We all end up in tight spots at sometimes. Big or small. Just annoying – or tragic. And if God's God – well shouldn't He show up on those days? If He loves us – wouldn't He help?
Every now and then, we find ourselves in a tight spot. Sometimes we've behaved our way into a problem; maybe a wrong diet or no exercise and we get diabetes. Or a neglected relationship and we end up with tension and strife. Or just a day-to-day thing, a difficult "what do I do?" kind of situation.
Lots of people have lots of different spiritual beliefs and practices, meditation, yoga, crystals but when it's crunch time, what difference can they really make? When we need help surely help comes in the form of someone not something. When you or I are in a tight spot, can we have the confidence that someone will deliver us out of it?
This week on "A Different Perspective", we're looking at the whole question of experiencing God as King David wrote back in Psalm 34, three thousand years ago, "We need to taste and see for ourselves that the Lord is good." And over this last few days we've been looking at the fact we need to come to God just as we are, trusting that all the rotten stuff in our lives – the stuff that God calls sin, is dealt with because Jesus paid for it on the cross. And then we need a desire, a God-given desire, to have a relationship with Him and then enjoy walking in God's plan for our lives.
But as we do that, as we walk in God's plan for our lives, and if that sounds a bit strange, I would really encourage you … if you are seeking an authentic spiritual experience; if you've been looking around, shopping around in the spiritual market place; if we want real, authentic, loving, powerful spiritual experience that makes a difference – try Jesus. But as we walk in God's plan every now and then, we hit a crunch time.
We hit a time where things are difficult … there's a pressure. There's something that we don't seem to be able to get through. There's something that scares us. There's something that unsettles us. Maybe it's sickness, maybe it's physical, maybe it's spiritual, maybe it's financial. Well, from where I sit; if God promises that He will be my God, if He loves me so much that He sent Jesus, His Son, to die for me; then the real proof of the authenticity is in those crunch moments.
Where's God? If God says to me through the Son, "Taste and see that the Lord is good", then when I'm at that pressure point, where pressure is coming in from all sides, surely God should be in that space too.
Now, I'm not talking about having a perfect life, I'm not talking about God taking all those pressures and problems away. I'm not talking about some sugar-coated unreality. When you're a kid, a perfect parent is someone that gives you lollies whenever you want them and we all know, as a parent, that's not the right thing to do. So it's not some unreality that we're talking about, it's God being in the middle of that reality with us.
There's a great story in the Old Testament, in the Bible about David and Goliath. Most of us will know that story. The army of Israel and the army of the Philistines were having a stand-off. And the Philistines had challenged a soldier from the Israelite army to come to dual with their soldier and their soldier was Goliath. He was a big, big man and it turns out there was not a single soldier among the Israelite army that was prepared to go and fight this man.
And then this young David, young kid, comes along to the battle scene – not because he was a soldier, not because he's been invited but because he was bringing food to his brothers who are soldiers. He's the runt of the litter and his job is just to be a courier. And he goes and sees what's going on. And he sees this Philistine over there and he says, "Hang on a minute, how is it that no one is going to fight Goliath? I'll go and fight Goliath."
So he went to see the King, Sa
