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The word “Goliath” is derived from the Hebrew word galah meaning “captive”, “stripped bare”, “denuded” in a particularly disgraceful way; shamefully exposed and conspicuously uncovered..

The word “Philistine” is derived from the Hebrew pelesheth, and palash’ words meaning “migratory/exiled” those who “roll” (or wallow)…as grieving in the dust.
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So the Philistines were camped on one hill and the Israelites on an opposite hill with a valley in between. There was no way for the armies to attack each other without being seen from a long distance. It would have certainly been a brutal loss for the one who attacked first.

So the Philistines came up with what they thought was an unbeatable plan – they would put one Philistine up against one Israelite.

Since they had Goliath on their side, and he was almost twice the size of any of the Israelites, they must have felt totally confident that he would obliterate the enemy and they would win the battle.

I had never looked up the meaning of the word Goliath, and was very surprised when I read the definition above. The meaning of names was a huge thing to the Israelites, and I wonder if David somehow knew the meaning of Goliath’s name and it helped him to have the faith he needed for God to deliver him from this giant everyone was so terrified of.

Somehow God worked in his life in such a way that he was able to get past all the negativity and fear of the whole Israelite army and have the total conviction that God would give him victory over this giant that was at least double his size.

Imagine how many people must have tried to talk him out of this ludicrous thing he was about to do (at least it was ludicrous in their eyes.) Nothing about his actions made sense at all in the way they looked at the situation. I’m sure they were bracing for David’s death and sad and fearful that they would be defeated and have to live in bondage for an extended period of time to the Philistines.

No doubt they were bracing for the worst scenario, but they were greatly surprised when they got the best. All of a sudden, they had overcome huge odds to defeat the great giant and the grave situation had turned around in an instant.

The Bible is filled with stories such as this where things looked hopelessly impossible and God intervened in such an incredible way that even the heathens knew He was something special and much better than their gods.

The next time you are faced with a situation that looks gigantic and totally impossible, remember that God is the master of making a way where it doesn’t look like there could possibly be one.

Get on your face before Him, and ask Him for a miracle like the one He did for David. He is the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He wants to give you the victory in a mighty way, so ask Him to give you a mighty faith to believe He will do the impossible.

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Deu 11:8 Soon you will cross the Jordan River, and if you obey the laws and teachings I’m giving you today, you will be strong enough to conquer the land

Deu 11:9 that the LORD promised your ancestors and their descendants. It’s rich with milk and honey, and you will live there and enjoy it for a long time.

Deu 11:10 It’s better land than you had in Egypt, where you had to struggle just to water your crops.

Deu 11:11 But the hills and valleys in the promised land are watered by rain from heaven,

Deu 11:12 because the LORD your God keeps his eye on this land and takes care of it all year long.

Deu 11:13 The LORD your God commands you to love him and to serve him with all your heart and soul. If you obey him,

Deu 11:14 he will send rain at the right seasons, so you will have more than enough food, wine, and olive oil, and there will be plenty of grass for your cattle. CEV

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During a recent really nice rain (the kind that is light enough the dry ground can soak it up before it gets a chance to run off,) the Holy Spirit showed me an awesome word picture. It was sort of like a light bulb coming on that gave me a clear understanding about the above verses.

God told the Israelites that if they would obey His commands and love and serve Him with all their hearts, He would take care of them by sending the right amount of rain from heaven at just the right time to take care of their needs. The rain they received would be perfect for the crops they were growing and would soak in for maximum benefit and yield.

When we have been in the middle of a drought, I have seen it rain so hard that the ground could not possibly soak up the rain fast enough and the majority of it just ran off to lower ground. If we got three inches, we may have only received the benefit of half the rain because of the run-off.

God wants to send His best spiritual rain into your life so it can always be fertile and open for growing maximum yields of fruit. He never wants the fertile ground of your heart to become dry, hard, rocky, and devoid of life-giving water that keeps it ready to plant a crop at any time.

