Facing Giants: Unpacking David’s Courage

Well, good evening.

Thank you all for being here tonight.

I know the Lord has a special blessing on you for being here tonight, as you can see.

Yeah, we do have the B, C, D, Z team here tonight, I guess you could say.

But no, I am always thankful for the opportunity to preach, especially in front of my home church.

And I'm very thankful for people.

Pastor allowed me to preach in his pulpit and I think I'm just very grateful for just the opportunities he gives me and just knowing that Pastor trusts me in his pulpit and it's very encouraging to me.

And my prayer is that the Lord can use me through it.

But if you have your Bibles tonight, take your Bibles to First Samuel, chapter 17.

First Samuel, chapter 17.

And our text tonight will begin in verse 23.

If you know this passage, I'm sure many of you do, it is probably viewed as probably the top three top five stories in the Bible.

I guess you could say, obviously it is the story of David and Goliath.

And there, if you go to the Internet, if you go to our sermon archive, you could probably find hundreds, if not thousands of sermons on this passage.

So I didn't.

I would like you not to turn tune me off tonight, I guess you could say I have entitled this message tonight, Facing the Giants.

I know that's the name of a movie, so hope I don't get copyrighted or anything like that.

So.

But I just thought that was the most appropriate title for this message is Facing the Giants.

And let's just go ahead and begin reading in verse number 23 of chapter 17.

And it says here, and as he talked with them, behold, there came up a champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the Philistines and spake according to the same words.

And David heard them.

So to kind of give you a little bit of a context here, David, of course is a shepherd and he's the youngest of all of his brethren.

His brothers right now are at this battle, right, against the Philistines.

His dad sends David to bring some food to his brothers and just kind of check up on his brothers, see how things are going, right?

And as David comes, of course, we all know Goliath has been coming out every single day.

He's been taunting the Israelites and he's been asking, you know, send somebody to come fight me.

I mean, he's probably getting bored at this point, right?

But Goliath is there just demanding someone to come and fight him.

He's taunting Israelites and He's cursing God's name.

And David finally hears this.

And it says here in verse number 24, as it says, and all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were sore afraid.

And the men of Israel said, have ye seen this man that is come up?

Surely, Genevieve, Israel is he come up.

And it shall be that the man who killeth him, the king, will enrich with the great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel.

And David spake to the men that stood with him, saying, what shall be done to the man that killeth the Philistine and taketh away the reproach from Israel?

For who is this uncircumcised Philistine?

For he should defy the armies of the living God.

And the people answered him after this manner, saying, so shall it be done to the man that killeth him.

And Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he spake unto the men.

And Eliab's anger was kindled against David.

And he said, why camest thou down hither?

And with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness?

I know thy pride and thy naughtiness of thine heart, for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.

And David said, what have I now done?

Is there not a cause?

And he turned from him toward another and spake after the same manner.

And the people answered him again after the former manner.

Let's pause right there for a moment.

I have entitled this message, and I've already said, facing the giants tonight, there may be a giant in your life.

And I want us to see the three keys to facing the giants in your life.

Let's pray.

Lord, I want to thank you again for this evening, Lord.

Thank you for the many men and women who are here tonight, Lord.

I pray you give them a special blessing for being here tonight, Lord.

Lord, I pray you'd speak through me that I wouldn't speak Noah Day's message.

I would speak your message.

God, allow me to be your mouthpiece.

Hide me behind your cross, Lord.

We love you, Lord.

In Jesus name I pray.

Amen.

I am a father.

Yes.

I've only been a father for about seven months now, so my experience is still pretty low.

Right.

But in some ways, I've been a father in to my dog.

I guess you could say my dog.

His name is Flynn.

He is an Australian shepherd.

If you know anything about Australian shepherds.

They are full of energy and they are actually very clever dogs.

They really are my Dog Flynn is a very special dog.

And I say, and I use that lightly, right?

