Put Down the Sling and Pick up the Word | Robby Gallaty | 1 Samuel 17

Today, I wanna teach on a very familiar passage, and here's the title if you're taking notes. I wanna encourage you today to put down the sling and pick up the word. Put down the sling and pick up the word. We're gonna study about David and Goliath, and the reason we love David and Goliath so much is we all love a good underdog story. Can I get an amen, right? Facing the giants, the blinds, I mean, we love those story. We love the story of the kid who never gets drafted. We love the story of the team who, against all odds, wins. We love the story of the fighter that no one bets on, and then he wins the fight, and the reason, if we're honest, look at me, the reason we love that story is because we want to be in the story. We want the story about us, and that's why David and Goliath really resonates with us, and for years, you and I picked up the Bible. We've read 1 Samuel 17, and we've interpreted it this way. You go out and identify your giant. Take your slingshot, find you some stones, believe in yourself, and decimate the person in front of you who's taunting you. That's how most people have heard this preached, amen? That's how, and sadly, I've even preached it that way before, right? Find your giant and face it for the glory of God. Here's the problem. The sermon makes us the hero,

and I wanna tell you, and I say this with love, this message, this text is not about us at all, and here's the reality. When David steps to, when the Goliath, I'm sorry, when Goliath steps to the battlefield, who steps to fight him in the valley? You would think King Saul would step in, but it's not the king. You would think it would be a trained soldier, but it's not. You think it would be a marksman, or it's not. It's not even the king, Mr. Dark, Tall, and Handsome himself. No, he's in a tent hiding. Who steps on the battlefield? A man named David, who is the most unlikely guy in the world to do it. The one who is supposed to fight isn't fighting, and David is not fighting for his own reputation. Don't miss this. He's fighting for God's glory. This is not a story about a boy who found courage to face a giant. It's a story about God who refuses to let his name be dragged in the mud, and the story isn't pointing to a person named David who's a shepherd boy. Watch this. The story is pointing 1,000 years later to a greater David, a man who would walk into a desert, stare a serpent in the eyes face-to-face, and win a battle for humanity that you and I

could not win ourselves. So if you have a Bible, turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 17. 1 Samuel 17 is the story of David and Goliath. We're gonna pick up right in the middle of the story. Verse 31. We like to say word at Long Hollow, so if you're there, you can say word. Verse 31. What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, so he brought David to him. David said to Saul, don't let anyone be discouraged by him. Your servant will go and fight this Philistine, but Saul replied, you can't go fight this Philistine. You're just a youth, and he has been training as a warrior since he was young. David answered Saul, your servant has been tending his father's sheep. Whenever a lion or a bear came and carried off a lamb from the flock, I went after it, struck it down, and rescued the lamb from its mouth. If it reared up against me, I would grab it by the fur, strike it down, and kill it. I mean, this is like an ancient Crocodile Dundee, David. I mean, this dude's bad. He's a bad dude. Okay, you don't mess with this guy, right? Your servant has killed lions and bears. This uncircumcised Philistine will go down or will be like one of them, for he has defied

the armies of the living God. And David said, the Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. David said to, Saul said to David, go and may the Lord be with you. I wanna give you two insights about this passage. The first one is about David and his preparation for battle, and the second is about Goliath and the symbolism he represents. Here's the first one. David teaches us that we need to practice in private so that we're ready for battle in public, okay? We need to practice in private when no one's watching so that we're ready for battle in public when everyone is watching. The Philistines, let me just kind of paint the picture. The Philistines were the arch enemy of Israel. Israel, they were always against them. They lived in the coastal plain, and so when the battle is about to take place, the two armies come together, and I want you to picture, there's this huge ravine or valley between them. Now, why in the world would they put up Goliath to fight someone from Israel? It was a common practice back then that in order to not waste thousands or expend thousands of troops in battle, you could put one person up as a representative of the nation, don't forget that,

and then they could put one person up, and then the two people will battle together. So Goliath says, hey, I'm gonna go. Obviously, he's the tallest dude in the whole camp, nine foot nine, come on, you're in. And then the main other question is this. Who does Israel put up? Who's gonna stand up and enlist themselves for battle? Saul the king, you would think, but no, Saul's cowered down in the tent. What about Eliab or Shammah, one of David's brothers? King David, eventually his brother. No, they don't step up. What about a mighty warrior? What about a trained assassin? What about a military leader? Nobody steps up except a young shepherd boy who's the youngest of eight brothers. He raises his hand and says, I'll go. Now, I want you to picture the scene here. If we're watching David, probably five nine, five 10 maybe, five seven, I don't know, Goliath, nine foot nine, if you're looking at that from outward appearances, David is a goner. I mean, he's got no shot at all. Now, remember though, something about David. When Samuel comes earlier in the book of 1 Samuel, and he finds David to anoint him as king, do you remember this?

