A Sunday School teacher was telling his class the story of David and Goliath. He really got into it and told it with lots of gestures and movements and sound effects. He finished by telling how little David killed the giant Goliath with a rock from his sling.

At the end of the story he asked the class what lesson they had learned. One of the little boys popped up and said: “Be sure to duck!”

The story of David and Goliath is probably the best known story from the Old Testament. Kids love it because it has the lure and power of a hero. The underdog; the quiet misunderstood kid; the one without any respect; the one that wins by overcoming insurmountable odds.

I like it because it’s a really great adventure and faith story about a teenager living out his faith and coming to the rescue of a whole nation.

We all know the story. Israel is at war with the Philistines. Saul, the Israelite king and his army are lined up on one side of the Elah River and the Philistine army is lined up on the other.

The Philistines send out their best and fiercest warrior. They’ve come equipped with a ringer. Goliath. The Israelites see Goliath and their hearts sink. You could hear the collective gulp of fear from the Israelite army.

You see, warring armies sometimes did sort of a strange but noble thing back then when they fought. Each side chose a warrior and then those two faced off in a head to head competition. In this case, who ever won the battle, won the war.

Goliath looked like a Sherman Tank. He was over nine and a half feet tall and weighed over four hundred pounds. He wore a bronze helmet. His armor alone weighed 125 pounds. His spear was the size of a small tree, the spearhead, alone, weighed over 13 pounds.

This was one bad dude. He was King Kong and the Terminator rolled into one, only with an attitude. Imagine Shaquille O’Neil TWO feet taller - on steroids!

Every morning for forty days, the Philistines came out and challenged the Israelites. “Where’s YOUR champion? Where’s YOUR warrior?” And then they’d laugh. The Israelites sat in their tents and shivered in fear.

Then one day this young man, David, shows up to bring his brothers bread and cheese from home. He hears Goliath’s taunts and jeers, so he goes to King Saul and says, “I’ll fight him.”

Saul and his entourage just laugh. But David insists. So, they deck him out in the King’s armor. But it so large and weighs so much that it really restricts his ability to move. He looks like a goofball and feels even goofier.

So David shucks the armor, takes his staff, goes down to the stream, fishes around for a bit and comes up with five smooth stones.  And with those stones and his sling he goes out to meet the giant Goliath.

Well, Goliath can scarcely believe what he is seeing. He laughs and makes fun of the teenager. Goliath says, “Am I a dog that you come at me with a stick?”

However, David never veers from his steady course. He shouts back, “You come to fight me with a sword and a spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord...the very God whom you have defied.”

And we all know what happened next, don’t we?  David takes a stone from his pouch, puts it into his sling and with a flick of the wrist sends it soaring towards Goliath. The stone ends up imbedded in Goliath’s head and he falls to the ground with an earth shattering thud.

Great story.  The underdog wins.  And we all know the moral, right?  With God, anything is possible.  So if you have a giant staring you down in your life (and we all do – whether it is our job or lack thereof, a struggling marriage or not being married, ill health, addictions) – all we have to do is trust in God and everything will be all right. 

Isn’t that how most sermons on this story go?  I was tempted to preach it that way too. BUT … is that how it goes in real life?  Is all we have to do is pick up a few stones and hurl them at our giant and trust God to do the rest? 

I would contend that it wasn’t that easy for David and it certainly isn’t that easy for us.  Trusting God is important.  But sometimes I think all we do is give lip service to God and then wonder why things don’t work out. 

David didn’t just trust God when he went out to face Goliath. He brought with him a number of important attributes or qualities that we also have at our disposal.  Let’s look at just five.

The first is PMA, POSTIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE.

Look at our text for this morning.  The Israelites were not in possession of much PMA  – as a matter of fact, they were filled with just the opposite. 

Saul and his people sat in their tents, immobilized by their fears and their anxieties, immobilized by the very sight of this giant, standing in their way.

Did you notice that was exactly what happened: they were immobilized by their fear of Goliath - not by anything the giant had done to them.

Not one single soldier of the people of Israel had been defeated in battle by Goliath, because not one single soldier of the people of Israel had overcome his fear long enough to fight this giant of a man. Not yet.

Like so many giants which confront us, which keep us from doing the things we dream of doing, which tell us, “It can’t be done” before we even try, Goliath went unchallenged.

Like so many of the giants which confront us, Goliath didn’t win by strength of sword and spear, but by anxiety and fear.

We can be our own worst enemies. When our minds generate fear and worry, we are the ones who create the malignancies that can appear in our spirits.

It is said, “That in which we invest mental energy will always expand.” Are you investing in positive or negative mental energy?

It is hard to have a positive attitude when we have already given up.  And even when we think we can move beyond our fears, often there are others around us who we let beat us back down. 

David’s brothers spoke to him as older children often do to their younger siblings: they put him down, told him he couldn’t do it. And there are all kinds of people who will do that … if we let them. 

David chose to ignore the taunts and jeers, as should we.

We can do more than we think: we really can. Far more than we think.  And it all starts with a Positive Mental Attitude.  See, that’s what David had. Everybody else looked at Goliath and thought he was too big to tangle with, too big to hit. But David looked at Goliath and thought he was too big to miss.

David didn’t let his fears get the better of him. David saw Goliath and saw an opportunity for God to show just how mighty God can be.

As Christians, as parents, we need that same kind of positive attitude in our lives, in our faith, in our homes. There is so much negativity in the world. There are so many negative images and negative role models.