Flynn we got as a six week old puppy and we actually bought him as a Valentine's gift to me and my wife.

My wife had been begging for a dog for about two months at that point.

And I was like, no, I don't want to spend the extra money on a dog yet.

We don't have nowhere to put a dog, all that type of stuff.

And my wife, of course, was like, she's like, I'm always lonely when you're not here.

I want a dog, right?

She's always been, she's always lived with a dog, I guess.

And then I said, okay, if the Lord allows me to get a raise or I guess a bonus or I get to work some overtime that I could get the extra money, I will get you a dog.

Well, literally, probably two weeks later, I had worked a 40 hour week in about 85 hours and it was a long week for me.

But of course my paycheck rolled around.

I had like three paychecks, it seemed like, in one, right?

And I of course got a little bit of that bonus for working overtime.

And of course my wife then started sending me pictures of all the puppies that were available, right?

And of course I didn't really want an Australian Shepherd.

I had my list.

My dream dog is actually a Bluetick Coonhound.

That's actually my dream dog.

I would love a Blue tit Coonhound.

But actually an Australian shepherd was actually my number two choice.

So of course I got the second pick, I guess you could say, in a way, of course my wife won that battle.

She wanted an Australian shepherd, so we got an Australian Shepherd.

And you know, early on with a puppy, they keep you up at night, they cry very similar to a baby.

And it kind of, it was funny when Henry came around.

My son Henry, he's been a very easy baby.

I can't really complain too much, right?

Flynn had been harder than our baby at times.

I just remember looking back at that and some of you may laugh because some of you all know the stories, but I look back on that and say, wow, Flynn kind of did prepare me for being a father a little bit.

And it's amazing how things in our life, and they may just seem so small or we may not see things in that way.

Down the road, we look back in our memories at those events, we see, wow, God was preparing me for something.

Now I know that may be a silly illustration about my dog preparing me for fatherhood but you could probably look back in your life right now and see some of those areas that God prepared you to face, those trials in your life, that sin in your life, right?

And I wrote down this intro for this message.

And I said, life is full of struggle and trial.

Failure and defeat seem to always be around every corner.

You are scared to take the next step because you may fall through the glass floor, maybe even scared to look up at what might be ahead.

It just seems like it.

Like life takes your breath away.

Like when standing at the edge of a cliff.

Fear just seems to always be the driving force of life.

But it doesn't have to be.

Let me ask you this.

Are you living by fear or by faith?

Tonight, as I mentioned before, I'd like us to focus on the three keys that we'll see in our passage.

Three keys to facing the giants.

Three keys to facing the giants.

Number one, recognize your cause.

Look again.

In verse number 26, it says, and David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, what shall be done to the man that killeth the Philistine and taketh away the reproach from Israel?

Jump down to verse 27.

And the people answered him after this marriage, saying, so shall it be done to the man that killeth him.

And verse number 28.

And Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he spake unto the men.

And Eliab's anger was kindled against David.

And he said, why camest thou down hither?

And with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness?

I know thy pride and thy naughtiness of thine heart.

For thou art come down, that thou mightest see the battle.

And here's a little bit of the focus for this point.

And David said, what have I now done?

Is there not a cause?

And he turned from him toward another and spake after the same manner.

And the people answered him again after the former manner.

Just kind of a side note here.

I love that when God is trying to do something in our lives, it just seems like someone else just kind of comes along and just almost tries to derail the train sometimes.

Or just something.

Just this roadblock that just kind of gets thrown up.

It's amazing to me that when God's working, there always seems to be a little bit of a hiccup every once in a while.

You know why?

It's because Satan does not want God to have victory in your life.

Satan is trying to keep you from experiencing God's will in your life.

And Elihab is acting as this roadblock in a way, this.

This stepping stone, I guess you could say, this stumbling block, that he is challenging David with what he is saying.

In fact, he was angered against what David was saying.

I don't know if it was jealousy or pride that got away.