He says, Jesse, his dad, he says, Jesse, bring your boys out. First one, it's like an ancient beauty pageant. You know, they strutting that. He's like, no, not him, get out of here. Okay, got anybody else? Yeah, I got another one. And then after all the brothers come through, seven of them, he's like, do you have anybody else? He's like, well, I got this strawny kid in the backyard who's messing around with sheep. I mean, David's a shepherd. You gotta understand, his life consists of dodging lamb droppings, surrounded by a cacophony of sheep sounds all day. This is David, and you will look at David like I have for years, this young boy who doesn't know what he's doing. Don't miss this. What is David doing when no one's looking? He is sharpening his skills. David is honing his craft. You gotta understand something about slingshots, or slingers, as they were called. They were trained marksmen. What they would do is they'd carry this leather strap. It was two straps that would connect to a pouch. Inside the pouch, they would put a ball, or a lead ball, or a rock in the pouch, and they would start to launch it at the target.

David probably took this slingshot, and he would swing it around six or seven times. By the way, we got a live Instagram pic of the ancient, I'm sorry. Okay, so he would, yeah, yeah. Little dramatic, but thanks, AI. Thanks, Drew, AI, yeah. Okay, six or seven times, the best I got. That was like the fourth one I made, so it was the best I got. I'm not savvy, but six or seven times, he would swing this around, and then he would send it at the target. Now, don't miss this. The biggest misconception about David is the weapon he chooses to fight with. I've even heard people say that, man, poor little old David brings a sword, or brings a slingshot to a sword fight. That couldn't be further from the truth. Don't miss this. David is not some poor little old kid playing with a kid's toy. David is a sniper. David is a sharpshooter. David is a trained warrior. Malcolm Gladwell, who's an author, wrote a book called David and Goliath, and in the book, he researched what it was like to be a slinger.

Here's what he said. David could sling a stone substantially faster than a baseball thrown by even the finest of baseball pitchers. More than that, the stones in the Valley of Elah were not normal rocks. They were barium sulfate, which are rocks twice the density of normal stones. If you do the calculations on the ballistics, on the stopping power of the rock that was fired from David's sling, it roughly is equal, don't miss this, to the stopping power of a .45 caliber handgun. This is an incredibly devastating weapon. Accuracy, we know from historical records that experienced slingers could hit a man or even a target at distances of up to 200 yards. Put that in perspective. Two-thirds of a football field, he could pick you off, not to mention that from medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. were incredibly accurate. Here's the point I want you to get. David was practicing behind the scenes when no one was looking so that he was prepared when the battle took place in public when everybody was looking. Friends, look at me. Are you doing the same?

Are you preparing not just your physical life but your spiritual life, your emotional life in the Lord? Are you preparing like David behind the scenes so that when the lights are on and the stage is set and you're standing on the platform, you're gonna be ready for whatever the enemy throws at you because we should. Now, don't miss this, though. David's victory does not come from the sling he threw or the rock he threw through the sling. David's victory comes from the one he served. That's the key. He was sharp, he prepared, but that's not why he won. He won from the God he served, which leads to number two. Write this down. David teaches us that we need to see obstacles in our way as opportunities, not barriers. I want you to get this. Opportunities, not barriers. And I wanna divide this section into two. The first I wanna talk about is the size of Goliath. The size of Goliath. Look at verse three. We'll go back to the beginning. We'll pick it up, just kinda walk through it here. Verse three. You like to say a word at Long Hollow? Word. Say it like you mean it.

