Goliath Must Fall

This is part one of Comfort Must Fall—an excerpt series from Louie Giglio’s Goliath Must Fall.  We like to kick back at the end of the day with our shoes off and watch a fun show on TV. We like hanging out in the backyard in a hammock. We like knowing how much money we’ve got in the bank and feeling financially secure. We like things to be orderly in our lives, not chaotic. We like things to be smooth and to go as planned. Isn’t that comfort? Sure.  And none of those things are deadly in and of themselves.  Trouble arises when the desire for safety and security becomes the dominant theme of our lives. When a relaxation mentality supplants our attentiveness to God’s call on our lives.  Jesus took time off, but he didn’t come to earth to relax. He came for a specific mission and he left us with one as well.  That’s why comfort is perhaps the scariest giant of them all. It’s so subtle in its deception. It’s the giant that causes us to miss the very best because we have settled for something good. On the surface everything looks fine. What could be wrong with having a good job? A nice family? A routine?  The problem is we might forget that in the grand scheme of things (namely eternity), we have about five seconds on earth to make our lives count. Really count. Here are a few specific ways comfort can become a harmful thing:   If we miss a great opportunity because we choose a safer, easier route. If a good thing actually turns out to be harmful or counterproductive over time because it lulls us into a false sense of security. If we choose the good thing but miss the God-thing. If we buy into the idea that we work hard for a season of life and then we can choose to do whatever we want with the rest. If we slip into thinking it’s “my life” to do with as I please. If my number one factor in deciding what I do is “whatever makes me happy.” If comfort is sought ahead of everything else, including our desire to be available to God’s plans. If we grow accustomed to our sin and fail to confront it and remove it from our lives.   That’s the danger of comfort. That’s why comfort can be such a deadly giant. I know how people can struggle with any number of overtly horrible things, but sometimes it’s not the overtly horrible things that kill us. We aren’t heroin addicts. We aren’t going to prison for tax evasion. On the contrary, we are honest. And honorable.  Yet we have just settled for comfort, and the comfort ends up doing us in. Our abundant life on earth and our eternal reward in heaven aren’t robbed by the “bad” stuff. Our chance for a meaningful life and a happy forever is robbed by comfort.  Each year on the side porch of our house where Shelley and I once lived, we had birds building nests. Sometimes it was a nuisance, but usually it was a good thing. A few springs back some birds built the biggest nest I’d ever seen. It was the size of a basketball. I wondered for a while if we had a bunch of squirrels living up there, but no, it was birds. We loved watching these birds work. I mean, sure their nest building was a little muddy and messy. But I have massive respect for birds, mother birds in particular. They build the nest. They sit on the eggs. They hatch the baby birds. They fly to and fro all day long collecting worms and bugs for the baby birds to eat. They stole a third of a bale of my pine straw to build their nests in the first place. But that was all okay. These mother birds are the workhorses and caregivers of the avian world.  But something disrupted their flow that year. You know what it was?  London. Our new dog.  London is a big dog, and dogs regularly need to do things in the yard. In our case, the side yard right out the door near where the birds would quietly build their nests. Now, the bird’s tranquil habitat was the daily thoroughfare for our Goldendoodle. So whenever London came outside, the birds would get all agitated.  We particularly saw this agitation right when the baby birds needed to learn how to fly. It was time for those baby birds to jump out of the nest, but there was our big dog down below, and that caused considerable stress in the birds’ lives. They were thinking, Wait a minute. This is not what we’d planned. We have our territory. You have yours. Get that dog out of here.  Even then, with the dog down below, the mother bird finally said to her babies, “It’s time.” And those baby birds came out of the nest. The mama was saying, “You can fly. You’re ready to go forward. Off you go.” And off they went. Sure enough, somewhere between the nest and the ground, those baby birds figured out how their wings worked. They started flapping like mad and flew off into the sky and it was like they were saying, “Hey, this is awesome! We’re so glad we didn’t stay in the nest.”  This is a picture of our life in Christ. A nest is a good thing for a while. It’s safe and comfortable and sheltered, and all our spiritual baby-needs are taken care of. But if we’re not careful, then the giant of comfort tempts us to stay in the nest forever. Maybe we’re worried about leaving the nest. We see a big dog below on the ground. We’re not sure if we can fly or not. But staying in the nest is never our end goal. Comfort and familiarity are not what God points us toward. Jesus isn’t in the business of flying to and fro for the rest of our lives, hand-delivering spiritual baby food to us. The calling of faith pushes us out of the nest. Jesus says, “Hey, you weren’t made to live in the nest forever. You were made to live out in a broken world where there’s conflict and risk.” The gospel of Jesus pushes us out of the nest and says, “You’re ready to fly. Off you go.” Somewhere between the nest and the ground we figure out that our wings work. We see how Christ came into the world so he could send us out into the world. We see how we’re filled with his Holy Spirit, and we can walk where Jesus walked and be the hands and feet of Jesus, and we say, “This flying is awesome. It’s way better than the nest.”  Jesus told a story about a successful man. That man had bumper crops and said to himself, “I’m going to build a bigger barn to hold all my banner crops. And then I’ll have plenty to last me for a long while, so I’ll just take things easy. I’ll eat what I want, drink a little, and have a good time.”  But, God said to the successful man, “You are a fool.”  I don’t know a lot, but I know you don’t want to be called a fool by God!  God continued, “This is going to your last day on earth and your soul is going to appear before God. What’s more, you don’t even know who will end up with all this stuff.”  Rest assured, God is a generous God. He’s not stingy. He doesn’t need our stuff.  What God is doing is trying to help us see that there is a fight to be fought, a race to be run, something of eternal significance to be contended for. He’s calling us to greater purpose, but he knows how easy it is to just eat a good meal, relax with a nice drink, and forget about the brevity of life on earth.  I’m talking about influence that God wants to give us. I’m talking about opportunities. I’m talking about walking in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. I’m talking about stepping out in obedience. I’m talking about prayer and action. If our hearts are wide open in faith, then God is wide open to us. If we take the risk and go where God invites us, then God’s conduit is deep and wide. In faith, we’re invited to enter into the story of a generous God. In faith, we’re called to rally around the war cry that Christ has come and the battle is already won.  To keep reading this excerpt from Louie Giglio’s Goliath Must Fall, click here for part two and click here to grab a copy of this special resource.

