Courage: Life lesson from King David

This was a lesson I taught a few weeks ago. Realised Ps Jeff uploaded his notes in his blog too. Think it'll be such a waste if any of us miss out the essence of this lesson if we are not reader of his blog. This is a lesson that may come timely for many of us especially when changes and challenges are setting in.

In any case, want to encourage more people to visit Ps Jeff's blog as he oftens pen down invaluable lessons and personal thoughts that may ignite thoughts and inspirations to many of us. His blog address is http://jeffchong.blogspot.com

Becoming More Courageous

Courage is a very important quality for leadership and for life. Courage is the opposite of fear. Fear can cause us to be angry, insecure, to lack faith, to be negative, to be critical in a bad way.

Courage is a distinct quality that all leaders need to have in their lives. Courage enables us to do what is right, to stay our course, to lead our people to new heights, to persevere, to have growth points in our lives and our ministries.

David versus Goliath (1 Samuel 17) is a story of courage. It is a story of God working through someone who decided to be courageous.

Israel was at war with Philistines. The Philistine champion was Goliath and he was calling for a one-on-one battle with anyone from Israel. Goliath was over 9 feet tall (that’s 2.7m tall!... slightly taller than me...)

The obvious person from Israel to fight one-on-one with Goliath was King Saul (he had both the positional and physical stature to do so). He was the king and he was described “a head taller than any of the others”.

Saul might have the position and he had the external appearance but he did not have courage. And because of his own cowardice, it caused the whole Israelite camp to be fearful (they were taunted by Goliath for 40 days).

Let’s look at the circumstances that cause David to develop courage in his life.

1) Through The Challenges That We Face In Our Everyday Living (1 Samuel 17:34-37)

David could have run away and no one would have known. He could have fabricated a story of how fierce the lions or the bears were (like Joseph’s brothers) but he did not.

David did not say that it was his own strength, his own knowledge that helped him but that it was the Lord who helped him out and would help him out again when facing Goliath.

It was in the everyday moments when nobody was watching that David built his courageous heart.

2) Through The External Criticism & Opposition That We Face (1 Samuel 17:26-29)

Eliab, David’s eldest brother, was burning with anger with David even though David did nothing wrong.

David was sent by their father; the sheep was left with another shepherd (v20). David was just being obedient to his father’s instruction.

Why did Eliab mistreated David in such a way?

It could very well be that Eliab was angry with himself. In David, he saw his own cowardice (when he was with the other people who were also afraid, he did not feel too bad about himself).

Perhaps, he felt ashamed of himself. Perhaps the fear of facing his true self caused him to be negative and angry.

How did David respond? David merely stated his position and then he moved on to do what he had planned to do. He did not go into a verbal war and argument with his negative brother. He did not allow unfair criticism to have much power in his life, he moved on with his mission.

Having said that, criticism is either true or false or a mixture. If it is true, then we fix what needs to be fixed and then move on (don't be a self martyr). If it is false, just dismiss it and move on (don’t allow it to cause you to lose heart).

3) Through Resisting The Pressure To Conform (1 Samuel 17:38-40)

Saul dressed David in his own tunic (Saul was a big guy physically while David was a small young man).

David did a really courageous thing to say no to Saul. Saul was the king and a renown warrior. David was unknown and a shepherd boy. It would have been really easy for David to say “Saul should know more than me. I should think that he must be right, what do I know?”

David knew his own gifts and served God in the way that God has called him.

4) Through Facing The Crisis Moments Of Life (1 Samuel 17:41-50)

David had been trusting God in his every day challenges and it made him even stronger as he gone through the crisis period. David faced Goliath head on and he trusted in God and God delivered him.

The summary of the whole story is really found in verse 45. With God, we can indeed be courageous. We need to face our Goliaths, we cannot run away from them.

At the end of the day, this is not really a story about David’s courage or his skills with the sling or his willingness to take risk, it is really a story about God. It is a story about how God is faithful to help us when we trust in Him.