Word. Here we go. The word, the word of the Lord. The Philistines were standing on one hill. Israelites standing on another hill with a ravine between them, picture it. Then a champion named Goliath from Gath came out from the Philistine camp. He was nine feet, nine inches tall. Now, just a sidebar, and I don't want you to get sidetracked. Look this up later, so just get off track, get back on. In your Bible, there's a footnote. In the footnote, if you go down to the bottom, it says, right by nine feet, nine, early manuscripts document him as six foot nine. Did you know this? Six foot nine, okay? Regardless, here's a funny thing. Last week at the eight o'clock service, we had coaches come on stage and pray, and the coach from Hendersonville was six foot 10. I don't know if y'all saw, anybody saw this online? He was six foot 10, and then when I leave church on Sunday, I'll call my mom and dad, I call them on the way home, and say, hey, what'd you think of the sermon? That's all they wanted to talk about last week was, man, did you see how small you, mom, that's not what I'm asking, I'm not asking. But that guy really humbled you. No, what did you think of the sermon?

But anyway, so he was tall, right? Regardless, whether he's six nine in a world where the average height was five six, five seven, or nine foot nine, the point is, he's tall, okay? The question is, how did he get there? In a society where everybody was normally shorter or smaller, modern doctors, medicine, will look at this and say, from a medical standpoint, his enormity comes from an illness called giantism or acromegaly, that's the technical term, acromegaly. Now, here's what that means. They said medically that a benign tumor from time to time will grow on the pituitary gland and cause the body to excrete more growth hormone than normal. So you'll put more growth hormone out, and some of you are like, I don't know what you're talking about. How many people grew up watching wrestling? Anybody, or we say wrassling. Anybody grow up watching Jeremy wrassling, right? Anybody remember Andre the Giant, right? Andre the Giant, seven feet, four inches tall. Now, I'm gonna talk to the PR department here, the media department. We should have Andre the Giant wrestling our very own Double J, Jeff Jarrett. Anybody remember Jeff Jarrett? But anyway, sorry, Jeff. But anyway, so Andre the Giant, seven foot four.

But anybody know in here the tallest man in the world? Anybody know who that was? Robert Wadlow, nine feet tall. Look at this guy right here. I was thinking about him. He could literally raise his arm and dunk the basketball, not even jumping. Now, one of the side effects of this medical illness or medical issue is because it's on the pituitary gland, it affects the nerves to the brain, and it causes two things. One, it causes double vision, but worse than that, it causes blindness. So when a medical doctor reads David and Goliath, and I wanna submit this to you, they suspect the effects of acromegaly, which are blindness. I'm gonna show you three of them. It's pretty insightful when we see this. Look at verse seven. Couple things you need to understand about this. Why is Goliath being escorted to the battlefield? This dude's nine foot nine. He don't need a handler. He don't need a helper. He just walks out to the battlefield. Maybe it's because he can't see. Verse seven, Goliath had a shield bearer walking in front of him, possibly, again, we don't know for sure, but this is speculation, possibly leading him.

What about verse 43? Goliath is not able to make out David's weapon in his hand. Notice what he says. He says to David, am I a dog that you come out against me with sticks? David's like, this sling? I don't have any sticks, I got a sling, right? Here's the last one, which is pretty interesting. Verse 44, he tells David, I'm not gonna go after you, you, bring it on, brother, bring it on. Look at verse 44. Come here and fight me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts. Now here's the thing you gotta understand about Goliath. Goliath's strength is gonna be a problem, why? Because Goliath's problem is that he can't move very well. He's not nimble, he's not agile like David, who's smaller. And what David's going to do is expose or exploit that as a problem. Here's my point. What appears to be Goliath's greatest weapon turns out to be his greatest weakness. He's big, and David said, no, that's gonna play into my favor. Look at verse 23. While David was speaking with him, suddenly the champion named Goliath, the Philistine from Gath, by the way, there is a belief that he is from the Nephilim, shout out to our Blurry Creatures podcast lovers in here,

from the Anakinite, so anyway, you could, I mean, Malachi, you can tease that out if you want a refrain, if you want to go deep. We don't know for sure, we just know he's a big dude, okay? So he's from Gath, some people say Gath, it's a sentence of Nephilim. Came forward from the Philistine battle line and shouted his usual words of taunting, which David heard, just a sidebar. Conor McGregor ain't got nothing on this dude's trash talk. I mean, this guy can trash talk with the best of them. And he's trash talking David, and after David hears this, David is about to spring into action, and the text doesn't say this, but you can imply this, the nation of Israel, his brothers, his family, are starting to hold him back, and they're seeing pessimistically the problem. And here's what they're saying. Look how much bigger Goliath is than you. And David, if he would talk at that point, would say, no, guys, you don't understand. Look how much smaller he is than God. That's what he'd say. Israel would say, he's too big to hit, David, what are you doing? David would say, no, no, no, he's too big to miss. You're looking at it wrong. The army would say, there's no way we can win. And David would probably say, no, there's no way we would lose, why?

