Goliath Talks Tough, But He’s No Match For Dishes Done In Love

The loudest noise about marriage isn’t where the real fight is happening. We take you past the headlines and into the everyday choices that either erode a covenant or strengthen it, showing how the most decisive battles are won in kitchens, living rooms, and late-night conversations. With a fresh look at David and Goliath, we unpack why fear keeps couples on the sidelines, how faith reframes the size of the problem, and why secondhand armor never fits as well as the gear God has already issued.

We get practical and personal with Ephesians 6, translating the armor of God into marriage-strengthening habits: identity secured by the helmet of salvation, motives guarded by the breastplate of righteousness, decision-making tightened by the belt of truth, hope protected by the shield of faith, lies cut down by the sword of the Spirit, and a readiness to move toward each other with the shoes of the gospel. Then we zero in on one surprisingly simple “stone” that drops many giants: love each other as Christ has loved us. From that center, forgiveness becomes possible, gentleness grows, joy returns, and faith builds a track record of answered prayer.

If you’ve felt overwhelmed by culture wars, policy debates, or the sheer weight of your own home’s struggles, this conversation aims your focus where it counts and gives you a plan to stand firm together. Expect clear steps, a grounded biblical framework, and a hopeful call to rebuild from the Cornerstone. Subscribe, share with a couple who needs courage, and leave a review to help more marriages find their footing in the fight.

Transcript

Framing The “Marriage Apocalypse”

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now, here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

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A recent CNN news headline stated, Are you ready for the marriage apocalypse? Quote, the marriage apocalypse may be coming. Talk to any millennial, and you can envision an America virtually free of marriage with everyone happily single.

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Christians are seeing marriage under fire on many fronts. The truth is, marriage is under attack.

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A mighty army has seemingly laid siege to God's design for marriage. The result? A corrupt society with a perverse standpoint on marriage. The attack on marriage doesn't just intend to make God into something he isn't, trying to change people's perception of him. No, it intends to erase him. As Christians, we stand and we watch. But do we feel prepared to help? What can we do? Are we in fact helpless?

The Real Battlefield At Home

SPEAKER_02 1:19

What stance do you take? There are many who are up in arms about the new marriage laws and the trend we see, the destruction of marriage as we've known it since the Garden of Eden. There are the people who don't just want to sit on the sidelines and watch the enemy team win. So they look for ways to take action. There are also many Christians who feel helpless, the ones who know there's a war, but who end up sitting on their hands, thinking there really isn't anything they can do because after all, even if they vote, they're not the ones who make the loss. Both groups of people I just described spend their energies, either activist energies or mental energies, being upset about what's happening in our world. They both know there's a war. So the first group goes about trying to find and build the best weapon. The group on the sidelines figures there isn't a weapon out there that can defeat this giant who's bulldozing godly marriage. Here's the thing though, without realizing it, both groups and all Christians today have the biggest, best, most unassailable weapon against the attack on marriage right in their own homes. A forest that could be missed because of the trees. A weapon so obvious we didn't see it before. It's our very own marriages.

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There are many Christians who are hopeless about their own marriage, but at the same time, they're fully resolved that God's design for marriage, one man and one woman, is correct. Recently a man came to me and he believes, absolutely believes, in God's design for marriage. He trusts it's the only way. He's even mystified that people would try to have a marriage without God. But his marriage is in the active stages of divorce. The war to defeat marriage doesn't simply exist in the changing of laws or the twisting of God's design for marriage. No, the war to destroy marriage begins with you, my friend. It begins with me. It begins in those small little choices we make in a day. Satan gets his foot in the door with our compromises to set God's word aside and do things the way I'd like to. Then he uses the jackhammer of our own sin and lays waste to the foundation of my marriage. He sets up a minefield and waits for unsuspecting couples to come waltzing through what they thought was going to be a field of flowers in their marriage. Many of us enter into marriage completely unprepared to deal with the fact that sin will soon have an assault on us in every direction. We trip and fall in our iniquity and our relationships get damaged in the process. We don't know how to even bandage it, how to put it back together, so we pull ourselves up from the minefield and just try to keep going.

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The battleground for marriage is not where you think it is. It's not in the media, the politicians, or the same-sex marriage announcement in the paper. The battleground is right in your own marriage and in the marriages of those around you. The enemy can so easily discourage us by this new picture of marriage he's trying to create. But what really gets us is within the four walls of our own homes. When we attack, so to speak, one another with backbiting words and selfish attitudes. That's where the undermining of marriage really is happening today. Those are the bombs that sink the ships.

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On December 7th, 1941, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Region sent this hurried dispatch to all major Navy commands and fleet units. Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill. It was a day, as President Roosevelt said, that would live in infamy. The US didn't see it coming. Japan hit Pearl Harbor with premeditated force. Japan believed that America didn't have the resources to defend, and so they struck. Their efforts killed over 2,300 Americans and sank or damaged 21 ships. It even destroyed or damaged over 300 aircraft all in a matter of two hours. As much of a surprise as this was to an unsuspecting naval base, America did not just roll over and accept that defeat. Together we responded to a war that threatened our very future. Americans who had been divided about their opinion on joining the war became united. Everyone that could get involved did. Car manufacturers became tank and airplane manufacturers. Women worked the assembly line while their husbands and sons were fighting the front lines. Rather than sulk away wishing that they had not been hit in the first place, America gathered its defense mechanisms, it planned its strategies, it deployed its men and women and marched straight up to the front lines.