We as Christians should always keep our mind, heart and ears open to hear the Holy Spirit and walk in obedience to His direction. It is then that the truth can soak in and change us from the inside, to be a powerful and fruit-filled Christian who can do great things for the Kingdom of God.

To “soak truth in” means to meditate and absorb a little at a time. Your mind always wants to rebel at something that is very different from what you know now. It tries to justify what you are doing now as right and the new thing as wrong, with its purpose being to throw you off and make you go in the wrong direction.

Let the word soak in and truly change your life by doing it slowly and surely. We usually wish we could grow and mature much faster than we do, but slowly and surely will always get the job done much better and the growth you have accomplished will last forever.

The Holy Spirit wants your heart to stay fertile and tilled so that it will be very easy for Him to give you direction in a certain area and know that He won’t have to spend days, weeks, or months trying to get you to think about things another way. He never wants you to get stuck in a certain way of doing things and be so stuck that you won’t consider doing them another way.

But…the Holy Spirit will never lead you to do something that is contrary to the Word of God. Even though God works in a much different way than we might think, He would never lead you to do something that is not in alignment with His Word. It might not make sense to you, but it always makes perfect sense to God because He can see the whole picture.

Make the choice now that you will be open to hear God and walk in obedience to what He tells you to do.

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I wish so much that I had realized this much earlier in my Christian life.

It is so easy to look at troubles and trials as really bad things, or think that God is mad with you or punishing you for something. In the book of Job, Job’s friends came to the conclusion that he must have done some horrible sin to be going through such terrible trials.

I am seeing more and more that God does initiate things that are out of our control so we will be put in a position of desperation to trust in Him. When we absolutely can’t do it for ourselves, it is only God who will be thanked, praised, and worshiped for what He has done to miraculously bring about an answer to our problem.

The more you study the Bible and learn about God’s Character, the more you will know you can trust Him with every detail of your life. He will always have something better and more complex in mind than you can ever imagine. He always sees the “big picture” and knows exactly how your part will fit into the piece of the puzzle.

I’m certainly not saying that this is an easy way to live, because you usually can’t physically see how everything will turn out. But the way you respond to God’s call reveals much about who you think He is.
Make the choice right now to walk in obedience to Him even though you may not be able to see the end result beforehand. It will be a magnificent ride!

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It will truly astound you at what God will be able to accomplish through your life when you surrender your all to Him!

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Ralph Marston

When a huge trial comes your way and stays there for awhile, it seems as if it tries to become a part of you. If you are not careful, it can change your whole personality and make you go from being cheerful and lively to bitter, depressed or moody. God never intended for you to carry a huge burden on your own with no help from Him in any way.

Matthew 11: 28-30

Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The following quote is from Charles Finney, who explains it very well.

1. Then let it be understood that Christ’s real yoke, or the true service of Christ, is never hard. His real yoke is never heavy. It is self-will and selfishness that at any time fault the yoke or the service of Christ.

2. If what we call religion is burdensome, it is not Christ’s yoke, it is not Christ’s religion. If we make an uphill business of it, and if we find it “hard to obey, and harder still to love,” Christ says to us, Who has required this at your hand? What I require of you is a love-service, not this slavish service. If you love me not, if you do not serve me from love, I abhor your doings. Let no one think himself truly religious whose religion is a bondage, and not the highest liberty.

3. Whatever is hard in religion is made so by our want of heart, our want of love, our want of confidence; and is therefore not Christ’s yoke at all. It is not true religion, it is not Christian liberty, but legal bondage.

4. All truly religious duties are easy. If we make them hard, they are not a love-service, and not what Christ requires. If we make them hard we spoil them. If we go complainingly about his service, grumbling about the difficulties and the hardness of his service, he loathes our bondage, he cannot accept it.

I know that many times I have lived in huge bondage because I took on burdens and problems that I should have given to God and left with Him to work out when the time was right.

Charles Finney has written such an awesome definition of the difference between living in bondage and living in freedom.