Because God is on our side. You gotta understand, everybody there, including his brothers, his family, thought David was the underdog. Feel the weight of this. But David believed, not just in himself, he believed in the one who was with him. David knew God was on his side. Here's the point. Two is always a majority in our life when God is in our party. Somebody needs to hear that today. Two is always a majority. The world can be against you, but if God is for you, what? Who can be against you? Greater is he that is in you and me than he that is in the what? The world. Friends, if God's on our side, we have a majority, even though there's only two. Number two, the first thing we see is the size of Goliath, which looked like an obstacle, it's actually an opportunity, number two. Or 2B, sorry, 2A, 2B, sorry, 2B. The symbolism of Goliath. Now let me just prepare you. The theological light bulbs are gonna start popping off in your mind, and so I just want you to be prepared because there's a lot here, so make sure you're plugged in to the source to get them all, so here we go.

It's pretty interesting when you see what's happening here. I want you to notice two things. I want you to notice in your mind, and I'll read this to you, I want you to picture what the armor looks like and the color of the armor in verse four. Then the champion named Goliath from Gath came from the Philistine camp. He was nine feet, nine inches tall, and he wore a bronze helmet, circle this, a bronze scale armor, bronze scale armor, circle that, that weighed 125 pounds. Verse six, there was bronze armor on his shins, bronze javelin, so a lot of bronze here. This guy's got a bling about it, okay? He's got a bling about it, but it's deeper than that. Now remember, we know at Long Hollow, we do not read the Bible just with our ears, with theological concepts and words and treatises and lists. That's not how they read the Bible and understand. We read the Bible in pictures, because that's what they did. So I want you to now put everything you know about this side, and I want you to picture what David sees with his eyes. I was gonna put a picture up, but I want you to picture, so I'm gonna let you follow me here. I want you to picture. The Bible says right away, Goliath comes out, and he has a scale armor.

Did you catch that? The ESV says a coat of mail, I think it says. The scale armor, okay, that word in the language of the Old Testament is the word scale. You're gonna love this. It's the same. word for the skin of a snake. Same word. Skin of a snake. So you're looking at this guy, you're like, wow, he's got a snake skin on. But the word bronze is an interesting word, why? Because the word bronze in Hebrew is representing something. In the Hebrew, this word in this context is neka-osh, or neko-shet, neko-shet is the word in Hebrew, but it's connected to the root word nekosh, neko-shet, nekosh, okay? That word can be bronze, but it's also found, same root, two other times that are important in the Old Testament. If you go back to the book of Numbers, chapter 20, if you remember, God tells Moses, bunch of snakes in the camp, God says, listen, if you wanna live, put a nekosh, serpent, on a pole and raise the nekosh up, the serpent, and anybody who looks at the serpent lives. Interesting. But it's used for the first time, Genesis three. And it's the exact same word for the enemy who is attacking the first couple in the garden by the name of the serpent, okay?

Give you one more piece and I'm gonna bring it all together. Look at verse 16. Every morning, evening, at night, for a 40 day, what, wait, what? How many days? 40 days. Now, we know 40 is the season of testing. 40 days, the Philistine came forward and took his stand against Israel. So Goliath is tempting and taunting the Israelites for 40 days, not 39, not 42, not 15, for 40 days. What is the text telling us? Come in close. The text is giving us a preview of what is coming 1,000 years later when Jesus comes on the scene. Goliath is portraying an image. He's a representative of something. David is portraying something. By the way, the word anointed, to anoint king, in Hebrew is the word mashiach, which is Messiah, crazy. So David, when you're anointed, somebody said, well, there's only one Messiah. Of course, the Messiah, but there are many messiahs. Just means an anointed one, a king. So David, as a king, shepherd, anoints him for me. Anointed one is representing people. Goliath, on the other hand, is coming and representing people, and he's dressed up like a snake with a bronze coating, which is a snake in a serpent suit.

