You have what you need. So why doesn’t it feel like enough? /// Flannelgraph: Part 1

We're so glad you've chosen to listen to our online experience! Here at Plum Creek, we’re all about changed lives, changing lives; and what that simply means is that what Christ has done in us is not just for us, but it’s for us to share with others in our community and around the world.

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If you're using this teaching for a Home Groups setting, we've included discussion prompts to help guide your conversation:

1. What “giant” in your life has become so large that it is keeping you frozen instead of moving forward in trust?

2. Reflect on a time when God prepared you through ordinary or overlooked experiences before you understood their purpose.

3. Which voices have shaped how you see yourself, and how might God’s view of you be different?

4. Look up 1 Samuel 17:34–47 and discuss what David remembered about God that gave him courage to enter the valley.

5. Consider what is already in your hand right now (a skill, relationship, experience, opportunity, or resource) and how you could surrender it to God.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Plum Creek Church Podcast. We're so thankful that you're listening along with us in this way. Now, if you're a returning listener, welcome back. But if you're new or newish, we'd love to become part of your listening rotation. So be sure to subscribe and follow to be notified when new episodes are available. Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing. We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true. Because when you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you. Okay. Let's posture our hearts for what God has in store. This message.

Message Start

SPEAKER_00 0:56

So good to see you. How's everybody doing? You're good? Um, so no joke. Uh, just this is a free fun fact. As I was about to get on stage, someone came by and go, huh, you look like a farmer. And then I said that, and someone else goes, bro, you do not look like a farmer. So for all farmers, I apologize. Um, they were starting a brand new series. It's called flannograph. And for those of you that don't know what a flannograph is, this is from my childhood. Now, I grew up with this thing called Sunday school. And in Sunday school, we would learn all these biblical characters, and uh our form of technology was a flannograph, which was like a little piece of paper that you could stick to these boards and it would sort of illustrate these classic stories of faith. And so we're gonna look at classic stories of faith over the next few weeks and just sort of unpack them. So um here's a question I have for you. Um, what are you afraid of? Like, what's the stuff that really scares you? Now, here's the truth about all of us. We all sort of fall in some buckets, right? Where we all sort of share some common fears. Um, so I just wonder, maybe by a show of hands or gasp, how many of you are deathly afraid of spiders? Any spider people? Okay, yep. I don't like them much either. Okay. Um, all right, how many of you are afraid of heights? Do you have any heights folks? Yep, yeah, don't want to go up on those mountains. Um, how about this one? Anyone afraid of public speaking? Yeah, me. Um well, when you make comments about my shirt, you get in my head. Okay, um, how many of you are afraid of snakes? This is a true story. In my house, we lived in Littleton, and I was going downstairs for a movie night, and I am not kidding. In a house, finished basement, a snake came out from underneath the couch. Never went back down in that basement. Anybody afraid of needles getting needles, people? Yeah. I mean, look, there are things in our life that we are afraid of that that make us stop, right? Like blood move out of your body. And I was thinking about one of those moments, um, it was so many years ago, one of those moments that just stopped me in my tracks, made me so afraid, um, was uh at a baseball game. Now, I probably couldn't have been eight, nine, ten years old. I'm not quite sure, but we were at Bush Stadium, and my father was the opposite of a helicopter parent, right? And probably in the 1980s, you could be. But I I told my dad we were in the upper deck of Bush Stadium. I go, Dad, I gotta go to the bathroom. And he's like, Well, you know where the bathroom is, go to the bathroom. So I got out and went to the bathroom, and I ended up in this spot and did what I needed to do, and I'm washing my hands and it was empty. When out of the back of my right behind me, I hear this voice go, Hey boy. Oh yeah. I mean, the blood drained from my face. And honestly, about this time, they had just released um where they started putting kids on milk cartons, and I was sure this is how that story started, right? You're in a bathroom, and someone goes, hey boy. So I freeze and I turn around, and of course it's my dad. So, right, like my dad's really great and awful at the same time. But I thought, you know, there are moments in our lives where we will face something that will make us so afraid, so petrified. The question is, like, what do we do in those moments? Because I'm telling you, those moments will come, like big moments. So I want to take a story that I know you're all familiar with, and I want to answer that question like, how do you face what I'll call the giants of life? How do you do it? And so I'm looking at David and Goliath, and and I want to say something from the beginning. One, spoiler alert, David does win, okay? But that's not what I'm really looking at because I actually don't think this is really a story about an underdog. Because those are really just stories about what happens in the moment. I think there's something else happening. And so I'm gonna explore that. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to 1 Samuel, it's in the front quarter of your Bible. It's 1 Samuel. We're gonna be in chapter 17. But let me set up the story. There's a battle that's about to ensue. Now, at the heart of ancient Palestine, um, there are a series of these ridges and valleys. And these ridges and valleys are exceedingly strategic territory. They've been warred over for centuries. People have been fighting about this land for a long, a long time. So in verse 1, this is where we find uh this story, the setting of this story. It says, Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. It lists a bunch of geography, but that's this particular portion of land, this valley. Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and encamped in the valley of Elah and drew up in a line of battle against the Philistines. And the Philistines stood on the mountain on one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with the valley in between them. What the Bible is telling us is both armies were in a strategic position. They didn't want to leave the strategic position, because if you came from the high ground down into the valley and tried to attack, you'd probably lose the battle. And so they were frozen. They were stuck on their ridge trying to figure out what do we do next? When, in verse 4, this happens. There came out in the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits in span, he had a helmet of bronze on his head, he was armed with a coat of mail, the weight of that coat was five thousand shekels of bronze, and he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. His shield bearer went before him. So what does all that mean? Well, what it means is he was basically nine feet tall, which is huge, and he wore body armor that weighed roughly 125 pounds. This dude was enormous. Have you ever like run into a giant human? Anybody? You ever run into like a giant human that you're like, oh my goodness, you're so big. Um, like in fourth grade, uh, we had this kid named Chris Clemens, and Chris hit puberty in fourth grade. No joke, he was six foot one in fourth grade, and he shaved. He was huge, and he was a really nice person. But if he asked you for your milk, you gave it to him. This kid was so big, this was Goliath, he was absolutely massive. And so, um, this is what it says in in verse 8. Uh, Goliath, this giant, this giant of a human, says, Why have you come out drawn up for battle? Am I not a Philistine? Are you not servants of Saul? And then he says, This just choose for yourself and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we'll be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us. And the Philistine said, I defy the ranks of Israel. This day, give me a man that we may fight together. Now, this is just not, this isn't just hyperbole or him sort of like popping off. This is actually known in the ancient world as single combat. It happened often. When two armies couldn't face off, and they felt like it was going to be a bloodbath, sometimes they would send two warriors, and those warriors would represent each side. They would fight, and that is who would win the battle. This is what Goliath was calling for. And the Philistines, for obvious reason, in a situation of single combat, chose Goliath, and Israel, for obvious reasons, chooses to send no one, right? I think the entire army really was frozen with fear. Not because they're cowards. I think it's because they couldn't see past the giant. And I think that's a feeling we know. Malcolm Gloudwell, um, he's an author. I don't know if he's a believer or not, but he wrote about this encounter, this whole idea of facing giants and David and Goliath. And this is how he frames it. He says, when I say giants, when he's talking about our lives, what I mean are powerful opponents of all kinds: disability, misfortune, oppression, the things so much bigger than us that they blot out the sky. Because that's what a giant does. And we've all had those moments. Those moments when the thing in front of us seems so big that you don't know your way around it or through it or under it or over it. It just takes up the whole screen. I remember I've told the story when Gray was just, our middle son was three months old, and he had a traumatic brain injury, and he had a bleed on his brain. I remember sitting in the hospital, and it felt like a giant we were facing. I couldn't see past it. And I was literally writing this week, and I got a text from my friend, and it took me back to a few years ago, one of my closest friends since he was 16. He called me when his wife went into labor at 28 weeks, and he he called me to tell me that um his wife was hemorrhaging, that Andrea was hemorrhaging, and he didn't know if she was gonna make it. Like, like that's a giant. It's just right in front of you. And here's the thing all of these things, these these opponents, all of them have the same thing in common. And it is that when you are in it, all you can see is the thing in front of you. And this is what I've learned when we get in those moments when the giant is the only thing that you can see. Sometimes there isn't even a fight. I mean, think about it. Here's Goliath for 40 days. That dude has been walking down into a valley. And do you know that there hasn't been a fight for 40 days? The dude's just talked. That's it. He has gone down in the valley looking real big, and he just talked. And that talk kept everybody in their place. And I know on the service we go, man, that's not me. But the truth is, oftentimes that's how it works in our lives. That there is a voice in your head that is whispering to