1 Sam. 17:41-47
41 The Philistine came on and drew near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him. 42When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was only a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. 43The Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?’ And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44The Philistine said to David, ‘Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field.’ 45But David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 47and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand.’
BLOG DISCUSSION QUESTION: David was confident....maybe overconfident...that God was on his side. How do we know if God is on our side, that the battle we fight is the Lord's?
"See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are."
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- Pastor Jerry
- Pastor Jerry is the pastor of Willow Creek and Benton Lutheran Churches of rural Dell Rapids, South Dakota.
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5 comments:
Your question....how do we know that God is on our side....is probably the world's most questioned thoughts! It does seem that David was very overconfident. My question..."Can we ever be over-confident" when the situation is truly in God's hands?" Mostly we settle for, "His ways are not our ways", right?
That is a tough question can it also mean what is God's will for us for the situation? When we've had big decisions to make our questioning went something like this: 1. pray that God will guide the decision, 2. get good counsel from trusted people (someone who will be honest with you) and if it's something that Bible can guide you with...then get into the word 3. then trust that whatever you do will be blessed by God. The one thing I do believe that even if you blunder in the decision, God is a faithful God who will be with you through your blunders.
I think I hear the Easter story actually. How do we KNOW God is on our side, well, for starters, he did give His son as a sacrifice for our sins. There is a song with lyrics that are something like this, "If God is with us then who can be against us...." I know David seemed confident, maybe even over confident, but it seems David was listening and showing that he believed nothing is impossible with God on his side. This is called faith.
In looking at the story again, it seems that David is confident because of God's promises to Israel. That is that when they invoked the name of the Lord in a battle, that God had ordained, God would enable them.
From Romans 8, "If God is for us, who is against us?"
When it comes to sin and death, of this we can be sure:God has won the battle and he is on our side.
When it comes to many perplexing questions and concerns in the world, it isn't always so clear.
Gabriel's words are good...pray, talk, and trust.
To that I would add, be humbly confident.
To act with humility remembers that we, too, are sinful....which means that we are often in the need of mercy, and the mercy we would want to receive aught be the mercy that we give....and since we see things through sin-tainted, limited vision, thus we might be wrong, or unmercifully harsh.
From the Gospel of John, chapter 3, "For God so loved the WORLD....."
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