Our children, our families, others in the world need to see and hear a positive message. We need to build up and not tear down. We need to strengthen our families, our church, our schools, and our community with a positive attitude that helps and builds.

Remember David didn’t say, “I don’t do giants.” He did what God asked with a positive attitude. We need that some positive attitude in our faith and in the world today.

Second, David was prepared to meet Goliath.  And when we face the giants that plague us in our lives, we, too, need to BE PREPARED. 

God will usually only work with what we give him.  There is an old adage that goes: Pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on you.  So true!

A fan of Marion Anderson, the famous opera singer, once remarked to her, “I would give my right hand if I could sing like you.”

Marion smiled and replied, “But would you be willing to practice eight hours a day for many years to sing like this?”

Today, we live in an “instant” society. We have instant potatoes, instant coffee, microwave meals.

There is a widespread belief that we can achieve instant success with a minimal amount of effort. To achieve success and excellence in a chosen field of endeavor, there must be sweat, hard work, and burning of the midnight oil.

Facing the giants and the large challenges of life and being victorious over them will never come without preparation.

It wasn’t by luck that David found just the right stone and just the right sling and that in tossing it towards Goliath, hit him in just the right place.  He was successful because he had practiced for hours and hours and days and days till he was really, really good.

And he was prepared.  Did you notice that he brought FIVE smooth stones with him.  We assume he hit Goliath with his first stone, but he was prepared if he didn’t.  God worked with what David brought to the table.  And so it is with us. 

When we are getting ready to fight our giants, we need to be prepared.

The third attribute that helped David and can help us is OBEDIENCE. 

Short story: Two men of rather low IQs were driving through the back roads of a little town. They came to an overpass with a sign which read: Clearance: 11’3”.

They got out and measured their rig, which was 12’4” tall. “What do you think?” asked one as they climbed back into the cab.

The driver looked to the left and to the right, then shifted the truck into gear, saying, “No cops around. Let’s take a chance!”

Many people are that way about God’s law. They look around to see if anyone is watching, and if not, they break the law, not realizing that even if no one else is looking, God certainly is.

As Christians, we are supposed to be obedient to God. If we want a good example of how to do just that, we need look no farther than Jesus.  Listen to him:

“Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

“I came down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent me.”

“Not my will, but thine be done.”

Note the “thy will be done” theme is a key emphasis in two of our Lord’s most important prayers: The Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

There is no question about it. At the center of Jesus’ life was a glad and unflinching obedience to his Father’s will. This kind of obedience and commitment to God’s will is a key mark of discipleship.

When we are obedient we are more able to hear God – when we are obedient we are more able to follow God where HE leads us, not where we WANT him to lead us.

I love what the old Pentecostal woman said after one particularly rambunctious service with lots of shouting and jumping around. Someone asked her what she thought of all these new people who had suddenly gotten faith.

She said, “Honey, it ain’t how high they jump when they get the spirit, it is how true they walk when they come down.”

That brings us to number four. If we have the right attitude, are prepared, are being obedient – then we need TO ACT. 

In front of his friends, David was pretty bold.  In front of the King, he made some big claims. Now in front of Goliath he had to back up his claims with action. 

And that’s just what he did. He took the field, faced Goliath and took out a stone and flung it.  Nothing would have happened without David doing something. 

Sure, God could have just given Goliath a heart attack and dropped him dead, but God most often works through us.  David had to initiate and as he did God was right there with him.   

Like David, no one can fully serve the Lord without some effort – effort which propels action. We can’t sit idlely by expecting God to do all the work – we need to take an active part.  We need to face our Goliaths and then do something.

Then finally, the fifth stone in our pouch and in David’s is FAITH.  David counted on God.  David believed God’s promises.  David had faith that what God said goes. Everything he did was surrounded by God because he knew God was with him. 

Do we count on God? In the face of all the other things we trust in, is God underneath and around and in everything we do? And when we face the scary giants in our lives – do we trust that God will take that which we have prepared in our lives and use it to help us overcome our adversary?

The story of David and Goliath was being taught in five-year-old Sunday School class one Sunday. In explaining the story to the children, the teacher asked, “What would YOU do if you were in David’s shoes today?”

Without hesitation one of the boys shouted, “I’d call 911!”

I wish that were the answer to all of our problems in the world but it’s not. We can’t pick up the phone and get rescued. But we can live the life of faith. Jesus Christ, the son of God, knows how hard life can be. He walked where we walk. He knows our needs before we ever even ask.

At the Last Supper he told the disciples, “Look you’re going to have all kinds of problems. You’ll have good days and bad days all the rest of your life. It’s not because of anything you did or didn’t do. It’s just a part of life. It happens to us all. The difference for YOU though, is me. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

We need to remember that. God is with us. We need a giant sized faith to live in today’s world. And it takes all five stones to defeat the giants in our lives. 

We need a positive attitude, we need to be prepared, we need to be obedient in our lives so as to hear God’s direction and feel his strength around us, we then need to take action and not sit on the sidelines waiting for God to do his thing.

 And above all, we need to undergird all of what we do and say with a faith in the living God who is greater than any giant and stronger than any Goliath.

It is my prayer that like David we will pick up our stones and with the help of God have the courage to face whatever giants threaten us. And not just face that giant, but use those stones to remove that giant from the path God has chosen for us.  May it be so! 

Amen!