Lessons for Living (Audio)

So, imagine that you’re about to face Goliath. He’s nine and a half feet tall, maybe 600 pounds and a warrior that even your king is afraid to fight! What is the mindset that will lead you to success? It doesn’t appear that David was intimidated one bit by Goliath’s physical stature, because David wasn’t looking with only physical eyes. Pastor Mark will be teaching about David’s perspective, which was that his God was more powerful than any mere human, no matter how formidable that human was. The lesson is clear – get your eyes on God and He will give you victory over your obstacles.

It’s too easy to fail to do what you know God wants you to do because you think that someone else (fill in the blank) could do it “better”. Moses had this problem. God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt; Moses claimed he couldn’t speak as well as Aaron, so God should’ve picked Aaron. Pastor Mark will be reminding you of your uniqueness, your individuality. You have gifts in a combination with your personality that no one else has. Besides – isn’t it prideful to be thinking about how you will look to people? God is the one who is supposed to get the glory – right?

Most people make the mistake of thinking that they’re too unimportant for Satan to be interested in messing with their lives. You might be thinking that way, too. “I’m not as important as David was, or even my pastor or elder; the devil won’t bother me.” As Pastor Mark will be teaching, this mode of thinking is incorrect because it assumes that Satan’s plans are based on how important you think you are to God’s kingdom. Satan wants to destroy your life – and your soul if he can – simply because he hates you. He hates all of God’s creation and he wants to destroy all of it. He is against you whether you admit it or not.

Well, now we get to the famous fight between David and Goliath. The deal was, was that the losing country would serve the winning one. You can be sure that if Goliath had won that the Philistines would’ve made sure to put Israel under their control. As Pastor Mark will be teaching, the countries around Israel are a symbol of your sin nature. When David beat Goliath, the Philistines ran away rather than turning themselves over to Israel. In the same way, your sin nature will not voluntarily submit itself to God’s will. As the apostle Paul would write later, the sin nature has to be put to death.

The passage you hear quoted is from Jesus and is generally applied from Jesus’ time to the present. It does, however, certainly apply to all of history – Satan did tempt Eve, after all. His plan for mankind has been, since his fall, to steal, kill and destroy any positivity God wants to bless mankind with. As Pastor Mark will be teaching, you will hear about that in the life of Saul. As Saul gave in to his pride and resisted God’s commands, he opened himself to the destructive influence of the devil. This is clearly contrasted with David, who gave himself fully to God and reaped those benefits.

It must have been really bizarre for David to go to work for Saul. Here he was, the future king, working for the current king. If, somehow, Saul had found out that David was the one God had chosen to replace him – well, David’s life might have been over. But as a tribute to David’s humility and quality of character he served Saul as well as his father to the best of his ability. Pastor Mark will be teaching about how this attribute was seen consistently throughout David’s life. Because David’s heart sought to please God, he was able to please the men God had sent him to serve as well.

Too often, people try to fix the symptom rather than doing the work of addressing the underlying problem in their lives. It’s easier to get larger clothes rather than admit that you’re gaining weight and need to use some self-control when it comes to eating and increase your physical activity. Pastor Mark will be teaching that Saul’s servants took the same approach; instead of encouraging the king to get right with God they sought to soothe him with music. You will be encouraged to – unlike Saul – be honest with yourself, seek God and make any changes in your life you need to.

There’s a desire in all people to feel important. No matter their station or status in life, there is a yearning to feel as though they have a value they can grasp, can hang on to. When you give your life to God, He asks – no, He demands – that you give that desire up. He wants you to find your value in the fact of being His child. Pastor Mark will be teaching about the boy David and his humble beginnings. It seems that from an early age that David had a relationship with God and, as a shepherd, had lots of time to contemplate his standing with God as well as God’s greatness. Many of the Psalms resulted from this contemplation.

Are you one of those people who likes to be in control of their lives? If you answered, “yes” to that question, you are like all of the other people in the world. It’s hard to hand your life over to God, to really trust Him to guide you, because He might want you to do something that’s uncomfortable, that stretches you in ways you didn’t anticipate. Pastor Mark will be teaching about what Saul could have been had he remained obedient to God, contrasted with what David was able to achieve because the intent of his life was to obey God. While David did get off track, his heart attitude was always to be close to God.

You probably can’t think of any media outlet that encourages and praises the “nobody” as a position to seek after. On the contrary, the messages are to “be the best you can be” or to seek your fifteen minutes of fame – even infamy is okay – just be noticed. Pastor Mark, teaching about the life of David, will show that God’s standards are vastly different from the worlds’. You will find out that the boy David was from a normal family, the youngest son, and a shepherd, which was a lowly position. Because he didn’t aspire to be anything but a follower of God, God could use him in an extraordinary way.