Maybe all of the above, right?

But something in Eliab's heart was not right.

He was the eldest brother.

He had been raised like David.

How come he was not standing like David was standing against Goliath?

How come he never spoke up against any of the men?

He had been there for days.

He had every opportunity to speak up, and he never did until someone tries speaking up and he tried to put that flame out.

It's amazing.

Every time that revival tries to start in a church, there's always someone with a bucket of water ready to pour it out.

Just amazes me sometimes.

But I would like us to see that David recognized his purpose.

That's another word for that word, cause there.

David's basically saying, what is our purpose?

Is there not a purpose for us here?

And we would say that of course there's a purpose.

Right?

We have our own purposes in life.

Our main purpose is to win the loss for Christ.

And then our second purpose is to live for God.

Let me ask you this tonight, though.

Where are the Christians who have a cause to stand against the giants?

Now, there's two types of giants that we can kind of take from this passage.

The first kind of giant is the giants that affect us, all right?

Immorality, those temptations, the movement of the awoke agenda.

I guess you could say the false preachers, the false witnesses out there.

There's so many giants that we could think of the alcoholic movement.

It is amazing to see how many giants are in our society.

And no wonder we can't see revival in America.

No wonder it has not come is because there are so many giants that Christians are not standing up to.

Let me ask you this.

When's the last time you spoke against one of those things at work?

I'm not talking about picking fights and calling someone out.

But you're not the type of one to turn away from it.

Or maybe you're partaking it.

I hope that you don't, but maybe you are.

Maybe you're falling into that temptation.

Where are the Christians that turn away from sin in their Life.

And they take a stand for God.

Where are those Christians?

Tonight?

We see that David is taking a stand before Goliath.

Let me remind you real fast, Goliath.

They say he's a giant, but let's back up a little bit.

A giant is not just a guy that is 7 foot tall, a basketball player.

We may think of those guys as giants, right?

I have many family members who are looked at as giants a lot of time, right.

Unfortunately, I did not get that gene.

They stole my height.

Just want to let you know that somebody needs to call the cops.

Just saying.

But anyways, we look at this story and we see that it says that it's a giant.

Goliath is a giant.

But let's pause for a second and think about how big this guy is.

They say his spear probably weighed between 80 and 100 pounds, give or take.

I don't know about you, I've never thrown a spear that's been £100, more or less.

A metal pole that's that big, you know, I've never thrown anything that's been over £100.

They say that his sword was probably twice the length of any great sword a man could wield.

Now, a great sword is a sword that can stand about this tall, and it stands anywhere between five and six foot tall, is a great sword.

And they say his sword could have been anywhere from 8ft to 12ft long.

That it could have been.

It could have been a shorter sword than that.

We don't know.

But they say.

They don't really give us details about it.

But could you imagine looking at this guy and saying, oh, yeah, that's an easy fight.

Of course, we don't really.

I don't blame any of these guys for hiding in their tent, to be honest, because I probably would have been one of them.

But if we take a second, we take a step back to just really look at this story about who Goliath was and what he was representing.

David is the only one to stand against Goliath.

Why is that?

Why is David one of the smallest guys?

The Bible says he's not a very big guy.

And we'll see in a moment a little bit about David's past.

He is the only one willing to take a stand out of all those Israelites.

They've all been taught the same things.

His brothers have all been taught the same things.

He's the only one.

We've all been taught how to live our lives for Christ, how to win the loss for Christ.

How come in our churches, the Pastor's the only one doing it.

That Sunday school worker.

What has happened to our churches in America today?

Where are the Christians?

I guess you could say, is there not a cause?

Is there not something to stand for?

Is there not a purpose for us tonight?

What is your purpose here tonight?

It's a very simple answer.

Glorify God.

We see that, first of all, we must recognize our cause when we face the giants in our lives.

And secondly, we must remember the victories that God has given us in our life.

Pausing for just a moment, I said that there was two giants that we faced.

