FACING GIANTS // S01E04 (EPISODE 4)
Sometimes we relate more to David, sometimes to the Israelites. No matter what the circumstance we have an enemy—but is our enemy the giant we make it out to be? Do we forget that God never loses, that no matter what, God’s plan always prevails. What are you afraid of, is it paralyzing you and keeping you in a sticky trap?
QUESTIONS WE TOUCH ON IN THIS EPISODE:
- Are you living in fear?
- Is something holding you back?
- What fear can teach us.
VERSES FROM FACING GIANTS
Proverbs 29:25, 1 Peter, 1 Samuel 17:16, 1 Samuel 17:33, 2 Samuel 12:20, Samuel 17:45
QUOTES FROM FACING GIANTS
“He finds victory because God never loses.”
Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast S01E04: Facing Giants
“You have a right to feel the way you feel, but just because you have a right to something doesn’t mean that that’s what’s best for you.”
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast S01E04: Facing Giants
“It takes courage to escape the sticky because our flesh is convinced that it’s a permanent state.”
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast S01E04: Facing Giants
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT
Shea: *Beatboxing* Alright, mic test.
Michelle: *Laughter* I mean I married you cuz I love you.
Shea: I mean, look, if we go into this thing like religious zealots, all staunch and everything, we’re in trouble. Hey, how is everybody out there? This is Shea.
Michelle: I’m Michelle.
Shea: Obviously we’ve been talking about other things before we started up on the, on the podcast, but, uh, not a, but that’s what we’re here for, right? We’re just here to kind of enjoy ourselves, have a conversation. Uh, that’s really what we wanna want to achieve on every one of our podcasts.
Shea: Um, I love talking to my wife. She has lots of good insight and today we’re going to be talking about facing giants. How God never loses. We have all of these things that we face in life, things that come against us, however you want to look at that, whatever that giant may be, whether it’s an internal giant, external giant, but it’s these things that we just sit there overwhelmed in. Um, I call it the, the mental roll sometimes. Um, because we just sit in our own mind sometimes and we get lost.
Michelle: So lost.
Shea: So lost.
Michelle: *Silence* *Laughter* Just say, I just was adding, “So lost.”
Shea: I thought you were going to carry something.
Michelle: If I say if I started talking now, I’d steal the whole show.
Shea: Wow! Yeah. Hear that? *Laughter* This is really what a podcast has about. It’s like, I’m going to be honest to sit here in a different environment. We’re going to get to the podcast, I promise, I promise. But to sit here where we’re like, we’re going to have a conversation and we do just fine on a couch and you put a microphone with some headphones on us and we’re just out there. We’re like, what? Hold on.
Shea: But hey, this is only our, what fourth one? Fifth one. It may be that we’re recording, but uh, again, facing giants like this is like one of those things we could sit here, we could get inside of ourselves, you know? Oh man, I didn’t say it right. Or, oh man, I said too much. You know, what are the people going to hear? Are people going to come against us? Are people going to be for us?
Shea: I mean it’s this constant mental roll and I’m kind of bringing y’all in on like our own thing. Cause I think sometimes it’s good to be real and so sometimes we get paralyzed in it. Sometimes we have these feelings of inadequacy. Sometimes we have, we’re overwhelmed or we feel under-equipped. We feel beat up, defeated. Um, and that’s not God’s position. That is not what God wants. He wants us to be joyful, you know, count it all joy no matter what you go through. That’s where we want our minds to be.
Michelle: The verse that sums it up a lot for me, what we’re going to be talking about today is in Proverbs, I’m a big Proverbs girl. I love Proverbs. Proverbs 29:25,” the fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe”. That word snare is powerful. In the NLT it lays a trap. Fear’s sticky. You catch it at some point in your thought process and from there it just starts sticking to other things, contaminating other things. There’s this video game called Katamari and I kinda think of fear like that. There’s, you start as this little, I guess alien guy and he has a little ball and you start out on like the carpet of a kid’s room pushing this little sticky ball around and you’re picking up little things like thumbtacks and paperclips and after while you get big enough, now you can pick up Legos and bigger, bigger. Now suddenly you’re picking up lampposts and power lines and then all of a sudden you’re picking up like boulders and then houses and keep going. And it kind of makes me think of that mental role that you’re talking about. The fear starts engulfing and tainting more and more the longer you allow it to live there. Speeds.
