David and Goliath: A Heart After God's Heart

When you are trusting God authentically, when you are living God's ways and not the world's ways, people who don't follow Jesus, people who don't trust God, people who don't align with God's values, God's ways, and God's kingdoms, they're going to question you for doing so. And, this is what's taking place here. David's heart is for God's. David's trust is in God. David's belief is that God will deliver him from this enemy of the Philistines and Goliath. But his brother and probably people around them, their hearts were not thinking God's gonna protect them. Their hearts are not aligned with God. What they do, they say he starts Eliab starts questioning David's heart. And the reality is one of the ways you know you're following Jesus well is when people who don't follow Jesus start questioning you for following Jesus. [00:41:52] (54 seconds)  #QuestionedForFaith

When your life aligns with God's values and not the world's values, the people who align with the world's values are looking at you and go, why are you doing this? This doesn't make sense. This is wrong. They'll start casting judgment on your character, on your lives, and your actions. This is the reality of what it looks like to follow Jesus sometimes. This is the reality of trusting God. This is the reality we see all the way back to David's time. His own brother questioned him. [00:42:46] (27 seconds)  #StandForGodsValues

``So, here's this person that's a little more than a boy says, okay, you come to me with sword and armor and and jab, all that kind of stuff. I come to you with the God of Israel. You come with your training and experience. I come to you with faith that God is going to take care of this. And, what a response by David. David makes it known where his help is going to come from. It's God versus sword and spear and javelin. And, he's saying, God is going to win. He's not even gonna say, I'm about to defeat you. He's like, because of God, I'm about to defeat you. This is where the victory comes. This is where my faith comes. This is where my heart lies. Because the reality is this, a person whose heart is for God is a person with great courage despite opposition. [00:47:29] (47 seconds)  #FaithOverFear

David is facing something that no other person in Israel is willing to face. He just has courage to say, you know what? I don't care what you have. I have something better. I don't care about your weapons. My weapon is greater. I don't care about your training. The person who did this, created this whole thing, his training is better than yours anyway. I've got God and you don't. I'm okay. This is the courage he has. And, don't miss this. This is where David's courage comes from. It comes from the fact that his heart is aligned with God's. No matter what the opposition, no matter what the problem is, David thinks, I'm gonna be okay. [00:48:16] (36 seconds)  #CourageFromFaith

But this isn't a message of ghost slayer giants. Like I said, I don't like that narrative. It's not the point. The point of this story is this. In order to have faith to do incredibly difficult things, you need to have a heart aligned with God who uses his people to do incredibly hard things. This is a heart issue. And, anything else, what we just saw was a heart issue in the story. This isn't go kill your Goliath. This is align your hearts with God so that you have boldness and courage to do what needs to be done even in the face of opposition. It all starts and ends with your hearts. [00:51:10] (42 seconds)  #AlignYourHeart

And, throughout this story and throughout this series, we just gonna keep seeing that David's heart indicates what he does. That when it's aligned with God, when it longs for God, it leads him to do amazing things, courageous things, bold things. We'll see in a couple weeks that when his heart doesn't align with God, he does stupid things. But, it all starts and ends with your hearts. And, who or what is your heart aligned with? This is the one thing we're walking with today. The heart aligned with God's gives courage and boldness. [00:51:51] (33 seconds)  #HeartDecidesActions

But for that to happen, our hearts have to be after God's heart. And, David's actions here showed that. And, here's the reality. I don't know what you'll face in life. I don't know what situation you'll you'll come in, but I do know we live in a world and a culture right now where boldness and courage is needed in the name of Jesus. [00:53:00] (22 seconds)  #HeartsAfterGod

What we're called to do as Jesus followers is not fall in line with the world. We are called to live in accordance to God's kingdom, with love, with grace, with forgiveness, but also to call out injustice. We're called to be peacemakers. [00:54:20] (24 seconds)  #KingdomLiving