The first is the.

The generalized sin that we see in the world today.

But the second giants in our lives are those personal giants, those personal trials, that sin in your life, the hard times, that debt, that sickness, that besetting sin, the temptation that you keep falling into.

Maybe we have some giants in our lives here tonight.

I guarantee every single one of us has a giant in our life tonight.

If we really examine ourselves, we could see that we have a giant in our life.

Let's continue.

We see here that David remembered the victories that God given in his life.

Look out in verse number 31.

Verse number 31, it says, and when the words were heard which David spake, they rehearsed them before Saul, and he sent for him.

And David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him.

Thy servant will go and fight with the Philistine.

And Saul said to David, thou art not able to go against the Philistine to fight with him, for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.

And David said unto Saul, thy servant kept his father's sheep.

And there came a lion and a bear and took a lamb out of the flock.

And I went out after him and smote him and delivered it out of the mouth, out of his mouth.

And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and smote him and slew him.

Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear.

And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.

David said, moreover, the Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.

And Saul said to David, go, and the Lord be with me.

Let me just say what great faith David has at this moment, and we're going to see a little bit more of that here in a second.

But let's back up.

How many of you have ever wrestled with a bear before?

And I'm not talking about a teddy bear, okay?

I'm talking about an actual grizzly bear.

I don't think I ever have.

Right.

You do realize some of those grizzly bears, when they stand on their hind legs, they're over 12ft tall.

I hope some of you understand that.

A lot of people, I think I saw this stat or a kind of a survey they did.

About 6% of Americans believe that they could take on a grizzly bear in hand to hand combat.

I do not know why they think that, but that is insane.

I would like to meet those people.

I really would.

If you've ever seen a grizzly bear, it is raw power.

I don't know what type of bear David faced and took down, but it doesn't say that David took him down with a bow and arrow.

It doesn't say that David just kind of.

I don't know what's another.

He didn't have a sword with him.

He may have had one, I don't know.

But it kind of indicates here that David kind of used his hands a little bit with the bears and the lions.

And secondly, he didn't just take down a bear.

Maybe that's not enough for you.

He also took down a lion.

Now, if you're not familiar with bears, most everyone in here is familiar with a lion, Right.

There are stories of lions catching people by the leg and they're able to pick them up off the ground and run miles with that person.

Not to give you nightmares tonight, but that gives me nightmares.

Okay.

Lions are also another animal of raw power and strength.

They literally have knives for hands.

Okay.

They're not something to necessarily mess around with.

Right.

And the Bible gives us a little bit of detail into these circumstances that David caught the lion by his beard.

Now, we know that most lions have manes, right?

At least the males do.

Right?

And usually their hair kind of hangs down a little bit longer underneath them.

Most people believe that when, when the Bible talks about that David caught him here.

Now, he didn't catch him by the top, he caught him underneath.

So hang on, when the Bible says he, he got him by his beard, that kind of indicates that David may have been holding him.

I don't know what that means, but there is a little bit of indication that David may have had some sort of Samson like strength in these moments.

There's not a lot of evidence of that, but you can kind of do a little bit of digging and a little Bit of creative thinking.

And you could kind of see that being a possibility.

Cause I've never seen a man wrestle with a bear or with a lion with just their hands and come out alive.

Right.

At least unscathed.

Right.

But it shows that the Bible, that God.

Sorry, The Bible shows that God gave David these victories.

This isn't in here because David is saying, hey, I'm actually pretty good with taking down wild animals, so I can take this guy down.

No, David is reminding Saul or he's letting Saul know that, hey, God delivered me during these times.

I think he can deliver me this time too.

That is what David's saying tonight.

David remembered when God gave him the victory in seemingly impossible situations.

This gave David confidence that the Lord would be with him no matter what, as long as he stayed true to God, obviously.

Let me ask you this.

What victories has God brought you through in life?

I could think of several victories that God's brought me through in life.

I remember when we found out that we were pregnant.