Make the choice right now that you will choose the way of Christ’s yoke of freedom!

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I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Paul was a person just like you. He ate, slept, worked, had fellowship with friends, etc. The big difference was that he had come to the point that he wanted God to rule his life instead of only doing things to please himself.

Material things of the world no longer had any real satisfaction for him, and the love of money had lost its hold on him.

He had found that the world could not satisfy him like God could. The more he saw God work in his life, the easier it was to separate himself from the vile things of the world. Paul wanted to be connected with God in every way, and not give his own fleshly desires any roots to develop. More than anything else he wanted to follow God with his whole heart, mind, and strength.

For many years I thought it a very difficult thing to be crucified with Christ. I desired it very much, but it seemed like it was always out of my grasp. It seemed next to impossible to actually be dead to sin and live an everyday life where I worked a job, interacted with people, and did all the everyday activities that took much of my time. I imagined myself as having to live a secluded life with very little interaction with anyone else and just read my Bible and pray all day – in other words not thinking about much else but biblical things.

Naturally, I found that it was impossible to live in that way.

But gradually I found that the more I let the Holy Spirit control my life, the more I could be dead to sin and not let my fleshly desires control me. I found that the things of the world were very boring when compared to what I saw God doing in my life. It is amazing how He can change your heart and mind about something that you previously thought was very important, and make it very unimportant to you.

I certainly cannot say yet that I am completely dead to the world, but the more I am obedient to Christ, the more the world becomes more inadequate to satisfy my deepest needs. I no longer want to do the same things that I thought were so exciting years ago.

Romans 6: 6-11

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

For he that is dead is freed from sin.

Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“Dead to” and “crucified to” were common expressions among the Hebrews, Greeks and Latins.

To die to a thing or person is to be totally separated from or have nothing to do with it or them.

To live to a person or thing is to be wholly given up to and have intimate connection with that person or thing.

Having the old man crucified means that one has no further dealings with him.

We as Christians no longer have to let sin rule over us. We can choose to let the Holy Spirit be our guide and walk in obedience to what He tells us to do. The more we make the choice to do this, the more we will be “crucified to” our old way of doing things and our fleshly thoughts, emotions, and actions will not be able to control us anymore.

Don’t settle for anything less than God completely controlling your life to use as He pleases. I promise, the things of the world will become more and more boring when you start to see the supernatural works of God at work each day before your very eyes.

I know I never want to go back to the way I used to be, and I don’t think you will either once you see God at work in your life.

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NAS – I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor

AMP – Behold I will send (to give) a blast (a breath that is a sensible or violent exaltation) upon him and he shall hear (to hear intelligently with attention and obedience) a rumor (report, announcement) and shall return (to turn back or retreat) and will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

In order to understand the significance of verse 7, we need to go back a bit and find out the reason God would need to say these words. God wanted to bless His Chosen people Israel to show the heathen nations around them that He was the One True God who could handle every circumstance and problem they might ever have.

All God wanted was for them to put Him first in everything they did; they would then stay close to Him for a time, then start a period of falling away which ended in severe consequences for them until they cried out and received another deliverer.

In fact, they had rebelled so many times against God that they had been divided into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms with different kings for each. The Northern Kingdom was captured and lost their freedom several years before the Southern Kingdom.

So now we come to Hezekiah, who was the king of Judah, the Southern Kingdom. He was 25 when he became king and ruled for 29 years. He obeyed God and was completely faithful to Him and God made him successful in everything he did, because he got rid of all the heathen idols and anything else that had been used for heathen worship.

He brought Judah back to a point of total worship and consecration to God.

But by his fourteenth year as king, Hezekiah was starting to fall away from God and Assyria came against Judah. The Assyrians had conquered almost all the nations around them, and from a human standpoint victory looked eminent for them. Since Hezekiah had fallen away from being totally consecrated to God, it was easy for him to believe that Judah could be beaten. He sent a message telling the king of Assyria that Judah would pay handsomely if they would stop their attack.