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.

This is part three of Comfort Must Fall—an excerpt series from Louie Giglio’s Goliath Must Fall. Click here for part one, click here for part two, and click here to grab a copy of this special resource. 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?  We remember that faith thrives in discomfort.  I spoke this message at our church, and when I came to this first point, it couldn’t have gotten any quieter in the house. One of those “don’t breathe” moments. Faith goes hand in hand with discomfort. Oh, that’s just great, Louie. Exactly what everybody wants to hear.  But hey, don’t let me get in between you and God’s Word. Read the entire chapter of Hebrews 11, the “hall of fame” faith chapter in the Bible, and you’ll see what I mean. “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (v.1).  That’s seldom comfortable.  In fact, the gospel is rooted in a place of discomfort—Christ’s discomfort. The cross brought pain to Jesus in the same breath it brought freedom to us. We are alive because of Christ’s discomfort. We can fully live because of the rugged cross. Christ endured what was uncomfortable so we could become the sons and daughters of God. This is our story. People ask, “What does it mean to be a Christian?” It means to put our faith in the work of Jesus. What is the work of Jesus? That he came to earth. He lived. He was crucified. He was resurrected. He ascended into heaven. He sent the Spirit of God, and he’s now living inside of us. This is the gospel. This is what we believe, and it all hinges around a very uncomfortable moment.  Somehow as a people of God, if we’re not careful, we can sing songs about the uncomfortable moment of Jesus while we live in the very comfortable moment of us. Thank you, Jesus—you took it all. But we forget what it truly means to identify with Christ. The Bible tells us that as Christ followers, we identify with his crucifixion just as much as we identify with his resurrection. Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That means our dreams and plans become merged with Christ’s when we remember that death and life are both part of Christ’s work. Romans 6:8 says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” That’s our call. To die with Christ and also to live with him.  Can you name anything in the life of faith that’s completely comfortable? Resisting sin? Nope, not comfortable. Being transformed into the image of Christ? No, not comfortable either. Joining with Christ on his mission? No. Wondrous, but not always comfortable. That’s why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  Faith thrives in holy discomfort. The greatest moments in life can often result from some of the most uncomfortable decisions being made. Nothing worth having comes without a cost.  A few months after my father passed away in 1995, Shelley and I were in a fog of discomfort. We had left a thriving ministry behind in Texas to help my mom with my father’s care in Atlanta. But just before we relocated, a heart attack took him from us. We were confused, grieving death, between two cities and without jobs. The reason we were making the move vanished, leaving us in no-man’s-land.  Not comfortable.  But in that tilled-up soil, a seed was planted, a seed we have watched grow and blossom into all things Passion. God needed us open-handed, flexible, and available so faith could give birth to something new and bold and beautiful. We remember the point of our lives is the fame of Jesus.  How can we make sure we don’t lose God’s opportunity by settling back in our comfort and complacency? We remember the point of our lives is the fame of Jesus.  If our only motivation for taking down a giant is our freedom, then we won’t have all the motivation that’s needed. God’s glory is also the motivation for us to walk in victory over the giants in our lives. Our freedom and God’s glory are forever intertwined, and if we forget about the glory of God, then we won’t be willing to pay the price of whatever step it is that God’s asking us to take. When we see the glory of God, we’ll understand that there is no cost too great to pay to make his name known in our life.  The army of Israel was complacent in their comfort. They had food. They had tents. They had a war cry. They had armor. They had little brothers who would replenish their supply.  But they weren’t moving.  David showed up and said, “Hey, Goliath, you’re insulting my God. That’s got to stop right now. It stops because you’re dishonoring my God. This is the God I worship, the God I commune with, the God who loves me, the God I’ve been hanging out with for years in the shepherd’s field. And you are taking glory away from the name of the one true God of all gods. That needs to stop immediately.”  Philippians 2 is an amazing passage. Paul talks about how he wants us to give our lives away for one another. The point of life is not to think about me and mine, but to think about you and yours. Not to get my stuff in order, but to think about what I can do to help you. Paul gives us a picture of that in verse 5: “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had” (NLT).  Jesus had the full rights and full nature and essence of God, yet he stepped out of heaven and came to earth. He humbled himself and became a man. He took the nature of a servant. Jesus obeyed God the Father and went to the cross. Because of all that, the Bible says, God “exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11).  