Long story short, my other truck gave up the ghost.

And there's a long story with that.

And I needed a new truck.

And our apartment was also a smaller apartment and we were at least needing an extra bedroom.

And so we were looking for.

We looked at houses, but we weren't able to afford houses.

We looked at renting a house and we couldn't afford that.

And finally I kind of did some calling around.

I talked to our apartment complex that we live in.

I said, hey, I'm looking for a two or three bedroom apartment, if you're able to get me one.

We need like an extra bedroom or two if y'all have one available.

And they kind of pulled a little bit of strings and they made it work for us.

And I can look back on those moments.

And God provided me.

And God provided me a truck that I could afford and that I could use.

And there was just all these victories that God's.

And those are very simple victories.

But I can look back on those moments in my life and I could see God providing every single time I needed him to.

And let me remind you, God is never late with his timing.

He never is.

He's seldom early, and he's always on time.

You see, we always seem to forget everything God does to protect and provide for us.

It always seems like when things go wrong, that's when we're like, hey, God, where are you at?

But we hadn't been really thinking about how he's already been providing for us.

God is always with you.

And we forget that sometimes as Christians living in America today, we forget that God's with us.

What do you have to be scared about?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Right?

Why can't we have the same attitude when we go into the trials in our life as David does?

Why can't we stand against the sin?

Why can't we stand against the trials just like David does right here?

It's not like the Bible is saying that David was something special.

I know he's anointed to be king in this moment, right?

That's the only thing really special going for him here.

But he's only anointed that because of the heart that David has.

And that came from spending time with God.

Let me ask you this.

When's the last time you spent time with God?

Proper time.

I know.

You may pray before every meal.

That's good.

Is that the only time you talk to God?

I'm guilty of it sometimes.

Just being honest.

God is with us.

He always has been.

In Hebrews 13:5, it says, Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as ye have.

For he has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.

It's amazing how many times we worry about how we don't have something or how we haven't earned something yet, like we're something special.

It's amazing how we forget that.

How we forget that God has still been able to provide for us every single moment.

So we see here first, we see that we must recognize the first key is that we must recognize our cause.

And secondly, we must remember our victories.

I hope you can look back in your life and see the victories that God has given you in your life.

I hope that gives you courage.

I hope that gives you strength, that confidence, that faith in God.

The Bible says that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.

I've never seen a mountain moved.

I guess.

What does that say about my faith?

And number three, we see the third key is that we must rely on the name of the Lord.

Look at verse number 43.

We'll jump down to verse 43 to give you a little bit of context, coming to this moment after David shares the stories with Saul about facing the lion and facing the bear and taking him down.

It's awesome story, right?

And Saul offers to David his armor.

And David says, no, I can't.

I Haven't proved these things.

These aren't going to work.

If anything, they're just going to hold me down, they're going to slow me down.

And David finally goes to the brook there and he grabs five smooth stones.

Now, there's a lot of debate on why he grabbed those five stones, right?

The first being for Goliath, the other four for Goliath's brothers.

There's maybe some concern there that once David took down Goliath, he thought that maybe his Goliath's brothers would retaliate, which were also giants, by the way.

So there may have been some evidence that Goliath may not have been the only giant there.

And David was ready to face all five.

It seems like that was more just a side tidbit, so you can kind of just take that what you will.

Anyways, in verse number 43, David has now approached Goliath and Goliath has started to speak to David.

And this is what Goliath says in verse 143.

He says, and the Philistines said unto David, am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves?

And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

Notice there, the little G, right?

His gods, like that, did anything right.

And the Philistines said to David, come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.

Now, let's pause there for one second.

Let's take a time out, just one second.

If a giant is threatening to feed you to the birds, that may be a little bit of a scary moment for you, just to let you know.

I don't know what Goliath sounded like, but I do imagine he sounded pretty tough, right?

I don't think he had a high squeaky voice.

I think it was very low and booming, right?