Unseen Enemy, Unseen War

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Today the war on marriage is no less ominous. As it says in 1 Peter 5 8, we have a crafty adversary, the devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for those he can destroy. And this time he's trying to have godly marriage for lunch. So let's ask this question: Has marriage been truly murdered or just simply assaulted? Do we believe the enemy has one, therefore godly marriage is dead, or at least dying on the battlefield with no hope in sight? Or maybe we believe it's still alive, but by the way we're acting or not acting, we paint a picture of people licking our wounds. If those scenarios don't sit well with you, good. Godly marriage may have taken a hit, but God is bandaging us with the truth so that we will be ready to continue to stand strong in our marriages, reflecting God's love for the world as we love one another. So if we want to get going, where do we start? First, I think we need to have a correct perspective of what we're seeing around us. Because when we do, when we know we're on mission in marriage, then we aren't waylaid by distractions. And that's exactly what the enemy's been doing. He's distracting us, keeping us busy, looking at what he's up to rather than focusing on the task at hand in our own marriages. We've been looking at his strategy all wrong. The enemy is not winning this war by his attempt to change marriage as God created it. At best, he can only make a dent with his attempts at shutting God out of the picture. When we turn on the TV or read the disturbing Facebook post, we assume he's got this one in the bag. We're using the world around us as a gauge on how many points he's got. We aren't seeing the whole picture. Yes, these things can be blatant, but they do not give us a correct measure of the war on marriage. That's just the top crust on a much thicker pie. But that's the enemy's tactic to throw us off his scent, to distract us so he can bring us down. He uses what we would never suspect to deflect the glory only God deserves.

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If all of Satan's attempts were out in the open for everyone to see, we'd see pretty easily how to devise our strategy to fight back. But he plots and he carries out his plans behind closed doors. His schemes are much harder to detect. If the naval base at Pearl Harbor knew what was coming that fateful day in December, you better believe that things would have turned out differently. So we have to know our opponent and study how he works. Who are we fighting? Are we fighting the media? Is it talk show hosts or politics? Is it the new laws that are coming about? The Supreme Court? No. Ephesians 6 12 takes the mystery out of this for us. It says, For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against the evil spirits in the heavenly places. This is an unseen battle, and it wages war for the very marriage you are in. This isn't a war that can be fought with carefully crafted speeches meant to try to persuade someone. This isn't a war that can be fought with the picket lines. Listen to Second Corinthians ten. We are human, but we don't wage war as humans do. We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. Satan might be sneakier than you think. He's winning the war in your heart. It's on the home front, it's affecting you and me, but it's so inconspicuous to the naked eye that sometimes I think we don't even see it. And because of that, we don't fight back for our own homes, for our own marriages. He's not winning the war on marriage by changing the laws or marriage trends. He's winning because we haven't known how to fight back.

How Satan’s Strategy Works

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So now we know our enemy. We need to figure out how he works. We gotta start with realizing that he always has a plan. The Prime Minister of Japan in 1941 didn't just wake up on December 7th and say to himself, you know what? I think I'll bomb Pearl Harbor today. He was calculated, deliberate, premeditated. Satan's plan is not just to roam around hoping he finds someone to devour. The father of lies, as he's known, is putting old plays back into action. Jesus says in John 10.10 that Satan is a thief and his purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. That sounds exactly like what he's up to, doesn't it? He's attempting to steal God's creation of marriage and pervert it for his own purposes. He's robbing your attention away from what you should be focused on. He's killing your passion to stand up for what is right every time you compromise. In your sin towards one another, he's destroying every opportunity you and your spouse have to reflect Christ's love for the church. All of this is nothing new. From the very beginning, he's been trying to usurp God, to take, to steal his place. Since most of us as Christians won't replace God with Satan, he then resorts to one of three things: distracting us from our true purpose, leading us to believe that we can find life outside of God, or making us useless on the sidelines when we believe there's nothing we can do. And don't think for one moment that he's going to leave your marriage alone in all of this. Just the opposite. He knows that if he can wedge his way into your relationship, his attempt at lawful corruption of marriage won't even matter.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

The enemy's plan for your marriage is to destroy it.com. Vows2Keep will respond to you via email and perhaps use it on the air. Now let's rejoin David and Tracy Sellers with the remainder of today's broadcast.

From Helpless To Battle Ready

David And Goliath Reframed

SPEAKER_00 12:02

You might ask, okay, well, what do I need to do? Let me start by saying there's no new tactic of war that we need to invent or figure out. When we've been resolved to the mindset that Satan is winning, I think we begin to think that. But really, the enemy is easy to spot when you know what you're looking for. He's got the same weak scheme he's had from the beginning, and we've got God's word to show us the plan. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel and thereby get even more distracted, let's look at an ancient story to fight a battle that's ages old. We're going to turn to 1 Samuel chapter 17 and look at the scene of David and Goliath on the battlefield. Now don't let your mind jump to that Sunday school flannel graphs thing. These events are dramatic, they're action-packed, and they're stuffed full of truth for you and I to walk away with today.