Why did Jesus ultimately take this step? For our well-being? No. For the glory of God. Why did Jesus empty himself? Because he loved us? No. It was ultimately for the glory of God. Of course God loves us. Of course God cares about us. The love of Jesus shines a light on God. And our response is to live for his glory. We align ourselves with God. How can we make sure we don’t lose God’s opportunity by settling back in our comfort and complacency? We align ourselves with God.  Any of us can sit back and decide it’s easier to follow the world’s message. A point of view. The example of someone else’s life. Someone else’s standard for material wealth. Ultimately, we can rationalize anything we want. But the invitation for each of us is not to come and follow our neighbor or fellow believer. It’s to follow Christ.  Purposeful, meaningful, lasting life is the by-product of walking closely with the Father, Son, and Spirit. When Jesus was a boy, he asked, “Didn’t you know I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49, author’s paraphrase). When the Spirit fell on the early followers of Jesus in the book of Acts, his power propelled them into the world to proclaim the grace and goodness of the gospel at all cost.  God doesn’t call us to avoid the danger of a lost and dying world. Rather, he leads us into it with the sword of the Spirit in our hands. He says, “We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work” (John 9:4 NLT).  My friend Andy Stanley reminds us that we don’t end up where we hope to end up. Our lives ultimately end up wherever our path is headed right now. So we have to be diligent about who and what we align ourselves with. Because whatever (or whomever) we saddle up with is going to determine where we arrive months and years from now.  Who are you linking your life to? Who helps you decide what you spend, where you go, what you watch, what ranks at the top of your to-do list? To walk with Christ is to imitate him. To imitate Christ is to live with ultimate purpose. We remember life is short. How can we make sure we don’t lose God’s opportunity by settling back into our comfort and complacency? We remember that life is short. It’s a mission statement for all of us to ingest into our hearts and lives. “Life is short.” We forget this so easily. But it’s so important.  When David’s three older brothers and all the rest of the army of Israel got to the end of their days, I believe they all shared a big regret. They’d wasted forty days sitting on that hillside. Forty days they would never get back. Hey, life is short, and what a waste to spend forty days under the influence of a taunting giant. They had the power of God with them. They could have moved forward if they’d wanted to. But they didn’t. They chose comfort instead of discomfort. They chose to waste their days rather than claim their days.  What’s the danger for us? It’s that we do the same thing. We waste our days thinking, I’ve got time. I’ll obey God in the next season of life. I’ll obey God when I get enough money in the bank. I’ll obey God when my kids are out of the house. I’ll obey God when I’m older. I’ll obey God when I’m finished having fun. I’ll obey God after I’m married. I’ll obey God when my marriage gets easier. I’ll obey God when it seems like it’s a more logical time to take the next step.  But God is breaking into our story today. He says, The battle is already won. I want you to step out with me right now, today. Don’t delay. Life is short. Don’t waste your days.  We might live to be eighty-five or ninety years old, but in the end it’s all pretty much the same. God gives us breath. And then our days are gone. Quickly, a match is lit. Quickly, a match is extinguished. Poof. Wow, that went by fast. If the Enemy can keep us good and comfortable, then he can prompt us to waste our days. But we are not a people of comfort. We are a people of faith.  To be clear, complacency is not about what we own or don’t own. It’s cultivating and tolerating an off-target heart. Complacency springs from the root of me that says we should protect what we have because we earned it—and we deserve more. That kind of thinking results from having our eyes glued to the wrong world. Namely, this passing world, instead of the one that’s coming.  The reminder of God is that we rally around the cross. We don’t have time to waste our days. Yes, we rest in the work of Jesus. Yes, his yoke is easy and our burden is light. But yes, we work with all our might. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:26, “I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.” We live on a planet with billions and billions of people who’ve never heard of Jesus. That’s why time is short. This world is rattling at the hinges, and we have the answer. We have the hope. We have the truth. We have the life. We have Jesus.  That’s what matters—letting Jesus be known. The goal of our faith isn’t to settle into a nice comfortable job and a nice easy routine. The goal is to say, “God, I’m available for whatever you want me to do. When you call on me I will step forward and say, ‘In the name of the Lord God Almighty, I will step into the fight.’ Not in my ability. Not in my power. Not in my strength. But in the name of Jesus. Life is short, and I don’t have enough time to have a complacent heart.” If you want to keep reading from Goliath Must Fall, click here to grab a copy of this special resource.

