Goliath Must Fall: Winning the Battle Against Your Giants

by Louie Giglio

The Devil prowls around continually and wants to devour us every day. The key to real, lasting change in our spiritual life is consistently filling ourselves up with faith.

God’s wrath means he can’t have anything to do with sin.

God’s wrath doesn’t mean he is out of control and pitching a fit. His wrath is much more a “positional” wrath than a “raging” wrath. It’s a character-driven refusal to have anything to do with that which is unholy. God, by nature of being a holy God, must turn away from sin.

Yes, he’s a God of wrath, but he is not a God of outrage. Yes, there’s still a fierce anger on behalf of God that we need to contend with.

Paul describes it like this: “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5).

That’s tremendous news for us! God isn’t angry with us anymore. Why? Because all of the righteous anger and holy wrath of God landed on Jesus at the cross. God’s anger has been satisfied. We run to Jesus and find a covering, a relief. We have a new relationship with God. We are his sons and daughters. We are kept by Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Justice will come. It will either come today on earth or in the future in heaven, but rest assured, justice will come. One day God will right every wrong. And he’s going to be fairer about it than you and I could ever be. He’s going to be more comprehensive about it. The situation will find true justice, true peace, true reconciliation.

By Christ’s power, we forgive the person we’re angry with.

This is done by Christ’s power for sure. This is not normal nor our first reaction I am sure.

Forgiveness is a process. Sometimes we need to forgive a person more than once. A relationship may not be restored just because you forgive someone. And you might not want that relationship restored. Just because you forgive a person doesn’t mean you want to be friends with them anymore.

We see David, the giant slayer, reveling in this love of God. David was confident because he had the confidence of Christ in him. David knew the fame of the Lord was at stake, and David didn’t rest on his abilities; he rested in the power of God within him. He killed a giant not for the fame of himself but for the fame of God.

Living with a smoldering fire is a sorry way to live. Living like a victim is defeating and imprisoning. Sooner or later, we have to get fed up with the giant and take it down. Aren’t you tired of being mad all the time? Weary from holding on to the grudge all these years? Taking down this giant is really about us letting go of control.

We think, I’m not going to forgive. I’m not going to let you get away with it. I’m not going to ever speak to you again. I’m going to make you regret ever doing that to me. And that feels empowering. Yet half the time the other person is off on a holiday without a care in the world while our stomachs are rotting. We are seething while they are snoozing on a beach somewhere.

For God’s sake, we have to get our eyes off of them and back on Jesus. We have to realize that we are held by nail-pierced hands.

We are able because God is able.

When it comes to addictions we need to cast a wider net. An addiction is anything we can’t live without. We’re enslaved to this thing. It’s a habit we can’t break. It’s a person we can’t separate from. A pattern we can’t change. And it’s ultimately harmful. If left unchecked, the addiction devastates our lives and everything around us. That’s the giant of addiction at work. It robs us of our very best. It leads us down a never-ending path to a never-fulfilled promise. And in the end, the giant of addiction stands over us, ridiculing us and dimming the fame and glory of God in our lives.

Do you know what the most widespread addiction out there is today? It’s this: the approval of others.

Underneath any addiction (and our foundational need for approval) is a larger question. It’s this: What problem is occurring in my life that I need to mask the pain or emptiness with an addiction? See, the drugs or the alcohol or the sex or the porn or the people or the social media or the retail therapy is only a symptom. The cause is something else. The cause lies under the surface. The root cause of most addictions is pain. The cause is sin.

That fight won’t stop. We will still want to cover up and cope. But the solution, instead of running to an addiction, is running to Jesus.

He went out to fight the giant with just himself, his sling, his rod, and his God.

In Genesis 3:9, God came down, as he always did, to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. He couldn’t find them on this particular day, not because he didn’t know where they were, but because they didn’t know where they were. God called out, “Where are you?” Adam answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid” (v. 10).

As soon as we leave intimacy with God, we leave peace with God and a place with God. Then we get into a hostile environment where we are feeling ashamed and defenseless and are comparing ourselves to other people and feeling like we need to run away or hide. We do crazy things.

but David said in the middle of verse 39, “‘I cannot go in these,’ he said to Saul, ‘because I am not used to them.’” David took off Saul’s armor. He pulled off the false cover. He walked out to battle as his real self. He was able to defeat the giant because he was confident in his intimacy with God. David still might have felt vulnerable, but he wasn’t alone. His God was way bigger than the giant.

David called out to Goliath in verses 45–46: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hands.”

With God, we are able. We are able because God is able. Thanks to our vulnerability, we are weak. But thanks to God, we are strong.

Whenever we feel vulnerable, we acknowledge our weaknesses and run to Jesus. We don’t try to cover up and cope. We don’t seek something harmful in an attempt to ease our lack of peace or to give us a buzz. We just run to Jesus as fast as we can. In him, we find the freedom to be “naked and unashamed” with our loving Creator.

If there’s anything good that can come from our harmful addictions, it’s that they remind us we were created to be dependent creatures. Sin puffs us up and makes us think we are independent—that we control our own destinies. But we were created by and for God. There is a God-sized hole in our souls that can only be filled with an intimate and real relationship with Jesus.

Sure, I long for people’s approval. I’m addicted to worry. Addicted to fear. Yet Christ lives in me, and because of him I truly live. Because of Jesus, my giants have fallen.

Until you are okay with being seen as needy or weak, you will never walk in true strength.

To keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

But to keep him from becoming conceited, God allowed a thorn in his flesh. We don’t know exactly what this thorn was, but it was something adversarial. Did Paul have an illness? Was it his singleness? Was it blindness? Was it somebody dogging him the whole time? Theologians debate exactly what it was. But what we know for sure is God allowed it to be there.

God doesnt cause us hardship but he does allow it at times and wants us to draw closer to him!!

We want out of the furnace as quickly as possible. But it’s interesting that God doesn’t promise that he will hit the Eject button every time we are surrounded by hardship, trial, and challenge. He promises something even more powerful and stunning. Right in the midst of the fray, in full view of the things that are threatening us, our Shepherd spreads a table of provision for us. It’s a table for two. One seat for you and one seat is for the God who is for you.

So how do we actually get from point A to point B? How do we turn the tables and ensure that our giants will actually fall? For one, we decide here and now that we are not going to give the Devil a seat at our table. Our Shepherd prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies, and we get to decide who sits at the table or not.

Notice David wrote “when I walk through the valley.” He knew his future was not stuck in the middle of the valley, but that his Shepherd would lead him through to the other side. There would be green pasture, quiet water, and rest for his soul on the other side.

Satan is after God’s glory. He refuses to honor the Almighty and targets anyone he can deceive in an effort to strike at the very heart of God. He’s not just out to get you; he’s out to tarnish God’s glory because we were created in the image of God with extraordinary purpose and promise. You are God’s prized possession. If Satan can gash your heart, he can break the heart of God.

While there may legitimately be someone in your family or work or school who is saying bad things about you that aren’t true and undermining you in some way, paranoia typically comes from the pit of hell. Have you had the Enemy tell you things such as these? No one likes you. Everyone is against you. Everybody is talking smack behind your back. They are all scheming to take you out. You better watch your back. Here’s a question for you: If our Good Shepherd leads us, and if his goodness and love follow us all the days of our lives, then why would we as his sheep ever feel the need to watch our backs? That kind of thinking doesn’t come from the Shepherd, but from the Enemy camped at our table. The paranoia bred by the Enemy quickly causes us to assume a defensive posture, believing that everyone is out to get us. Soon this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as we mistrust and attack everyone around us.

God wants us to focus less on who it is that’s surrounding us and focus more on the fact that he is sitting with us. His presence at our table is greater than the presence of any enemy that surrounds us.

Our giants keep taunting us, so we need to hold God at his word: that he is already victorious. We need to believe that our pain can be overcome. We need to remind ourselves that those giants don’t need to be giants any longer. This is true for us no matter our stage of spiritual growth. It’s imperative that we live in the finished work that Jesus has done for us.

No matter what stage any of us are in, it’s vital that we don’t allow the Enemy to get a foothold in our lives. Why? Because some sort of sin or addiction might look small on the front end of things. But five or ten or fifteen years later, there’s a huge giant in our lives we need to contend with.

Most times in our lives the power is not in a massive leap but in the succession of a thousand tiny steps.

I don’t want to offer you a specific formula for success, because I don’t know the specifics of your situation. And I acknowledge that things can and do get worked out in individual lives in different ways as we go forward with Christ. Because that’s who it all comes back to—Jesus. He always does the real sanctifying work in our lives. We go his direction. We trust in Jesus, and we lean his direction.

“Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). Those same old desires will always be there, giants demanding that we cower and fall. Yet the way we say no to their voices is by saying yes to his.

We know in our minds that the giants need to go, but there’s security in having those giants there. They’re harmful, but they’re familiar, and we tend to like what’s familiar. But familiarity can be the voice of the Accuser in our lives. Our giants constantly tell us no. No, I won’t fall. No, it can’t be done. No, you can’t win the victory. Don’t take no for an answer. The cross is a safe place, but it’s not always a comfortable place.

The gospel is not the gospel so we can sit and stare at our navels. The gospel is the gospel because life is short and we have a big God. The gospel is the gospel because Jesus leads us to proclaim the truth that he saves to anybody and everybody on this planet.

We are assured of his love for us because of the circumstance of Christ on the cross. We remind ourselves that the pinnacle and depth and breadth of all chaos was thrown at Jesus. Jesus knows all about suffering. He knows all about pain. He knows all about loss. He was mistreated. He was abused. He was rejected. He suffered death. So we always keep our eyes on Jesus. We deliberately set him always before us.

Let the Holy [Spirit] in you keep you abiding in Jesus, so that when Satan comes to knock at your door, Jesus will go and open it, and as soon as the devil sees the face of Christ looking through the door, he will turn tail.1

One of the greatest concerns of the modern Christian is the tendency to make everything about us. We reduce Jesus to a self-improvement technique, saying, “He helps me feel better about my life.” The same happens with our relationship with church. You hear people say, “I got a lot out of that.” Or, “I like that church because it helps me.” In the end, the person of Christ, the promise of the Word, the gathering of the people, the work of the cross, the hope of heaven, all become about “me.”

God wants you to experience the fullness of everything he has accomplished for you and all of who he is, but it’s not all about you. God does not exist for us; we exist for God. We are not his maker, he is our Maker. Our lives’ central aim is to enjoy this great God and to glorify him forever.

The LORD upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.

But a victor has emerged in our story and he is sitting with you right now as you come to the finish of this book. His name is Jesus, and he takes down the giants and announces freedom for us all. He sees the stain and the pain you have endured. He knows the “less” you have grown accustomed to and is still committed to leading you into his best.

Goliath must fall. Your goliath must fall. Your giant must fall because Jesus is already victorious. Now is the time to walk in the freedom that he has won.