Shea: Yeah. Yeah. It gets worse, right?
Michelle: Things you were never scared of before now are intermingled within the initial fears and it just can ruin your entire life. It can completely cripple you.
Shea: One of the verses, and we’re going to break into some David, I love this David and Goliath, but one of the verses I want to put out in front is in 1 Peter and it’s about how the adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. It kind of goes into your proverbs, you know, he lay, he’s laying a trap, a snare. He wants us to be taken away from a mind-frame that’s on heaven, that’s on God. You know, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit listening.
Shea: The story. I mean, David Goliath is a perfect example. Um, I’m sure there’s other people that have seen it and whatever, but it really captured me on the first verse. You know, you come in and it’s like, here’s Goliath, right? For 40 days and 40 nights, he’s strutting around in front of the Israelites. That’s in first Samuel 17:16 and it’s like 40 days and 40 nights. Same message: come out here. One person take me on. Whoever wins, wins the battle. I mean this brother was confident, puffed up, strutting. I like that word. Strutting. And it’s 40 days and 40 nights. That’s crazy.
Michelle: The wilderness. *Laughs*
Shea: Yes. Right. The wilderness in that, the thought in that, it’s like even King Saul who had the blessing of the Lord didn’t even speak up, but they were all paralyzed. They were, they were caught in this sticky trap. Uh, the ball rolling picking out lampposts, picking up boulders, pigging out. They’re just like, ah.
Michelle: The fantasy grows bigger and bigger. You know, this, this intimidation tactic that fear loves to use.
Shea: He, he wants us to stay inside of our own minds. I call it the whisper. *Blows air* I don’t know how that’s going to come out, I guess, but—
Michelle: We’ll edit it as it comes.
Shea: Right. But it’s like, it’s that whisper though. It’s like, why am I really getting so bent out of shape? Caught up in myself, over something that’s happened? See, this comes into that thought of identity, right? Who am I in Christ and what has he made me to be when I started believing?
Shea: I love that. I love that idea. Like if you can’t reflect and get it yourself, read the word of God. Go to the verse where it just tells you that, you know, you’re a Royal priesthood, a Holy nation, this is who you are. And then get out, you know, get out of it, put those thoughts, capture those thoughts, and put them away. And David is really good with this. You know, I liked the snares, like David comes in and he’s fresh. He’s bringing food to his brothers, he ain’t been there for 40 days and 40 nights I was at his dad’s like, Hey, why don’t you take some food, your brothers? And he shows up and he’s like, yo, what’s going on? And they tell him and he’s like, Oh, really? And what do we get? And they tell him whether he gets, you know, it’s like, a wife or something—
Michelle: A lot. Yeah, no, the family no longer has to pay taxes. He gets a wife.
Shea: Right, right. And, and it’s kind of cool. It’s like, he goes and he goes, that’s it. Oh wow. That’s cool. Yeah. It’s like he’s not caught.
Michelle: I imagined them kind of walking in like eating some of the bread that he’s supposed to bring. His brother’s like, what’s going on guys? Nom nom. You know, and I think going back to community real quick. It’s so valuable to be in a community because you might be completely engulfed in the taunts and the jeers of the enemy that have been kinda like just kind of shrinking you down. Sometimes the giant isn’t getting bigger, they’re normal size, but they’re making you feel smaller. Right.
Shea: That’s a good point.
Michelle: So you feel so small, you forget the eternal mindset. But then someone from the community is brought in fresh. That hasn’t been there in this wilderness. You know the Bible uses the 40 as like tests and trials not in the test and trial yet, they kind of come in and help a refresh and challenge the enemy in your own mind so that you know you can recalibrate. I love using that word you recalibrate to match your eternal status again. I really like him just kind of coming in bright eyed, bushy tailed with some food. Yeah. And it’s like he has literal food, but then he has spiritual food.
Shea: Cause he carries that in with him. Yeah. He brings in the bread of life. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s, it’s that amazing. But you know, and I liked that actually, cause you came off with community, right? Watch this though. If community is just my friend, well he walks right up to Saul and Saul looks right and he says, don’t be ridiculous. He’s like, I’ll take him on. Don’t be ridiculous. This is in 1 Samuel 17:33 I like that. Don’t be ridiculous. Saul replied.