you, you can't win this. You can't get through this. And oftentimes we'll say, Man, it's the evil one. He's whispering lies, and that is true. He lies to us all the time. But sometimes I do his work for him. I look at me and I look at this giant and I go, you don't have what it takes, Eric. You can't get through this. And I just decide I'm just not gonna fight because I can't win. This is what's happening. Standing on a ridge for 40 days, frozen by talk from the giant. Until one day, in verse 20, the Bible tells us that a kid shows up. Now, this is David. Verse 20 says that he leaves his sheep and he comes out to feed his brother. But this has been going on for some time. So David's brothers, they are part of the army. David is not, he is just a shepherd. But his dad pecks him up with food, he goes out, he delivers it to his brother. And on this particular day, he shows up. And he shows up at the time that the giant is saying all the things that the giant says. You know, popping off about God, about their army. And David, being the kid that he is, looks around and is a bit confused. He says to himself, wait a minute, you're gonna let that guy talk and you're not gonna do anything? And his brother, of course, being the big brother that he is, tells him, shut up. Go home. Right? He looks at him, he goes, You bro, you don't know what you're talking about. There's a big giant, there's a big giant down there. So you need to just go home. But David can't get it out of his mind. He's going, wait, nobody's gonna do anything. Nobody's gonna do anything. So he says, Fine. This is a kid who just showed up. He says, if nobody's gonna do anything, I'll fight him. And of course, everybody with an earshot is like, Who are you, right? No, you're not. You're just a shepherd. You see, it's interesting because with David, he's actually the kind of person that has been um undervalued his whole life. He's been told he's just uh his whole life, right? I mean, you you look at it, his father didn't think he had what it took because when Samuel came looking for the next king of Israel, he lined up all his sons except, except for David. He said, Oh, well, he's the right. You don't want him. When he shows up and he's the only one willing to fight, his brother's like, bro, you're just a shepherd. When he says to Saul, look, put me in, I'll do it, I'll do it. Saul's like, you're you're just a kid. This is grown man's business. This is David's life, his whole life. Every voice had a vision for him. He was too young, too small, too low, just a sheep kid. And David, this is what I love, he never once served their vision of him. He served God's vision of him. Somewhere along the way. God taught him something about who he was, and he believed it. You see it in the speech because he doesn't take no for an answer. He's like, No, no, no, you don't understand. I can fight this guy. And in verse 34, he says, Your servant, he's talking about, I used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion or a bear, and it took a lamb from the flock, I went after him. I struck him, I delivered it out of his mouth. If he rose against me, I caught him by his beard, which is amazing. He said, I caught him by his beard, and I struck him and I killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears. And this giant, this uncircumcised Philistine, shall be like one of them. The Lord who delivered me, listen, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from the hand of the Philistines. Listen, there is something that has happened in David's life that in moments like this, he was able to remember. I um I've told you that I have this, I'm wearing short sleeves so you can see it. I have this little tattoo right here. And I got this for this very reason. It says, forget and then remember. And I've said this often, but I'll remind you that too often I forget the things I should remember, and I remember all the things I should forget, right? Anybody else? Well, not David. David stands in this moment and he said, Well, wait, God has always showed up. Like when I fought the bear, he was there. When I fought the lion, he was there. Why would he not show up again? It's like in this moment he remembered not only who he was, but who God was. He's like, he's gonna show up because that's what he does. I can see it in my life, and the truth is, the truth is. If you track back your life, all of us have moments where when we look back, we can see God's hand clearly. You know it. It was that moment when he reached in, and you might not have known it in the moment, but you know it now. David says, I see God's hand. And I love this because everybody else, they see David. David sees God. God sees David. It says in 1 Samuel, for the Lord sees not a man as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. And long before any of this, long before any of this happened, out in the field somewhere watching, with nobody watching except God, God had already told David who he was, showed him who he was. And so Saul reluctantly says, All right, fine, fine, fine. If you're gonna go out and fight this big dude, then I gotta put a bunch of stuff on you. So he puts him in all of his armor, right? Armor that isn't David's. David's just a scrawny little kid. David looks at all the armor, he's like, I can't wear any of this. In fact, in verse 39, it says, And David said to Saul, I can't go with these. I've not tested them. Like, they don't fit him. So he takes it off, he leaves it on the ground. And I want you to see where he what else he left there. He left every voice, every doubt, every version of himself that somebody else built. He put it all on the ground. He said, That's not my armor. And he walks into that valley as exactly