How do you fight your Battles?
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How do you fight your Battles?
How do YOU fight your battles?
You know. Something doesn't go your way - how do YOU handle it?
Someone doesn't give you what YOU want - how do you relate to them?
How does GOD expect you to fight your battles?
One of the most famous battles in all of history was in a little valley called Elah - some 17 miles from Jerusalem. We remember this confrontation as the batttle between David and Goliath.
(ALL the above is mine - below is idea from Jim Dennison)
God's strength for tough times When Goliath finds you In times like these most of us feel more like David than Goliath. As we'll learn this week, that's not a bad place to be. On Friday we journeyed to the Valley of Elah, 17 miles outside of Jerusalem, for one of the epic battles of recorded history. On one side strides the Philistine champion Goliath. As he takes the field, we stare in disbelief. The Bible says that he stands "six cubits and a span," thus over nine feet tall. Such height is not impossible even today, as proven by one Robert Pershing Wadlow, a man 8'11'' tall at the time of his death on July 15, 1940 at the age of 22. Goliath's armor is made of several hundred small bronze plates resembling fish scales, together weighing 125 pounds. His spear's point, shaped like a flame, weighs over 30 pounds. Its shaft is "like a weaver's rod" (1 Samuel 17:7), meaning that it is wrapped with cords so it can spin through the air and thus be thrown with greater distance and accuracy. The giant marches out for hand-to-hand combat with his shield bearer before him to give added protection. He looks, and feels, invincible. By contrast, Saul and his army have no iron weapons. They have no giant champion, except Saul, and he is cowering at the rear of the lines in fear. None will fight this man. And so Goliath will win by default, and his Philistines will continue to enslave Israel. It is at this crucial point that a young shepherd boy enters biblical history. Saul scoffs at him: "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you (emphatic) are only a boy, and he (emphatic) has been a fighting man from his youth" (1 Samuel 17:33). Saul and his army know only one way to fight: in human strength. With human weapons. Using human resources. And they don't have enough. We never do. I once read a fascinating analysis of contemporary culture: The Transformation of American Religion, by Boston College professor Alan Wolfe. The thesis is simple: religion in America is no longer about God—it is about us. It's all about us. Regarding worship services: "When they worship, Americans revere a God who is anything but distant, inscrutable, or angry. They are more likely to honor a God to whom they can pray in their own, self-chosen way" (pp. 9-10). Popular worship today is "as much designed to make people feel comfortable as it is to fill them with the majesty of God" (p. 16). Why does this fact matter to your soul?