So looking at this, it doesn't seem to faze David.

So let's look here.

In verse number 45, it says, then said David to the Philistine, thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield.

But I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied this day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand, and I will smite thee.

And take thine head from me, and I will give the carcass to the host of the host of the Philistines this day, unto the fowls of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth May know that there is a God in Israel.

And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hands Again, we see an insane amount of faith David has right here.

I don't know if you've ever noticed, but I am a smaller guy.

I'm not a very big guy.

The Lord has decided to not make me so tall.

Right.

I'm not a huge, muscular guy.

I'm just not built that way.

Right.

I remember playing football, and I remember going against a lot of the guys that were bigger than me.

Right.

I never chose to taunt them.

However, it always felt good when I was able to tackle one of them because it just made me feel really good.

I don't know.

Right.

But I never was wanting to taunt one of them.

Right.

But I always seemed to want to taunt my younger cousins that were like, twice my size.

Like, y'all know jar in here?

Yeah.

I used to tease that guy and pick on him all the time.

It was kind of dumb of me.

He's a really big guy.

I don't know if you noticed that, but anyways, I cannot imagine.

And I find it somewhat comical that David right here is taunting Goliath and says, let me just paraphrase real fast, dude, I don't know about to cut your head off.

And, yeah, you're just gonna get eaten by all the wild animals.

And by the way, your head's gonna be like a trophy for me.

So if you read a little further in the Bible, you see that David kind of carries his head around for a few days.

It's pretty awesome, right?

But let's get back to it anyways.

So I just love that David says that this day the Lord will deliver thee out into mine hand and I will smite thee and take thine head in front of me, and I will give the carcass of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air and the wild beast that the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

David remembered when God gave him the victory in his lives, and that allowed him to rely on the Lord even more in his life.

In other words, it gave David faith.

What is faith?

Well, faith is the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen is what the Bible says.

David stands against Goliath by leaning on the Lord.

It's such an amazing passage here to see the faith of David.

He is staring at a guy that is twice his size says that he's going to take him down.

That's pretty amazing.

And you know what?

David doesn't have any.

Doesn't show any sort of pride with what he says here.

He says, this is what's going to happen, and it's because God wants to take you down.

That's why.

And it's nothing that I can do.

It's everything that God's going to do to you.

And I'm just the vessel.

He gives all the credit back to God.

Let me ask you this.

Where are the Christians standing against the giants?

Has fear been the driving factor of Christianity in America?

God has promised to give us power.

In Acts 1a, it says, but ye shall receive power after that.

The Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and to the uttermost part of the earth.

You know, fear was the main factor that kept me from surrendering my life to God.

I don't blame a lot of these Israelite soldiers for being fearful of a giant.

I don't really blame them.

But every single one of them had the same opportunity David had.

And David is the only one that took it.

Tonight you have so many opportunities to make a difference in this world.

It only matters if you take that opportunity.

My youth pastor growing up was Brother Jesse Ladder.

He was a youth pastor here for several years.

And the last lesson that he gave me, I'll never forget it, is he said that potential is just a word.

My last time hearing Brother Jesse speak to me directly, it was in a room full of seniors.

And he says, you guys have all the potential in the world, but potential is just a word.

What decisions are you making tonight that are keeping you from the potential God has for you?

God has promised to stand with you, to give you the victory over any giant in your life.

That doesn't mean life is going to be easy.

God just says, hey, there's going to be some hard times in life, but you're going to be able to go through it because you're going to rely on me.

I love.

Let's read the rest of the passage.

Let's see what happens here.

Says in verse number 48.

And it came to pass when the Philistine arose and came and drew nigh to meet David.

And David hasted and ran toward the army to meet the Philistines.

He's running towards the giant.

And David put his hand in his bag and took thence a stone and slang it and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead and he fell upon his face to the earth.

So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone and smote the Philistine and slew him.

But there was no sword in the hand of David.

