The Taunt Ends Today

This is part two of Comfort Must Fall—an excerpt series from Louie Giglio’s Goliath Must Fall. Click here to read part one.

They repeated their battle cry every day. They got suited up and went and stood on the front lines. They had God on their side and believed he was the one true God. But for forty days they were held back by comfort. They were prevented from moving forward by the lure of ease. The giant was calling the shots. He was dictating their lives. Goliath would come out every morning and evening and shake, rattle, and roar, and the Israelites would all say, “Nope, not today. Too dangerous. Too uncomfortable. Let’s go have lunch. Let’s stay in the tents where it’s safe. If we run out of supplies someone will arrive with more. Maybe we’ll do battle tomorrow.” 

We can act the same way today. We have our churches and our battle cries and there’s an entire camp of us hanging out together in our comfort. But the giant is taunting us. We are failing to let the victory of Christ into our lives in the fullest way, because we aren’t willing to step away from our sense of control, our ample supply, or our sense of material comfort. We won’t accept a challenge and move out with God into whatever he is calling us to do. We shout our war cries, but we continue to shudder in the shadow of our giants. 

The picture we tend to miss in the story of David and Goliath is that the little brother came on the scene and did in one day what his three older brothers and the whole army of Israel hadn’t been able to do for a month and a half. Every day they’d been wavering. Every day their comfort held them back. Every day the giant kept coming and coming and coming. Then David showed up and said, “This is nuts. This is going to end today. What hasn’t happened in the past forty days is going to happen in the next forty minutes.” 

It makes me wonder what God wants to do right here, right now, in our lives. Maybe we’ve been wavering. We’ve been waiting for a long time for all the pieces to line up before we can move. We want everything to get in place before some sort of good change happens. Instead, we just need to listen to God He’s saying, I am the God who can bring salvation today. Your giant is going down. In faith, you can step out of your comfort and go where I show you to go. I bet all the pieces aren’t going to line up for us at first. The whole pathway forward is not going to be revealed. The new direction God calls us in won’t feel familiar and comfortable at first. Yet God says, By my hand and by the might and the power of God, this victory is going to come. 

See, what matters is not that you and I wait until we feel fully strong. We don’t need to learn how to fly before we jump out of the nest. What matters most is that we understand that we move in God’s strength. As soon as we grasp that, we’re ready for the battle. Sure, when we do that we could be put in an uncomfortable position. Yet we will also be in the place where we can see the salvation of God.  What does this look like? 

To keep reading this excerpt from Louie Giglio’s Goliath Must Fall, click here for part three and click here to grab a copy of this special resource.