How do our giants come down? Jesus is your giant slayer. He has the power to break every chain. In this message, Louie Giglio examines how David defeating Goliath acts as a mirror to the hope we have in the power of Jesus. Our giants, our “Goliaths”, have to fall at the feet of Jesus.

How can we tune out the voice of fear in our lives? Fear is faith in the enemy. Worship is the way we can seek to silence the voice of fear in our lives. Louie Giglio encourages us in this message by showing us how to maximize the power of a soundtrack.

You are your own worst enemy. Underneath and behind the giants of fear, rejection, comfort, addiction, and anger lies the giant of self. Louie Giglio inspires us in this message as we learn how just like Goliath must fall, self must fall.

We all have giants standing in the valley of our lives. Giants are subtle ways the enemy gets into our stories, derailing us from God’s plans for our lives. As we look at the different things trying to take us out, we look at ourselves. Instead of bringing attention to the giant taking us down, we can lift our eyes to Jesus. The giant isn’t our family member or that substance—it’s ourselves. We can’t get free as long as we’re blaming someone else; we have to understand that God is greater and we need to humble ourselves before Him, ultimately taking responsibility for our own decisions.

“Complacency is when we have willingly tolerated something in our lives that we know is not God’s plan for us.” God has the power to set us free. Instead of living comfortably and being complacent, we can start today by stepping into the fullness of what He has called us to, giving up anything less than the best He has for us.