The king demanded 11 tons of silver and a ton of gold. To get up the amount, Hezekiah ended up taking all the silver from the house of the Lord and all the treasure from the king’s house. He also cut off the gold from the door of the temple and the gold that overlaid the doorposts.

The messengers from Assyria had been sent to intimidate the Israelites into an easy surrender, and these are their words: “Listen carefully to the words of The Great King, the king of Assyria: Don’t let Hezekiah fool you; he can’t save you. And don’t let Hezekiah give you that line about trusting in God, telling you, ‘God will save us—this city will never be abandoned to the king of Assyria.’ Don’t listen to Hezekiah—he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Listen to the king of Assyria—deal with me and live the good life; I’ll guarantee everyone your own plot of ground—a garden and a well! I’ll take you to a land sweeter by far than this one, a land of grain and wine, bread and vineyards, olive orchards and honey. You only live once—so live, really live!

“No. Don’t listen to Hezekiah. Don’t listen to his lies, telling you ‘God will save us.’ Has there ever been a god anywhere who delivered anyone from the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? And Samaria—did their gods save them? Can you name a god who saved anyone anywhere from me, the king of Assyria? So what makes you think that God can save Jerusalem from me?” II Kings 18: 29-35

It certainly looked like Assyria had the upper hand and Judah would be carried off as Israel had been years before that.

When the messengers from Hezekiah heard the news, they ripped their robes in despair and told the King what had been said.

When Hezekiah heard, he too ripped his clothes and dressed in rough burlap, sent word to the prophet Isaiah and told him everything that had happened; they then asked Isaiah to lift up prayers for them and asked God to send a miracle.

Isaiah answered them, “Tell your master, ‘God‘s word: Don’t be at all concerned about what you’ve heard from the king of Assyria’s bootlicking errand boys—these outrageous blasphemies. Here’s what I’m going to do: Afflict him with self-doubt. He’s going to hear a rumor and, frightened for his life, retreat to his own country. Once there, I’ll see to it that he gets killed.

To make matters worse, right after the word from God, Sennacherib once again threatened Judah by reminding them that not one country had been able to win against them and Israel would not be the first.

Hezekiah went to the temple and cried out to God, praying fervently for victory.

God responded back to Hezekiah through Isaiah again by reaffirming that He would truly fight for them and that Assyria would be doomed.

That very night an Angel of God came and massacred 185,000 Assyrians. When the people of Jerusalem got up the next morning, they saw a whole camp of corpses. The Assyrian king managed to escape, but it had been already prophesied by Isaiah that he would be killed. One day when he was worshiping in the temple, his own sons murdered him, thus ending his reign of terror.

God was totally true to His Word and gave Judah an awesome victory without them ever having to physically fight at all.

Many times God speaks a word of victory in the midst of a situation that looks absolutely and utterly impossible. You must decide if you will believe God or what you might be physically seeing or hearing at the time.

The next time you are faced with a situation that looks physically impossible, will you turn to the same God who delivered Hezekiah and the people of Judah in such a dramatic way?

Let’s start to be a people of God who believe what the Bible says so much that God has no other choice but to honor His Word. That’s the way He wants us to live each day. He can see the future, and we can certainly trust a God who always has our best interest at heart.

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If you faint in the day of adversity your strength is small.

The Message version

If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you in the first place.

This verse is very powerful to me, because I can think back on many instances where a person has gone through a huge crisis of some sort. Some have handled it with dignity while others have completely fallen apart and never fully recovered.

Adversity comes in many forms, and sometimes what we think might be a terrible thing might turn out to be something we can look back on and see how God wanted us to run to Him and let Him handle it in His chosen way.

God has dealt with me about walking in His Strength each day instead of trying to do everything in my own strength. I have found that trying to fit everything into one day that I feel God wants me to do is totally impossible without His supernatural help and guidance; but when I tell Him first thing each morning that I will never be able to get everything accomplished without His help, He somehow supernaturally gives me the strength I need to do it.