And here's what's happening. David is representing a serpent. I mean, Goliath is representing a serpent. David is representing a savior. Goliath is representing evil. David is, this is not a battle between a giant and a shepherd boy. This is a battle between good and evil. What does David do? Verse 49. David puts his hand in his bag. He took out a stone, and he slung the stone and hit the Philistine on his forehead. By the way, how many stones does he have in that bag? We know it because it said it earlier. He has five stones. David, he hits, the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground. David defeated the Philistine with a sling and a what? And a stone. Even though David had no sword, he struck down the Philistine and killed him. David ran and stood over him. He grabbed the Philistine's sword, pulled it from its sheath, and used it to kill him, and then he cuts off his head. And if you read in the text, David's gonna walk around like a show-and-tell for the rest of the couple months, and he's just hanging around with his head.

You know, it's like a show-and-tell, but why? Why? Well, first of all, let me show you the stones. I've heard this like you my whole life. David shows up with a bag of five stones, but he's only gonna kill him with one stone. What are the other four stones for? What have you heard? For the brothers on the hillside. You ever heard of this? Now, by the way, that can't work for a number of reasons, one of which, like if you have an MMA fight, and you get in a ring with a guy, or the cage, and let's say you're fighting a guy, let's say you're fighting Conor McGregor, okay, let's say, and you beat Conor McGregor, for this example, continue with. He's not what he used to be, by the way. Nah, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. No offense. If you beat him, do you now have to fight his manager, and his brother, and his coach? No, it's one-on-one, and you decide. If he wins, we win, right? So that's the first problem. But the second thing is this. We know we're not just reading numbers literally. We know that the Jewish culture does something called gematria. Numbers do double duty, meaning the number five

is way bigger than just literally five stones. Did he have five stones? Of course he did, but the five symbolizes something. Does anybody know, for the Jewish ear and mind, what the number five symbolizes? You're gonna love this. The Torah, the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In a sense, the number five symbolizes the word of God. Yes, David is fighting with a sling. and stones, but he's not fighting with sling and stones. Why? He's fighting with God in his word. But more than that, it's interesting. He cuts the head of the giant off. Why would he do that? Well, David knows Genesis 3.15. And after the serpent tempts the first couple, God says this prophecy to the serpent. He says, I'm gonna put hostility between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring, and he will come and you will strike his heel, but he will strike your heel, but you will, or he will bruise your heel, but you will strike his head. So the Messiah's gonna come and strike the head. The enemy's gonna come and bruise his heel. Isn't it interesting that David takes off the head? What is David doing? David is saying, I know the prophecy.

And here's what David's doing. This is mind-blowing. David is a prototype, a foreshadowing of what's coming 1,000 years later when Jesus, our Messiah, enters a desert to do battle with Satan. Oh, by the way, how long is Jesus in the desert being tempted? 40 days, just like him. And he's not battling a giant. He's battling a serpent, not with swords or with spears, not with weapons of this world that are carnal. He's battling him with the what? How does he defeat Satan? With the word of God. Jesus destroys the enemy, get this, by quoting Scripture to Satan. Here's my challenge to us today at Long Hollow. We need to stop trying to fight spiritual battles online, in person, with carnal weapons of this world, and we need to start wielding the only weapon that is authorized in Scripture, which is the word of God. How do we do that? We gotta be men and women who get into the word. Young people, listen. We need to get into the word, into the word what? Gets into us, we need to read the word. We need to make it a priority. We need to study the word. We need to saturate our life with it.

We need to hear journals in the word. How many people still doing those? We need to speak the word. We need to trust the word. See, here's the point of this passage. The point of this passage is you and I are not David. As neat as that would be. We're not David. We're the army, if we're gonna be honest, on the hillside behind, frozen and paralyzed by fear. That's who we are. Every one of us knows that, why? Because anytime you and I try to fight our own battles and our own strength, we always lose. Anybody know what I'm talking about? How many times have we been defeated by anger? Defeated by greed? Defeated by the sin of immorality, the sin of idolatry? A lot of you know that. You can't out-discipline yourself from lust. You can't do it. I'm not gonna look anymore. You can't do that in your own strength. You can't out-muscle addiction. Anybody know what I'm talking about? I'm not smart, I'm not fit. You think you are, but you're not. You can't overpower anger toward another person in your own strength, or the shame that some of you feel, look at me, that taunts you every morning you wake up