Michelle: How often we hear that.
Shea: Right, right. And, and Saul tries to reinforce the stickiness that they’re caught in and he’s like, there’s no way you can fight this Philistine. There’s no possible way of winning. Right. He’s like, you’re only a boy. This dude is like a seasoned veteran, man. This dude’s been at it, by the way, so far in this whole chapter, Goliath hasn’t killed nobody. Yeah, he’s strutting.
Michelle: Yeah, he’s just inflating himself.
Shea: I mean, now don’t get me wrong. Things like, what? Nine feet tall?
Michelle: Oh yeah. He’s, he’s a little literal giant.
Shea: All kinds of toes, y’all. Right? He had brothers to just let y’all know.
Michelle: Yeah. He was not the only one.
Shea: FYI all the giants were defeated. I’m just saying, because God never loses. But he comes in and sometimes, and that’s why community comes to my point on that, why community becomes important. Because if you go to your friends, sometimes they’ll side with you, man. Or they’ll jump in and they’ll try to get you, or let’s say you’re angry, man, I’ve gone to France sometime it, man, I’m so angry. They’re like, yeah. Right.
Michelle: Yeah. They reinforce what you think you have a right to, I mean, you have a right to feel the way you feel, but just because you have a right to something doesn’t mean that that’s what’s best for you. And so that’s why it’s so important. I experienced it with pregnancy. Oh, it’s okay. You’re, you’re eating for two, eat that extra piece of cake. I’m like, yeah, my second is the size of a lentil. So no, I shouldn’t have the second piece of cake for that rationale. Like if I wanted a second piece, that’s not the rationale I need to hear. Worse than that. It’s not to go too far off topic, but I’m passionate about this.
Michelle: Like when I was pregnant, they were like, well, you know, it’s okay. You know you’re emotional, it’s okay to, you know, fly off the handle more or whatever, say whatever you want to say. It’s because you’re pregnant or you know, whatever. And I was like, just cuz I’m pregnant that doesn’t give me the right to disrespect my husband or anybody else. And I need people that are going to love me a little tougher and kinda be like, David come in and be like, no. Like everyone else says, okay, you’re pregnant. And I’m like, no, it’s, you know, pregnancy isn’t sticky either.
Shea: It’s a giant.
Michelle: I might be getting giant. *Laughter* But it’s not a giant
Shea: from your husband it was cute. That is on topic though, because the outer voice, you don’t want an outer voice becoming an inner voice. Right. And then of course, you don’t want your inner voice to take control of truth. Yeah. And really what it boils down to is biblical truth, right? It’s amazing the credit that the enemy gets, you know, by worldly standards he seasoned, man, he’s seasoned, you know, and if you look at it, I mean practically don’t eat the apple. They take a bite sent in his world and look at the sins that we see today. I get it. There’s, there’s a lot of sin out there. And he has, he has, he seen many battles. Of course he’s, and he’s told many lies. And honestly, he’s also destroyed and taken life.
Shea: But see, this is where God never loses. When I put it on me, when I put the trust on me, it’s like I’m gonna, I’m going to be defeated. I don’t know how many times I’ve lived in that ugliness. I’m going to call it what it is, where you’re just consumed. You feel so overwhelmed. You feel like you’re just in a toilet that’s nonstop running, but you’re big. You can’t go down, but you’re just constantly going around. I know. That’s right. Get dizzy, getting tired.
Michelle: Gettin’ dizzy, wet…stinky. *Laughter*
Shea: Uh, and you know, it really, it builds up the stress. Um, your stress, it builds up and it is unhealthy. But see, God had a plan. God had a plan. It’s called His Son. It’s called Jesus Christ because He never loses. One of the tougher stories in the Bible. I mean, I could pick many, but I think as a father who’s lost a child before, um, David goes through a really rough patch, you know, I’m going to bring in David because I think that this could have been one of those ideas or those situations where it could have just turned in one way. It could, it could. It’s literally a story that would turn a person one way or the other.