When you are walking in His will for your life, you will find that He tells you to do things that you will never be able to accomplish in your own strength. God purposely places things in your life in order to help you to grow stronger and tougher as a Christian.

He even told some of the great men and women of the Bible to do some things that were downright hard. If they hadn’t trusted in a mighty way they would have probably been devoured by Satan.

God wants you to find out about His Character. Once you know even a few truths about Him, you will realize that He always has your best interest at heart and wants the absolute best for your life. He can see exactly how everything will work out, and wants you to rely on His sight and strength to work through you to accomplish what He desires.

If He tells you to do something hard, it is because He sees great potential in you and wants to develop it and use you in a mighty way for His Kingdom.

God sometimes puts you in a tough situation to teach you to lean on Him with everything in you. The next time things look impossible, claim Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

You will be amazed at how much more you can accomplish with God’s supernatural help. Try it and be amazed!

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The Holy Spirit gave me this thought and it has affected me in a powerful way. Every day it is possible for you to make several different choices as to the direction you will take for the future.

Some choices are huge and others are tiny, but they propel you in one direction or another. It is easy to think that just one day won’t make much of a difference because it is only one day among the thousands that will make up your entire life.

Many times when you are older, you can look back to one decision that you made that might have started you down the wrong road, and it may have taken you years to get back on the right one. An example would be the first time you tried alcohol or drugs.

It truly is possible for one small action to change your life forever. Just saying YES or NO one time can have very powerful consequences – whether good or bad.

God gave us the Bible specifically so that we can have a guidebook to know how to live and so that we can have the best life possible. He wants you to live a life of peace and joy even in the midst of problems or persecution, and that can only be done through living a life for Christ.

When the next temptation comes your way to make the wrong decision or put something off until another day, think about the fact that what you decide to do will ease you further along a road, but which one will it be?

Will you be able to look back a year from now and see progress or will you have lost ground? Each day’s actions are much more powerful than you can ever imagine.

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27. For God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame.

28. And God also selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are,

29. So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God.

OH if we could only see things from God’s perspective. We certainly would trust Him much more than we do when He tells us to do something that seems hard.

He can see everything about your life – the most strength you are capable of having, the most endurance you can stand under pressure, how far your limits will reach in any given situation, and how much stamina you can have before you can’t take it anymore.

A good word picture would be a “stress test” (a medical test) that tells you the condition of your heart. You basically walk on an electronic treadmill exercise machine. The whole point is to try to keep up with the machine as it makes you walk faster and faster, walk uphill, then walk fast and uphill at the same time; you are hooked up to heart monitors the whole time to see how your heart is responding. If you can endure to the end, you definitely have a healthy heart.

God wants you to use His strength, ability and power to do what He has called you to do. In fact, He does not want you to be able to accomplish it on your own. He will tell you to do things you are not capable of doing so He can receive all the glory in what you are able to accomplish.

In the Bible, God consistently told people to do things they were totally incapable of doing on their own. They felt overwhelmed even thinking about how they would accomplish such huge undertakings. But God knew exactly what they could be capable of doing with HIS power and HIS strength added to their own.

He chose ordinary people like you and me who didn’t think of themselves as special in any way. They just had a heart that wanted to know and obey God, and He chose to use them in great and marvelous ways.

Vs. 25 says “…the foolish thing [that has its source in] God is wiser than men, and the weak thing [that springs] from God is stronger than men.

So how many times do we miss out on God’s way because we try to put Him in a box and expect Him to act in a way that is already familiar? What if He wants to do things in a new way? Will you be open to listen and obey?

Many of the Israelites missed Jesus because they were expecting a Savior in the form of a leader who would go to battle against their surrounding enemies and defeat them. God had worked in that way numerous times before, but this time He had in mind a much better and different plan.

Will you open your mind and heart to hearing and obeying God even if He chooses to do things in a way that you have never imagined? Your life will definitely not be boring.

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