or every time at night before you go to bed. See, you and I have tried to battle our flesh and our flesh to no avail. Friends, the Bible says we overcome the enemy through the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony and the word of God. And so we don't need a hero to imitate, right? We need a champion we can trust who's gonna go to battle for us. We're not David, but Jesus is, aren't you glad? Jesus entered the valley of the shadow of death and he cut off the head of the enemy. And if that's the case, which it is, we need to stop fighting for a victory in life and we need to start fighting from the victory in life, which has already been won, amen? The rock's already been slung. The giant's already fallen down. The stone has already been rolled away. But don't misunderstand what I'm saying here, look at me. Resting in Christ is not retreat. I want you to hear this. Just because we trust and rest doesn't mean we cower down and back up. The same grace that saves us as believers is the same grace that sends us out into the world. And so we need more men to stand up and act like men for what's right in the world, amen? We need more women and men to say, hey, we're not gonna lose our families,

our sons and daughter to Satan on iPads and computers and immorality. We're not gonna do that. We're not gonna let Satan have a foothold in our home. We need more men and women who are gonna say, we're gonna fight for our marriage today. I don't care what the world says. I don't care what she's done. We're gonna fight for our marriage today. We need to be people at Long Hollow who stand up for injustice. We need to be a people who are passionate about ending hunger in summer. Not half of it, all of it. on our watch, amen? That's what we need more of. And we need men and women. We need men and women who are gonna battle sin and seek purity at all costs. Not with a sling of our own strength and our own power. Not with words that cut down other people or condemn. No, we fight the way Jesus fights. Jesus fought by speaking the word of God. Friends, listen, when the serpent came hissing in the desert, Jesus doesn't reach for a sword or a spear. Jesus reaches for the sword of the spirit and wields the word of God. And that's what we need to do. We need to start holding the ground that King Jesus has already won on the cross, amen?

And we need to do that in a way with confidence. Friends, we can't defeat the giants in our life. But aren't you glad we know someone who did? And I know in a group this size, there are some who are like, man, I just feel overwhelmed. I feel like I'm in a valley. I feel like I'm battling a giant. I feel like I have an insurmountable issue in front of me and I don't know what to do. You're in a good place today because the greatest thing you can do is surrender and trust in Christ right now. So I wanna pray over you personally. If you're online, if you're at Gallatin, I wanna pray over you personally. Then I'm gonna give you an opportunity just to come and just bow down and make these steps an altar. Spend time in the presence of God. You can if you want to. If not, you can stay at your seat. But I want you to bow for a moment. And I know in a group this size, there are some that you're like, man, that's me. I'm there. Not a physical giant, but boy, it feels overwhelming. Financial strain, I can't get out of it. Addiction, I can't experience sobriety from a porn addiction. I keep going back to anger, jealousy. I'm just eating up with jealousy.

Resentment, greed. I'm bitter about my divorce that happened months ago or even years ago. I can't get past that. Relationship, trauma, abuse, I just can't get. It's overwhelming, Pastor Rob. Just slip your hand up. Don't tell me what it is. Just slip your hand up. And it's not just for me to see, it's for you to acknowledge before the Lord. God, I need grace right now. Just lift it high. I'm gonna pray over you personally, amen. A lot of hands already. Just lift it high, extend it so I can see it. Praise God. Anyone else over here? Pastor Robby, pray for me. I feel like I'm in a battle right now. I need help, I need grace. So anyone else? Praise God. I need grace, amen. You can put your hands down. Father, we pray right now. In the only name we know. It's in the name of the one who has gone before us to do what we could never do in our own strength. Goliath may have called himself champion,

but we know the one who is the champion over life, death, and the grave. And Jesus, I'm praying right now, whatever barrier is in our life, we would see not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity. God, you're using the struggles and the suffering in our life to not push us down, but to level us up. That we keep preparing in private, in our Bible reading, in our prayer, in our here journaling, in our scripture memory, so that when the stage is set and the lights are on and the platform is open, we can step on stage, not draw attention to us, say, look at me, but we can say, no, look at the one who is in me. Look at the strength that is inside of me. For we know no weapon formed against us on this earth shall prosper. We know that nothing can separate any of us from the love of Christ in Christ Jesus. Not things future, nor things present. God, nor angels, nor demons, nor powers, nor principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of Christ in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And so, God, we pray for grace upon grace. We don't deserve it, but we say thank you, Jesus, for it. Say that with me. Thank you, Jesus. Say it again.

Thank you, Jesus, we pray. Amen.