live under the umbrella of intimidation and fear. A challenge and problem that is a giant brings tears to your eyes, anxiety to your heart, and frustration to your life. When the challenges in life become overwhelming that is when we feel like we are facing a giant and that is what 1 Samuel 17 is all about. It is the well-known story of David and Goliath. So are you ready to learn how to face your Goliath?

1 Samuel 17 gives us the anatomy of a giant. Look at how it describes him, “A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.” (1 Samuel 17:4-7). Goliath is a champion who is 9’6″ tall, he is a freak because of his size. 1 Chronicles 20 tells us that Gath, where Goliath as from, was known as the land of the giants. They were abnormally large.

You know that you are facing a Goliath in a size problem in your life when:

1. You react to the problem like Saul and the Israelites did when they saw Goliath. “On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified… Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.” (1 Samuel 17:11, 24). It says they were dismayed, terrified, and had great fear. A giant is a problem, a situation, or a person in your life that looms so large that it intimidates you and causes you to live in fear. When they saw the giant walk they were greatly afraid, and when they saw him talk they were greatly afraid. You are facing a giant in your life when you are running away and it is chasing you, when the situation paralyzes you, and you are unable to function normally because it is consuming you and it is causing you great consternation. That is what Goliath was doing to Israel.

2. Another way that you know that you are facing a giant is, it will not go away. “For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.” (1 Samuel 17:16). For 40 days twice a day the giant kept taunting them by saying, “I’m here, what are you gonna do about it?” The giant kept telling them to come and fight him, and he kept asking them, “Where is your best fighter?” “Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” (1 Samuel 17:8-10). Giants like to talk a lot of noise and that causes you a lot of grief and consternation.

Israel is facing a giant just like we do when situations are beating us down and we feel defenseless and defeated. Day in and day out our giants show up in the morning and again in the evening, just like Goliath did, to taunt us. It refuses to go away, and even though we try to run from it, it just keeps coming after us. Some of you know what I am talking about because you have giants on your job, some of you live with giants, some of you go to school with giants, some of you have financial giants, health giants, or relationship giants.

So even though we understand what a giant is, the question is how do we defeat it?
What is our attitude supposed to be as believers toward the giants in our life?

The Bible shows us a contrast between how Saul reacted to Goliath and how David reacted. In verse 11 it shows us how Saul and all of Israel reacted. “On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.” They were sad, discouraged, scared, and intimidated. Saul was the king at that time and when the leader loses confidence that is really bad because that attitude will run down to everybody serving under the leader and they will lose confidence quickly. Another reason why people were intimidated and dismayed is because Saul stood head and shoulders above all the other people in Israel, therefore, if the tallest guy in Israel was scared to death of Goliath then everyone else would be scared too.

Do you know why Saul was afraid of Goliath? Saul is scared because we are told in the Bible that Saul has drifted from God. The further you are from God, the bigger your Goliath will look. I don’t know what the name of your Goliath is, and I do not know how big the distance is between you and God. But I do know that if you are close to God your Goliath will look small, and if you are far from God your Goliath will look enormous. There’s a great scripture in the Bible in 1 John 4 that says “perfect love cast out fear”. In other words, the stronger your love relationship is with God and the more intact it is, then the less fearful you are when things don’t work out for you.

Look at it this way, when a parent has a child and the child has a nightmare and is afraid, think about what the parent does when they go in to the child’s room to comfort the child, they hold their child and assure them that they are there and everything’s gonna be ok. The love that the parent shows decreases the fear in the child, because perfect love cast out fear. As children of God, we cannot have the love of God and intimacy with Him and fear occupying the same place in our life at the same time, because when we are close to Him His perfect love cast out fear. Fear is a spirit, it is not just an emotion. The Bible calls it a spirit because it says God has not given us “a spirit of fear, but of power and love and discipline”. (2 Timothy 1:7). Since it is a spirit, that is why fear cannot occupy the same place as the love that God has for us.