I love how the Bible is driving that point home.

David did not have a sword in his hand.

He used the sling and the stone.

And it says here in verse number 41, it says, Therefore David ran, stood upon the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of the sheath thereof and slew him and cut off his head wherewith.

And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.

What an amazing victory that God gave Israel and God gave David this day.

I would love to to be able to see this scene.

Like I alluded to before, we're all facing giants in our lives.

Maybe some of them are more serious than others.

As you know, I myself am potentially staring at the face of a giant in my life.

Our son Henry was born with a heart murmur and he has a VSD is what they call it, in his heart.

That is a hole between the two, the left and right ventricle.

And what that does is that.

And long story short, it can inflate his heart on his left ventricle and that could cause his heart to work really hard.

And it also caused his lungs to work harder at times.

Back in January, we had him checked out to see what was going on.

That's when they told us this and they said if it doesn't start to close, we're looking at open heart surgery.

And it terrifies me.

I do not want to have to put my 7 month old son through open heart surgery.

As some of you may know, Henry has spent two different times in the hospital because of respiratory illness.

And a lot of the doctors have told us that it's probably because his when his vsd, because he has this situation that when he does get sick he kind of, it hits him a little harder.

And our prayer is that God would start to close the hole because the doctors give us hope by saying if it starts to close, he doesn't look like the typical VSD baby.

I guess you could say he's actually thriving in a lot of ways.

But they said that if it doesn't start to close that we are looking at open heart surgery.

I'm praying that I don't have to face that, but you know, if I do, I hope that I run towards it like goliath like David ran to Goliath and just rely on God.

You know, the Bible is full of people that had every opportunity, had every chance to turn and run because of fear in their lives, but they didn't, whatever it was, that God had some sort of plan for them in their life.

I'm not trying to draw attention to my life at all, please don't get me wrong there.

But God just gave them so much grace and mercy.

And those people who are just like you and me stood their ground against every trial.

I think of Moses standing before Pharaoh.

I think of Joseph being sold into slavery, not knowing what his life was about to look like, but still living for God.

I think of Noah and how God says he's going to flood the whole earth and it's up to him to build an ark to save humanity.

I think of Esther standing before the king.

She could die.

And she said, if I perish, I perish.

I wonder what happened tonight.

If we had Christians stand up against the giants and said, you know what?

God has given me so many victories in my life, I'm not going to fear, I'm going to have faith.

Although the Bible in the Bible, many men and women had the opportunity and even the understanding of fleeing from trials, tests and the giants in their own lives.

But they stood for God and God stood with them.

Let me ask you this.

It's the same question I asked you at the start.

Are we living by fear or by faith?

The three keys to facing the giants in your life is recognizing the cause that we have in our lives, the purpose of why we're here, remembering that God has brought us victories throughout our whole life.

And then all we have to do is rely on him to take us through it.

Rely on God when you're facing the giants.

As our musicians come, every head bowed, every eye closed.

I don't know where you're at in life tonight.

I don't know what you're going through in life.

I don't try.

I'm not trying to draw attention to my life tonight.

But I know some of you in here may have be facing some giants in your life.

Maybe the trials and tests are coming.

My prayer for you tonight is that you will not run in fear.

You will face it and rely on God.

You stand with God and he will stand with you.

Lord, just want to thank you again for the night you gave us tonight.

Thank you for every man and woman that was here tonight.

Lord, I pray you give them a blessing for being here tonight.

Lord.

Lord, thank you for this message.

Thank you for speaking to even my heart through it, Lord.

Lord, help us to always rely on you when we're facing the giants.

Help us to recognize our cause and help us to remember the victories that you have given us in our lives, that you can give us another one, Lord.

Lord, I pray for the many men, women who are here.

If they're going through something in their life, Lord, I pray you'd provide for them and you give them strength and courage.

Lord, we love you.

Lord.

Please be with the rest of our service in Jennifer pray.

Amen.