Devotional 081210

Dear brothers and sisters,

Good morning. Thank God for showers of blessings. The whole nature is nourished by this warm Winter’s rain. God is love. We can find His expressions of love to us in many different ways. Rain, sunshine, fresh air, nature, ability to work, ability to enjoy friendship, and ability to enter communion (interaction with different senses) with God are signs of His Abundant Love for us. He is a creative God. I thank Him for creating you to be such a lovely beautiful being in Christ.

This is a common experience in the Valley of Elah (1 Samuel 17:19-54) when an amateur ventures into a field dominated by professionals. All around us people who care about us are suddenly there helping—piling armor on us, dressing us up in equipment that is going to qualify us is for the task (even though it didn’t seem to be doing them much good).We get advice. We get instruction. We are sent off to a training workshop. We find ourselves with an armload of books. These people are truly concerned about us and we are touched by their concern, in awe of their knowledge and experience. We listen to them and do what they tell us. And then we find that we can hardly move.

It wasn’t easy to do what David did that day David loved King Saul. He admired King Saul. He served King Saul. King Saul was splendid and powerful. King Saul loved him and was doing his best to help him. But despite all that, David removed the helmet. Unbelted the sword and took off the armor. It couldn’t have been easy to do that, walking away from all that proffered expertise. But to have gone to meet Goliath wearing Saul’s armor would have been a disaster. It always is. David needed what was authentic to him.

What strikes me so forcibly in this picture is that David was both modest enough and bold enough to reject the suggestion that he do his work inauthentically (by using Saul’s armor); and he was be modest and bold enough to use only that which he had been trained to use in his years as shepherd (his sling and some stones). And he killed the giant.

David left: Saul’s armor behind and walked out into the Valley of Elah clean and spare, traveling light, delivered from an immense clutter, and kneeled at the brook.

David at that moment, kneeling at the brook, frames something that is absolutely essential for each of us. Are we going to live this life from our knees imaginatively and personally.’’ Or are we going to live it conventionally and second-hand? Are we going to live out of our God-created, Spirit-anointed, Jesus-saved being.’’ Or are we going today and defer to eunuch professionals? Are we going to be shaped by our fears of Goliath or by God? Are we going to live by our admiration of Saul or by God?

God created each one of us for a purpose and equipped us with gifts and talents from above. If we busy ourselves with a lot of information regarding how others deal with life, but spend no time to reflect on what God has already given us to deal with life, we will not be able to conquer giants in our lives. A lot of time, the greatest enemy is ourselves. Only if we can conquer ourselves, we can conquer other giants or whatever difficulties that come our way. Many people will give us advise as we encounter giant. They all meant good. They want to provide us with the best advise that worked for them before, and hope it works for us. But their suggestions usually not totally fit our situation. There is no “one size fits all” in ministry or in life encountering. That’s why we need to be reflective to our potentials, attentive to the word of God with the help of the Holy Spirit, and selective in our methodology catering to our strength and His principles. There is nothing wrong to listen to “professional” advise. But at the end of the day, we need to sort out some major decision in life through prayer and meditations – allow God to speak to us and we respond with obedient heart.

With love in Christ,
Lawrence