When we look at David, we see the opposite of Saul and the Israelites, because David is not impressed at all with Goliath’s size or what he is saying. Even though Goliath is 9″6′ David is not intimidated or afraid. “Then David spoke to the men who were standing by him, saying, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should taunt the armies of the living God?” The people answered him in accord with this word, saying, “Thus it will be done for the man who kills him.” When the words which David spoke were heard, they told them to Saul, and he sent for him. David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail on account of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” Then Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth.” But David said to Saul, “Your servant was tending his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has taunted the armies of the living God.” And David said, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and may the Lord be with you.” (1 Samuel 17:26-27, 31-37).

Everybody else is afraid they are frozen in fear and intimidation, but David is not impressed at all or scared even though he is very young, small in stature, he’s never fought in a military battle, and the only reason he is there is because he is bringing some lunch to his brothers who were on the front line. That is when David saw Goliath and he wanted to know who is this Philistine? While everybody else was looking at the reputation, the size, the history, and the background of Goliath, David looked at his problem, Goliath, through spiritual eyes. He did not look at Goliath’s height, weight, and experience, because he looked at it through spiritual eyes. All David said is, “I see somebody who is uncircumcised so that means that they don’t serve my God. That means he doesn’t belong to God, therefore, he does not have divine help on his side. That means Goliath is in trouble, because he is taunting the armies of the living God.”

So when you look at the giants in your life have you developed a spiritual perspective on your problem or are you just intimidated by the height, weight, experience and speed of your giant. You need to start super sizing God when you look at your Goliath, because you don’t want regular, you don’t want normal, you want God to come through BIG. David supersized God when he looked at his problem, because David had the right spiritual perspective on the problem. Look at verses 45-47 it shows us that David delivered the battle to somebody else and that was God. “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 I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, 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).

The size of the giants in your life are nothing compared to the size of your God. You have to do like David and look at your giants spiritually. Look at verse 45 regarding what David said he was going to do to Goliath. “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.” David specifically delivered the battle to God. He did not say this is me versus Goliath, instead he said it was God versus Goliath. You need to do the same thing when you look at your Goliath, look at it through a spiritual perspective not a physical or emotional or psychological perspective.

So how do you approach your Goliath? How do you go after it: when it is bigger than you, just like this one that was 9’6″; when it is more skilled and experienced on the battle field than you are; and when it is already a champion.

Look at verse 37 what Saul said. “Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.” He was basically saying, “I’m praying for you David”. Then in verse 38 Saul tried to get David to wear his armor where it says he “dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head.” But David had never used this type of armor before and he was being asked to use something that he wasn’t used to.. So David said to Saul, “I can’t use this stuff”. “David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. “I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.” (1 Samuel 17:39).

Like David, you cannot defeat your Goliath using somebody else’s armor. If God gave them that method to address their problem and to defeat their Goliath, that does not mean it is your method and the one that God wants you to use. You have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. God has provided us with fixed principles in His Word, but He does not have fixed methods. We see that all through the Bible, where God uses different strokes for different folks.

We have Christians right now running around asking everybody else to borrow their armor. Which basically means that they want to borrow the method that God used in someone else’s life to defeat their Goliath. But you may be thinking, “How do I know what I’m supposed to use?” It’s simple, when David tried to use Saul’s armor he couldn’t walk with it. It was not comfortable to him. He had to use something that he knew how to use. To put it another way he couldn’t flow using Saul’s armor. You always know that you’re moving with God and using the method that He wants you to use because you flow and you move easy. It is natural to you and it is not cumbersome or awkward. If the Holy Spirit is moving you in a certain direction it is going feel natural, it will feel like it fits you.

So don’t let other folks force their armor on you. Don’t let them force their way of doing it on you because that is a specific method that God used for them. Don’t let them force their approach and their orientation on you. Always, always keep and honor God’s principals, but use the method that He has for you. In this situation, the principal here was Goliath had to die, but Saul’s method to get it done is not the method that God planned for David to use.