who God said he was. Now he only had two things, but he walked with them. Look, every single one of us have a chorus of people that say things in our heads. In fact, C.S. Lewis, he calls it the fallacy of the inner circle. We all have an inner circle in our life, these voices that we've accumulated over life that tell us what we're capable of, where we can go, what we can do, that we're too small, we're too much, we're not enough, we're too big. And he says, so often we're living our lives trying to appease and live by this inner circle that he says, you find out one day isn't even watching. It's a bunch of people that aren't even watching. David had the same thing we all do. And he says, Look, I can't spend my life fighting from your armor. I can't do that. That's not me. And so he walks out onto the field with a stick and a sling. Now, if you're the Israelites, you're not feeling good about this, right? Because you see the giant and you see David, you don't even know who David is. You're like, this dude was like a grub hub driver. And now he's walking down into the field. We're all gonna lose. And Goliath thinks it's like a joke. In verse 43, he says, Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks? Right? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods, and the Philistine said to David, Come to me then, and I will give you your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field. He says, Fine, this is your best, bring him down. And I love David's response. David looks at Goliath and he says, This says, You come to me with a sword and a spear. I feel like I should read this like Robert De Niro, except I don't know how to do that. Um, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you've defiled. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down, and I will cut off your head, and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know. Not that I am great, not that I can do this, but that there is a God in Israel. Think about it. No bravado. He doesn't say, I'm bigger than you think, I'm stronger than you think, I've got this. He says, You. Come with the sword. You know what I come with? The name of the Lord. See, he's not arguing that he's enough. He's telling Goliath, I just brought somebody else to the fight. It's funny to me because something did click. And something often does with us. I don't know when it happens. Oftentimes when we're facing some of these moments when we need God to show up, something clicks and we realize, oh wait, God is big enough, isn't he? He made me for this. I can do this. And it happened with David. Now you have to think about it. He's walking out with a stick and then he has one of these things in his pocket. Now, it's not exactly what David have, because I bought this on Amazon. But it's real similar. He had a sling. Now I know when we tell the story, we're like, well, how is this little rope and this little leather gonna compete with the big old dude with 125 pounds of armor on him? But it's interesting because I think something clicked in David's mind. Something clicked where he saw past the problem and he realized, wait a minute, wait a minute, I have everything I need. Like this is all I actually need. Now, you have to understand ancient battle. There were actually three types of warriors in ancient battle. There was cavalry, and they were the ones in the chariot. There was heavy infantry, right? They had all the armor on, but there was a third. They're called slingers. Now, historians will tell you that a slinger with one of these, right here, could actually pick a bird out of the sky in flight. Incredibly skilled, right? That's what slingers were. And David is looking at a Philistine who is in all of that gear, and he's like, oh well, he's heavy infantry. What am I? Well, I'm definitely not cavalry. And obviously, I tried to put on this, and I'm not infantry. I'm a slinger. And did you know that the one thing on the entire battlefield built to beat heavy infantry is a slinger. Nine times out of ten, they win. The speed at which they would release a rock. They win. And David went, okay, I'm not trained in the army. I was never trained. But I was in a field, and it was me and God, and I just took this thing, and day after day, I just sort of played with this thing, and I got good with this thing. For 40 days, everybody on that ridge they accepted the fight that Goliath described. Come down here, go toe-to-toe with me. David, he did not. He decided he was gonna go with what God gave him. With what he gave him. He never agreed to that fight. And everybody on both sides of the ridge, they were still so blinded by the size of Goliath, they really thought it was a mismatch. They just didn't understand that they had it backwards. Everything David needed, everything he needed for this moment, was in his hand. God had given him everything he needed. The very thing that they thought made him nothing was the thing that God had spent David's whole life prepping him with. It's the irony of it all. David wasn't crazy. The truth is, he really did, he really did. Just trust God. He did, and it wasn't a feeling. It was built on the fact that he had seen God go before him and that he trusted that he had given him everything he needed for this. And here's the truth, here's the truth, Plum Creek. As you open this book and you continue to understand it, what you see is story after story, just like this one. I mean, think about it. Moses, he stands at a burning bush, and he is listing every reason why he is not the right guy. And God asks him one single question. Moses, what's in your hand? And it was a stick. But do you know that stick would later be called the staff of God? It split the Red Sea. In 2 