Shea: He finds victory because God never loses. Right. He’s, wow. He cheats with his friend’s wife. I mean, a friend, a friend that’s so much of a friend, so much of a great guy. I really think he’s a great guy because he comes back, David calls him in from work, his, his, his wife gets pregnant by David. He calls me in to try to cover this up. The little cover up story, you know, didn’t work. Dude’s like, no, it’s not fair. I’m not going to sleep with my wife. I’m not going to have luxuries while my men are in battle. What a great guy. And then Davidson is about it has him killed. Number one. He got, he slept with his friend’s wife, got her pregnant, number two, number three goes out and he kills it. Know has his friend killed, puts him in the front lines and make sure that that just happened. Well, God wasn’t too pleased. So David ends up losing his son and that, you know, that’s a sad moment. I mean, think about that and people’s lives, the loss that we’ve gone through.
Shea: How did we recover from it? But here’s a great example. Why sit in the sticky, right? Why sit in the stickiness of that situation in a 2 Samuel 12:20 it says, then David got up this after son passes, right? He’s been, you know, he’s been a misery. You mean he really was weeping, crying, but he gets up from the ground, washes himself, puts on lotion, and changed his clothes. He went to the tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. I liked that he knew where to go. He knew who to turn to. After that, he returned to the palace and was served food and ate. His advisors were amazed. They’re like, how do you, one minute you’re, you’re wallering, the next minute you’re up. And he comes back in 22, 23 it says, I fasted, wept while the child was alive for, I said, perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let my child live, but why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me. He found God. You know, and, and where are we in that?
Michelle: If you think about how our actions can make huge ripples on a very basic level, that single verse that, those words that he spoke when he amazed everyone by getting up, brings hope to this day, to so many who lose their children. You know, like that’s the verse people claim to because it shows I will go to him one day. It answers a question that so many have about where’s my child? And, uh, that’s amazing amounts of hope that have been bestowed by one man’s moment of courage.
Michelle: It takes courage to escape the sticky because our flesh is convinced that’s a permanent state. That we have to wrestle out of. It makes me think of this little kid rhyme. I’m flour and you’re glue and that means I can’t stick to you. Worshiping the Lord is like the flour coding yourself in this flour, this protective covering where the sticky can just slide right off or like a duck’s feathers, you know, that can just kind of the rain beads up, slides off, you know, the wax on a car, any analogy, you know, me and an analogies. But it’s so important to have that on first because you know, in our, in our flesh we have these survival mechanisms where we are guaranteed to survive.
Michelle: And so when we aren’t calibrated properly and we aren’t thinking about having an eternal life and we aren’t trusting in God and His, His sovereign plan for our lives that has our best path laid out, then any kinds of things that we start thinking can kill us or have the same fate as death or a fate worse than death. You know those things, they start evoking all of this fear that convinces us again, because it starts puffing up, we, we start to fear our worst fantasies, right? We’re not fearing the actual reality that’s currently happening.
Michelle: We’re fearing a probability of an uncertain person, like an uncertain, we don’t know what percentage chance it’s going to happen, but that’s what we’re fearing is. If it’s guaranteed, then we grabbed the reins back because we’re like, no, I need control because if I just do this, you know, like with the Coronavirus right now, if I just buy all the hand sanitizer, my family will be safe. You could have no money for any hand sanitizer and be safe because that’s the Lord’s plan for you, right? You could have all of it and succumb to the worst fate because it’s God’s plan, you know? So it’s like, it’s about submitting to him rather than getting wrapped up in fear. One of the biggest threats of fear is taking the reins back from the one who can actually do it.
Shea: Right. We, we, we, we all of a sudden go from relying on the unseen and grab hold of thinking we can control what we see. You know, it’s like there’s no way this little virus, man, it could be anywhere or it could be nowhere. I mean, it’s like how would I know? How would I go through life right now? You know? Do I live in fear? Absolutely not. Right? I was like, Oh, that fact, we were praying last night and all that pray power protection over my family and Michelle’s mama and, and just, you know, keep us safe. Keep the germs away from us. And in reality, and I know this is going to be hard for some people to hear, but I could keep you all in the house locked up. When it’s time for us to go, it’s time for us to go. Right. God’s plan. I liked what you said about the flour. You know, like what was that saying?
