All for the Glory

I have said this many times, but this mission trip is an amazing opportunity. Already, I have learned so much and feel like I am growing closer to God. It has been a blessing to tell others about the World Race and see people’s reactions to it, but I feel like God is trying to teach me another lesson. Recently I was struck at a Monday night Bible study with the feeling that I had been viewing myself in the wrong role of this story.

We were discussing the famous story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 For anyone who doesn’t know this story or needs a refresher I will give you a quick summary. It starts off with the Israelite army prepared and waiting to fight the Philistine army. As both armies wait on opposing hillsides, a valley between them, the Philistines send out their champion fighter. This fighter, Goliath was massive, about 9 feet tall. So, Goliath says to the Israelite army ” Choose a guy from your army to fight me. If he wins, we will be your servants but if I win you will be our servants” (I’m paraphrasing a bit). The Israelites look around at their army and were like there is no way we can win against that dude and so they became afraid.

Then we pan over to David, a young man tending sheep in a field. David had some brothers who were a part of the Israelite army and the Israelites had been fighting the Philistines for about 40 days. So, David’s dad Jesse sent David to bring food to his brothers. When David got there, he heard Goliath come out and speak to the Israelites with the same challenge. David asked about this man who was challenging the army of the living God and Israelites told him that no one wanted to fight him, even though the king was offering a big reward. David asked Saul if he could fight the Philistine champion because someone needed to fight these men who were defying God. Saul looked at David and told him he was too young. In response, David told Saul his epic stats as a shepherd. He had saved his sheep once from a lion and once a bear by chasing them down and killing them with his bear hands (sorry for the pun I couldn’t resist). Anyway, after that Saul let David go fight Goliath and clothed David in his own personal suit of armor. David tried on the suit but decided against it and went in just his tunic (according to VeggieTales the armor was too big).

David goes off to fight Goliath taking with him his staff, a sling and 5 smooth stones he chose from the brook. Then David approaches Goliath and there’s a little smack talk and David ends with this “…and 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.” Then David ran toward Goliath, grabbed one stone and slung it into Goliath’s forehead, killing him in one shot. David ran to Goliath and cut off his head, which he would later bring to Saul. When the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they ran away, and the Israelites chased after them to finish the battle and defeat the Philistine army in the name of the Lord. The End. (Whew, that was long, but we made it)

This is a pretty classic story to be discussed at a bible study, and at first, the conversation followed the typical track. We talked about how we may not be fighting a physical giant like David, but we all have our own giants in our lives. Since this bible study is a young adult group, we got a little more specific and talked about some things that people our age might be struggling with or view as a giant. The conversation flowed as expected, with us bringing up things like finding a job or career, moving out of the house, figuring out finances, and building relationships both with friends and romantic relationships. Nothing too surprising, but then we continued on in the study, and a new perspective was brought up.

Typically, we put ourselves in the place of David in this story. We tell ourselves that to defeat our giant, we just need to have faith, find our stones, and muster up the courage to face our giant as the ultimate hero of our own story. The truth is, though (as revealed to me through Louie Giglio in our series), that we are not the heroes of our story. Jesus is. We will never be strong enough to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to save ourselves from the giants in our lives. In the story of David and Goliath, we are more accurately represented by the Israelites. We are the soldiers in the Israelite army who stood on the sidelines, saw Goliath, and said, “Nope, not today. He is too big for me to defeat alone,” that is true. Our giants are too big to defeat on our own.

So, what made David different? How could David step up and enable the Israelites to finish the battle? David was humble enough to truly recognize that he could not defeat Goliath without the power of God. He was also humble enough to realize that defeating Goliath would not be for his own glory but rather all for the glory of God. That is what really hit me during that Bible study. The realization was that even as I had been preparing to go on this mission trip to serve God, a part of me still loved the attention and glory I was receiving for doing something people thought was so cool. And instead of turning that glory back to God, I kept it for myself.

I need to emulate David’s humbleness a bit more as I continue this journey. Not only that, but I also need to imitate Jesus’s humbleness too. Jesus was so humble that even though He logically and rightfully is the only one who could consider himself equal to God because He is God, He still did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. The verse that tells us this is Philippians 2:5-8, which happens to be the verse of the day today as I am writing this. I think God is trying to tell me something. I am finding more and more that pride gets in the way of a lot of things, and I don’t want it to get in the way of serving in God’s army and kingdom.

My prayer going forward is that as God teaches me more about humbleness, I will continue to be receptive to the lessons. I also pray that I follow David and Jesus’s examples as well as the Israelites. They saw what David had done to defend God’s honor and glory and continued the fight. That is exactly what we are called to do as Christians. We are fighting from the foundation of victory that Jesus won for us on the cross, and now we need to go out and finish the battle.