Kings, there's a widow about to lose everything, and Elisha asked her a similar question. He says, What do you have in your home? She says, One jar of oil. And that jar pays off everything she owes. And then in the New Testament, there's 5,000 plus people who are following Jesus. They need to be fed. And the disciples say, This is impossible. Jesus looks at one little boy, his lunch, five loaves, two fish. He makes enough for everyone. This is the story. See, God doesn't start with what's missing. That's not where he starts. He starts with what is already in your hand. And look, you will face giants. Jesus said in this life, we will have trouble. But here's what I'm learning from this story and from this book that God prepared us before he ever shows us the giant. He's been prepping us for these moments. See, God didn't just meet him in the valley, David. He didn't. He was working on him in the field for years. Just David in a field. And nobody was watching. Truth be told, there's so many of us that look at our lives and we wonder if those years that you were working in that place or those wasted years back on a job that your family dismissed you, every lion, every bear, listen, God was putting something in your hand. He wastes nothing. He just doesn't. And we don't often know it in the moment. But we see it. And I know that when you hear that, some of us ask a pretty simple question. Well, how do I know it's in my hand? How do I know? Because I feel like I'm about to step into a big old fight. How do I know? Well, David didn't really know. I mean, he never stood in a field, taking inventory of what he was doing and going, you know, someday I'm gonna use this sling to become famous. They will talk about me everywhere. He just did what was in front of him, right? When the lion came, he chased the lion. When the bear came, he chased the bear. He spent time in this field. He wasn't really training, he was just working. He was just doing the next thing in front of him. And God was quietly building this man. He didn't know that the field was preparation until he was standing in that valley. And that's how it works. You almost never see it going in. You see it looking back. And so, where do you look? Look at the small stuff. I mean, look at the scriptures. It's like a staff, a jar of oil, boys' lunch, five smooth stones out of a creek. Nobody in any of those stories looked down at what was in their hands and thought, well, this will do, right? Nobody. And the truth is, so often we're waiting to step into the fight until we feel like we have enough. And listen, you'll never have enough. Not just you on your own. It'll never feel like enough. It won't feel like enough. But God's saying, Will you just step and trust me? I mean, I thought about Greg. The truth is, when he called me, he did not have in his hand a way to stop his wife from bleeding. What he had in his hand was a telephone, and he called me. And when he couldn't pray, there were armies of us that prayed for him and Andrea. And she did, she made it. But sometimes it's that simple. It's the hand is a friend. Sometimes it's a verse that somebody made you memorize when you were like 10 years old. Sometimes it's the last valley that you crawled out of and barely made it out. But here's the thing. We have a choice in these moments to stand on a ridge and believe the lies, or to step in the valley and trust God. To see his track record on display in our lives and say, if he's shown up then, he's gonna show up now. And here's what I have, use it. You know, this is what why David says in verse 47, this battle, it's the Lord's. It's the Lord's, it's not mine. And look, look, did he use a sling? Yes. Did it kill Goliath? Yes. But I'm convinced if it wouldn't have been a sling, we would have had a pair of pliers. I mean, it would have been weird, but I'm convinced God would just use the things that we surrender to him, say, God, it's yours. I trust you. I know, I know you can do this. So I'm not gonna sit on the ridge, I'm gonna fight. I'm gonna fight with what you gave me. It was never about the power of the thing that was in David's hand, it was about whose hand he was in. And it's still true, Plum Creek. I mean, I know, like oftentimes when I'm praying about these messages, I'm like, Lord, I just need you to speak through me to someone who's in a real tough spot, especially this one. And they're tired and exhausted and can't feel a way through because the giant's the biggest thing on the screen. And I'm just here to tell you, none of this was ever about the power of David. He never had to be bigger than the giant. He just had to trust the only one that was. There was one that was bigger. That God that met a shepherd in an empty field, the God who put a staff in Moses' hand and an oil in a widow's jar, and a boy's lunch in the hands of Jesus, the God who stood in that valley next to that kid. That God, the same God today. Same. That is the same God who is standing in your valley today. He's not gotten smaller, he has not gotten tired, he has not run out, he is no different than the God of this story. So if you are facing a giant, don't believe the lies. Remember the truth. There is a God, and he is bigger than the battle you're in, and all you have to do is give him what you got, and it will be enough. God, I pray for my friends. Will you help them grasp and grab onto the reality of this story and this song that you are the same God? Deliver us because that's what you do in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks again for listening. Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus. If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend. So until next time, grace and peace in the name of Jesus.