Michelle: I’m flour and you’re glue and that means I won’t stick to you. So out of your heart flows living water, right? Yeah. Have you ever tried to glue something when it’s wet? Oh, right. Yeah. Glue. Okay, fine.
Shea: y’all are going to, Oh, but he, man, what about gorilla glue?
Michelle: More like that. Underwater stuff. 90% of time, if it’s wet, you need something highly specialized.
Shea: You have his living water flowing out of your hearts. Man, these things aren’t gonna aren’t going to stick to you like that. Yeah. David did it the best. I mean, look, David had this mentality. No adversary was too big for him, right? No enemy, too strong, no strong hold. That could, couldn’t be torn down. Right? He, he was always submitted, right? In this situation. I said always, but I know he had a, he had a moment, you know, with, with Bathsheba, but we understand it. But you know what? Even in that moment, he was always turning to God. No matter what. Even in his worst step, he turned to God and that’s where we need to be. We need to be on that turn to God, right? Trust in him that he’s our King, that you know Jesus Christ is just there for us and out of that, the Wells are just going to be overflowing in our heart.
Shea: David knew this, David came in there fresh and my last, this last little verse and then we can just talk a little bit more, but like this last little verse, it’s not really little, but it’s first Samuel 17:45 where you come with the sword, right? Yeah. David replied to the Philistine, this is awesome. I love this for us. “You come to me with a sword, spear and javelin, but I come to it to you in the name of the Lord, the Lord of heaven’s armies, the God of the armies of Israel who you have defied today. The Lord will conquer you and then I will kill you and cut your head off”. He knew his priorities. He’s like, here’s this giant. He ain’t no giant to me cause he doesn’t know my God. People know your God. Yeah. Know how big he is. Put anything beside him. Yes. You can’t. Impossible won’t stand for nothing. 30, 40 year pastors will sit there and tell you what limited knowledge they still have of how big God is. And it’s like wow, but that’s who’s in your corner. He never loses. Right.
Michelle: It makes me think what’s funny, I had that verse up. I’m like, he didn’t use that verse. I gotta pull it up. We have to use it. Cause it’s just such a good verse. It makes me think of all the planets lined up by size. You see the sun, which is not a planet. Right? But everything in our solar system, right. You see the sun little Pluto. If I was on Pluto and somehow survived, I’d be so small compared to Pluto. I might look at that and say, no, you’re not a dwarf. You’re a giant. But when I put Pluto beside the sun, there’s no comparison. Right. And it makes me think of Psalm 18:6 where it says, the Lord is for me, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me? The word mere is very important.
Michelle: Words are so important because they reveal how you think of things. That word mirror. It’s like what would mere people do? What would mere sickness do? What would mere poverty do? All these things are huge. If we sit there and say, no, it’s not a mere like imagine all the suffering going on in X, Y yes, yes. But that’s when we put ourselves beside it. Oftentimes these things are bigger than us because we don’t have control over them.
Michelle: They’re not bigger than our God. So if we’re putting everything on ourselves to like it’s our job to fix it, then yeah, some things are smaller, but feel bigger. Some things are actually bigger. Hurricanes bigger than me, right? But it’s not bigger than God. Right? And so we can sit here all day and feel it against ourselves, but we’re comparing against the wrong person.
Shea: God goes before us to fight the battle. So our size actually doesn’t matter. Right. We are mere. Yeah, it did say what can we or people do to me except I’m not a person. No, I’m a mere person too. I’m one of those mere people because guess what? I messed up. So I have to be that mere person too. So sometimes when I’m not quite right in the house I become that mere person to Michelle that she gives me grace. Praise God.
Michelle: Right back at you.
Shea: So on that look, He never loses. He never loses trust in him. Don’t have an adversary that you think is so large. Don’t have an enemy that you think is too strong. Don’t have strongholds. Know who your God is good. Get those hooks and chains off of you and just turn to God. God. See what God can do. Cause he will amaze you. Amen, Amen, Amen you guys have a beautiful day.
Michelle: Yeah, remember to go to the pantrypodcast.com let us know what you think. Ask us questions. Give us prayer requests. Love to pray with you about some stuff, and we will see you next time. Or, you know, talk to you next time. Bye.