In verse 40 David took a slingshot and chose five smooth stones. “Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.” David used his pouch, slingshot and some rocks and he approached Goliath with that. Please notice the statement that the slingshot was in his hand. In other words, David already had the slingshot it’s not something that he had to go get and learn how to use, because he used it all the time as a shepherd. He used the tool that God had provided him that he already knew how to use. If you’re wondering why David picked up five stones it was because he was going to use one on Goliath and one on each one of Goliath’s four brothers. David was ready to wipe out Goliath’s whole family.

I want you to also notice that David approached the Philistine. Earlier we saw that Saul and the army of Israel were running from Goliath, but because David had God backing him, he approached the giant. David knew that he had the power of God behind him so he approached his problem he didn’t run. You know when the giant is winning in your life when you are running from it and it is coming after you. Because of David’s confidence in God he goes to the Philistine with an attitude toward Goliath of, “How dare you challenge the armies of the living God. Who Do you think you are?”

Goliath gets ticked off because he sees that David is just a young kid coming out to fight him. “He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!” (1 Samuel 17:42-44). Goliath was so upset he ended up cursing David by his gods because it was a spiritual issue. Verses 45-47 show us how David responded to Goliath’s cursing, “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 I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, 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).

In Verse 48 Goliath started to approach David and David ran toward him. “As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.” (1 Samuel 17:48). David killed Goliath. “Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.” (1 Samuel 17:49). Samuel wants us to know that David killed Goliath and he didn’t have all the fancy weapons that Goliath had.

David chopped of. Goliath’s head off with the Goliath’s own sword right in front of the other philistines so that they knew that they were defeated. “David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword. When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran.” (1 Samuel 17:51). The giant is no longer in control or calling the shots. It is time for us to stop letting the giants in our life call the shots. It may be a person, a problem, or a situation, that giant can only loom large over you as long as you do not see the spiritual nature of the problem. If you take a peek behind the giant, like David did, you know that giant is going down.

David then took the Philistines head and his sword. “David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem; he put the Philistine’s weapons in his own tent.” (1 Samuel 17:54). David gave the head to the priest, because the head of Goliath in Jerusalem is like us having a trophy case with trophies in it. It is to there to remind everybody that when another fool from Gath shows up then their head will be right next to Goliath’s head. It is to remind them that what happened to Goliath can happen to you, if you mess with God and me

David put the sword and his armor in his house because every morning when David got up he would be reminded that when he was just a teenage boy, God slew Goliath. David needed this reminder because he is going to face a whole lot of enemies in the future. Like David, you need to be able to look back over your life and see the victories that you’ve had in the past with God. You want to be able to see what God did yesterday so that when you face today’s Goliath you know that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond what you could ask or think according to the power that works in you. So when tomorrow’s Goliath comes, you can call him what you called yesterday’s Goliath, “An uncircumcised dog” because you can see the spiritual nature of the thing.

So never let the size of your giant determine the size of your God. He’s got it.

Pray this – Our Precious Heavenly Father, I want to always always be close to You because I know that the further I get from You the bigger my Goliath looks. I serve a Big Big God who loves me and will never ever abandon me. I proclaim for myself what Jesus said, “I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. ” (Luke 10:19). I declare that The Lord is my refuge, and the Most High my dwelling, no harm will overtake me, no disaster will come near me. For he will command his angels concerning me to guard me in all my ways; they will lift me up in their hands, so that I will not strike my foot against a stone. I will tread on the lion and .the cobra; I will trample the great lion and the serpent. Because I love the Lord, He will rescue me and protect me, for I acknowledge His Name. (Psalm 91:9-14). I declare to the Goliath in my life, “I will defeat you, you uncircumcised dog. You don’t stand a chance because The Lord God Almighty, The Lord of the angels armies is on my side.” In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen