This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is the second day of our fourth week of Looking Through First and Second
Samuel. We're in the middle of the story of David and Goliath right now.
Yesterday, we looked together at four good reasons not to have faith.

You can always find a good reason to not have faith. Other people are more than
willing to give you a good reason not to have faith. Yesterday, we looked at
losing faith.

Today, we're going to begin to look at choosing faith. Yesterday, we looked at
how do you make the possible seem to be impossible. Today, we're going to look
at how do you see God making the impossible possible in your life.

We're going to look at four qualities in David's life that enabled him to say no
to those things that were trying to rob him of faith. And because of that, it
enabled him to face and then defeat Goliath. These things we're going to talk
about, these are things that you and I can begin to put into practice in our
lives today.

You will be surprised at how simple these four things are that make us men and
women of faith. What do you do to have faith? Well, number one, first thing you
learn from David is begin with faithfulness in the possible, faithfulness in the
small things of life.

That's where you begin. Listen to verses 34 to 36. David said to Saul, "Your
servant has been keeping his father's sheep.

When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after
it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I
seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the
lion and the bear.

This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them because he has defied the
armies of the living God. " David says, "I was faithful with my father's sheep.
I was faithful to protect them from the lion and the bear.

So I know that I can have faith in this circumstance. " It is faithfulness in
the small things of life that builds an ability to overcome the impossible in
our lives. David's great victory grew out of this faithfulness in small,
insignificant tasks.

One, we just read about tending the flocks and the protection of those flocks.
But a second one we talked about yesterday, taking lunch to his brothers.
Carrying his brothers' lunches to the battle is what got him to a place where he
could hear this challenge from Goliath.

If he'd said no to his father, I'm too important to carry that lunch, you do it,
he would never have been in this place. Faithfulness in the small things got him
to a place where he could have faith in the big things. Jesus said it, "Have
faith as a mustard seed, just as a mustard seed, and it will enable you to move
mountains.

" That's true because it's not the size of your faith that matters. It's the
greatness of God in whom we're putting our faith. That's what makes the
difference.

So you want to be a person of faith. You want to be a man of faith, a woman of
faith. Instead of worrying about what you can't do.

I'm not a very good witness. I'm not a very good missionary. I don't speak well
enough.

Instead of worrying about what you can't do, set that aside for now. Find
something you can do. Be faithful there.

Be faithful there and watch God to begin to grow in your life a faith that can
face the impossible in your life. The impossible task, the impossible
relationship, the impossible trust. There's a simple principle here for building
towards victory in our lives.

You be faithful in life's details and you will build towards victory over life's
Goliaths. Be faithful first in life's details. It's amazing here how God used
ordinary things to build this extraordinary victory.

David took a sling and five smooth stones. Now these were ordinary common
stones. There was nothing special about the stones at all.

And he'd used this sling all of his life. It was very common, very familiar in
his life. He built this incredible victory out of very ordinary things.

I'll never forget years ago, I can't even remember the name of it, watching a
television show about David. And it showed him getting ready to go out and
defeat Goliath. And he stood there and he picked up the stones and then I know
you won't believe this, but literally on this TV show, a blue beam of light came
out of heaven and hit David.

And because of that, it supercharged him, strengthened him to go out and defeat
Goliath. Listen, this isn't X-Men we're talking about here. This is God's power.

God doesn't send these blue beams of light from heaven. God uses ordinary things
in our lives. It's his extraordinary power that's working through these things.

It's not the blue beam of light. It's the God of heaven who created this
victory. You see, the most exciting thing of all is how God uses the ordinary
circumstances of our lives to create these extraordinary victories that we would
have never expected.

The victory of forgiveness, or the victory of someone coming to faith, or the
victory of a healing, or the victory in your life of a relationship that's
restored. That's what God does. So the first thing you do is you begin with
faithfulness in the possible, in the small things of life.

The second thing you do, David teaches us, is keep your eyes on God, not
Goliath. Number two, keep your eyes on God, not Goliath. Verse 26, David asks
the men standing near him, "What will be done for the man who kills this
Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel?

Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the
living God? " Faith changes our perspective on life. It changes your perspective
on life.

When you begin to see what others call impossible as a certain possibility,
that's because of faith. And when you begin to see with that perspective, the
rest is easy in many ways, because your perspective has been changed. You've
already seen it.

You've already seen what God's going to do. In verse 26, "Well, everybody else
was looking at Goliath's size. " Look how big he is.

He'd been doing this for 40 days, remember, coming out telling them, "Would
somebody come fight me? " Can you imagine over those 40 days the conversations
they were having about how big he was? Look at that guy.

He must be eight feet tall. I think he's nine feet tall. Maybe he's 11 feet
tall.

He's 20 feet tall. He had to get bigger and bigger in their mind every single
day, this nine-foot Goliath. But David had a different perspective.

He didn't focus on how big Goliath was. He focused on the armies of the living
God. Who is this guy anyway that he defies the armies of the living God?

The question is, are you spending your life gazing at Goliaths or looking at the
living Lord? What are you spending your life doing? All of us tend to gaze at
Goliaths sometimes because they're really close to us.

They're easy to see. And we've got to intentionally, by faith, get our eyes off
of the Goliath and get our eyes onto something that is much bigger, much
greater, the Lord. You see, when David thought about this battle, it wasn't a
battle of Goliath versus David.

It wasn't a battle of spear versus stones. It was a battle of Goliath versus
God. Because he knew that was the battle, he knew that victory would happen.

It's a change in perspective, that perspective so many people have talked about
with Goliath. Either Goliath was so big I can't possibly win, but in David's
case, he is so big I can't possibly miss. He had a different perspective.

Same giant, different hearts. You put the battle of life in perspective, and
when you do that, you begin to allow him, God, to become the story of your life.
It's not about you defeating Goliath.

It's about God defeating Goliath, and you get to be part of that. Are you
keeping your eyes on God, or are you keeping your eyes on Goliath? Are you
faithful in the small things?

That's where victory starts. Let's pray for a few minutes together and just ask
God to help us to be faithful to him so we can live in this sense of faith and
victory in our lives. Our Father, we come to you and we pray that you give us a
place to be faithful, faithful in the small things, with our family, in our
church, in our community, in our school, someone we can serve today, some way we
can serve today.

And Lord, whether anyone else notices or not, give us the faith to be faithful
there, the faithfulness to you. And Lord, out of that, build and strengthen
faith in our hearts, I pray. And Lord, I pray also that you'd help me, help us
to keep our eyes on you, not at the Goliaths of our life.

It's so easy to get focused there. That's not where we want our focus to be. We
want our focus to be on you, on who you are and how great you are.

So Lord, right now, intentionally, we turn our eyes off of all the other things
of life, the financial problems, the health problems, the challenges, the
opportunities that seem too huge for us. We turn our eyes from those and we put
our eyes on you. And we ask you, Lord, what do you want us to do?

What do you want us to do next? Show us and guide us, we pray. We ask this in
your name.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at two other ways that you and I
can have the faith of David.