End of Level Boss

For some time, I’ve been listening to podcasts from Celebration Church where the preacher is usually the very entertaining, yet extremely challenging Pastor Mark Gungor (you may have seen his popular Tale of Two Brains on YouTube).

His most recent sermon is called The Thin Line Between Faith and Stupid. As ever, it is very humorous but often uncomfortably challenging. There’s one point that the speaker made which really struck home for me two days ago and I’ve been mulling it over in my heart saince. He asked how come it wasn’t stupid for David to take on Goliath when he did, in the way he did (we’ve all heard the story, but you can refresh yourself here in 1Samuel 17)?

And so I got to asking myself the same question; how come David could have been so confident in taking on this giant of a dude who may have looked not dissimilar to Brian Blessed on stilts?

You know, if you’ve ever played any computer games at any point since the 80s, you’ll be familiar with the end of level boss. You face the end of level boss after you’re managed to get through all the other smaller bad guys as they come against you in wave after wave of merciless attack.

If you can’t fight the little spaceships, you’ll never be able to take on the mother ship.

David had experience of what God can do in fighting off the threats he faced in his life. In fact, such was David’s attitude with God’s strength that if a lion came and stole one of the sheep he was shepherding, he would actually get up and chase the lion, get the sheep back and kill the lion for its trouble! He did the same also with a bear!

It’s precisely because David had tackled the lion and the bear in the strength of God that he knew he could tackle Goliath. If he’d killed the lion and the bear in his own strength and self confidence, he’d have had reason to doubt his ability against an armoured lump of a man like Goliath.

Sure, he said that he believed in God, but all the soldiers in the Israeli army would have believed in God. David had experience of God and was an eyewitness to what God can do with people who trust him.

Everything we face in life is the next big thing, every problem is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced and every heartache is the darkest heartache, every disappointment is the deepest, every let-down is the biggest, but it’s because we trust God to get us through this one that we can be confident that He will get us through the next one!

If you can’t get passed this hiccup in your experience, you’ll not stand a chance with the next one. When we feel that we’re finding ourselves in the same situation, over and over, it’s usually because we’re not facing up to it as we should.

You could be looking down the barrel of  the pistol of potential disappointed-hope; But what to do? Sure, you could run away and be bitter and stew on what you feel was done wrong by yourself and/or others, or you can take back the joy that the disappointment has taken from you and trust in God to help you through it, even to kill the disappointment that’s in your heart. I know that if you don’t handle it properly, you’ll only have to come back and re-play the level and face again the same butt-ugly end-of-level boss; you’ll only have to come back and re-sit the test.

There’s an element of testimony in this post because I’m mid-way through a personal battle. It may last a few more days or weeks yet, but looking back through it even from here, I can see the changes that God has made in my heart already. He’s been able to make changes as I’ve trusted Him at various points and I can’t afford to stop now.

Dudes, you aren’t going to get anywhere spiritually if you don’t trust Him right where you are to do what He wants to do in your life. You might not like it! You might not even think it’s fair! It may even result in people thinking you’re the biggest schmuck to have been born of a woman, but hold on in there! Don’t give up! Don’t pack it in if you make a mistake along the way! Trust God, trust God’s grace, trust God’s wisdom and trust God’s love.

Trust.