Graduating from the School of the Lion and the Bear

1 Samuel 17:36 (New King James Version)

³⁶ Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.”

Sometimes our lives are not a pleasure cruise of joy and contentment. Sometimes we are riding each day in an atmosphere of His peace and other times we are battling to hold on and rise up in faith. Wars occur in our lives that is a fact! Battles confront us sometimes from something we did for God, sometimes for nothing we did at all, and sometimes for just being a target of the enemy. This record of David’s battle is encouraging to me from every angle. The whole chapter is so rich. I am enraptured by how it shadows what Jesus Christ our King did for us and who He is that I could sit down and spend 2 or 3 hours just expounding in my heart and mind the power of God and the display of His greatness. But when I came to this verse and heard David tell king Saul “Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear;” I was stop in my Holy Spirit lead tracks. I knew that this verse was not to be overlooked or taken for granted. In this verse combines our humanity and the reality of our enemies. An enemy out there intent on stealing, killing, and destroying our precious families, friends, and even our lives. This verse exposed in my heart the realities of all the fears and the weakness we experience when we are confront in our lives by these beasts. The truth is we must stand against them and we must eventually fight them.

Just take a moment and think about what David must have emotionally felt when he stood in the presence of the lion and bear. This is a life threatening moment the very possibility that these vicious beasts would be cleaning their teeth with his rib bones. It is in these moments when you stand in the midst of a lion or bear do you recognize the reality our enemy. Only when you are in the midst of an enemy that has the power and ability to take your life do we grasp the true powerlessness and weakness of our own strength. If you are living for God today then your life will be full of these moments. What must have David been thinking in these moments? I am sure David had to have felt extreme fear, panic, anxiety, physical weakness (week-in-the-knees), sick in his stomach feelings. If he is human at all he had to feel these and probably much more. These moments are a true do or die moments. What would you do standing in the midst of a lion or a bear? Run? Ignore them? Sing a lullaby? Freeze up? Now I know that David could have run or maybe even not have gone after them as David’s will give more detail later in the chapter about his remarkable encounters with these beasts. But I want to make a strong point here about when we face these moments in our lives.

There is a reason and purpose that God allows us to stand in the midst of the lion or the bear. Whatever brought you to these points in your life whether you are attacked out of  no where or whether you go after these beasts because they are taken what God has given to you as a possession. I assure you that God knows very well what you are up against when you are standing face to face with it. This I believe is the final exam moment in our lives. A testing and examining of what we have learned, testing who we really trust, and whether or not we have learned to use the weapons God has given us to defeat our enemy. If God truly loves us, and I know He does, then He will test our faith to strengthen it even when we didn’t ask for it or expect it. Even when the lion or bear comes into our lives and wreck havoc. In this verse all we hear David tell Saul is “I have killed the lion and the bear…” Wow David! But there is so much more to it then that. We heard what you did and what encouragement to us that our enemies are able to be defeated. But hearing one person claim victory does not gives to us our own. Our enemies still lay in wait for us. Our lion and our bear moments are still out there. So take courage in the knowing that if God is with you in the midst of your lion or bear that your they can and will be defeated in your midst with God’s ever present help. And God knows we will need this reality to be supernaturally engrafted in our heart. This is a graduation day that will teach you more then any theological book could ever teach you. The day you graduate from the School of the Lion and Bear is a lesson in the power and presence of God that you will never forgot.  Next I would like us to dig deep and extract from God’s word how David explains he killed the Lion and Bear….

Psalm 27

 ¹ The LORD is my light and my salvation;
         Whom shall I fear?
         The LORD is the strength of my life;
         Of whom shall I be afraid?
 ² When the wicked came against me
         To eat up my flesh,
         My enemies and foes,
         They stumbled and fell.
 ³ Though an army may encamp against me,
         My heart shall not fear;
         Though war may rise against me,
         In this I will be confident.

 

Have you graduated from the School of the Lion and Bear?