Fear, Retreat, And A Shepherd’s Faith

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Picture the scene with me. Two armies each wanting the win. The Philistines on one hill, the Israelites on the other, with a valley in between. Somebody's got to make the first move. Israel can clearly see that the Philistines have gathered their forces of war. They appear to be an intimidating foe. Then the Philistines bring down the hammer. They send out a guy who's nine feet tall, their strongest warrior, Goliath. He's been fighting since he was a boy, and it shows. He's got more confidence in his little finger than the entire Israelite army, and that shows too. This behemoth of a man dressed in all of his mighty armor comes out and tries to strike a deal. Here's verses eight and nine. Goliath says, Choose a man and let him come down to me. If he's able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects. But if I overcome him and kill you, you will become our subjects and serve us. Sounds pretty reasonable if Israel's army had a giant hiding somewhere in the back. Anybody? Bueller? Nope, guess not. But Goliath's deal gets a whole lot more personal in verses 10 and 11. He says, I defy the armies of Israel today. Send me a man who will fight me. When Saul and the Israelites heard this, they were terrified and deeply shaken. If you can imagine, this went on for 40 days. Both camps drawn up to the battle lines, no one moving a muscle except Goliath. Every day he came and took his stand, and no one was willing to do anything about it. They didn't think they had a representative who was strong enough, tough enough, able enough. Not knowing what to do, they did nothing. Now enters stage right, a young shepherd boy named David. David's father had sent him to bring food to his brothers in war. When he arrived, the Israelites had already been shaking in their boots for 40 days. And because everyone knew the Israelites served the one true God, every day of their inactivity reflected more poorly on the God they said they served. David shows up expecting a battle scene. Instead, all the Israelites were doing was drawing the line and shouting the war cry. That's it. Then they just stood there. David heard Goliath shout his usual defiance. He turned around to see who would go and fight this enemy and found that everyone had retreated in fear. It didn't take more than a few minutes, and David goes to Saul, king of Israel, and says, Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him. Saul, in his doubtfulness, tries to dissuade David, saying he's not big enough or experienced enough. The enemy is just too formidable. But David knows better. He recognizes who he's fighting for. He sees that all his time as a shepherd fighting bears and lions has been preparation for this moment. He has faith that God will supply exactly what he needs to accomplish this victory. Instead of using the armor that Saul tried to give David, David chose his weapons, five stones from the stream. He put them in his bag and marched up to Goliath. Now Goliath's not about to have it. He curses David in the name of his false gods and threatens to feed him to the birds. But David boldly states his purpose and plan. Let's pick up in verse forty-five of 1 Samuel 17. David replied to the Philistine, You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the Lord will conquer you and I will kill you. Picking up in verse 47, David says, And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, not with sword and spear. This is the Lord's battle, and he will give you to us. And you know what happened next. David took a single stone from his bag, flung it at the giant, and Goliath fell face down on the ground.

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So many of us have been deploying the Israelite strategy for war. We're sitting on the sidelines saying, What can I do? The enemy is too big. I can't conquer him. And we tremble in fear, we shake our heads all the while, not realizing that God has equipped us to fight. When the Israelites retreated, nothing got accomplished other than that the Philistines are mocking God's people. And that's what's happening today. Many Christian marriages cause God to be ridiculed. Why in the world would people who see a Christian husband and wife at war with one another believe that God's plan for marriage is better than theirs? People are creating their own rules for marriage, left and right, and they've got no reason not to. With separation, divorce, adultery, pornography, manipulation, selfish ambition, each of us trying to make sure we're the ones that come out on top. I can see why when the world looks at our marriages, they don't see a giant finger pointing to their creator. They didn't even get a glimpse of how Christ feels about them. Instead, they get turned off. They have no reason to believe that God's way is better. So they make their own rules. And Satan gains the advantage. And that's how it's been. But that's not where it needs to stay. David, a bold, brave, faith-filled man of God, decides to take action. And look what happened when he did. Complete and absolute victory. He was just a tool in God's hands that day. He's not the point of the story. His actions, though, made way for a celebration for who God was and the miracle that he made happen.

Spiritual Armor For Modern Marriages

One Stone: Christlike Love

SPEAKER_02 18:26

David had the faith to take that action because he saw himself as prepared. David didn't need all the tips and tricks of his commanding officer to win this fight. He set aside what looked like the right armor and put on his spiritual armor instead. We read in Ephesians 6 how to dress for our fight, how we've been prepared. Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the helmet of salvation because when we do this, we remind ourselves of what the gospel of Jesus Christ has done for us. It tells us to put on the breastplate of righteousness, asking for forgiveness for our sins and standing tall in the righteousness that comes only from Jesus Christ. Then we put on the belt of truth, reading God's word daily so we can sift through all that's being thrown at us and have discernment on what is true and what is a lie. We take up the shield of faith, knowing that we can deflect any of the enemy's flaming arrows with what we believe in our hearts is true. We take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, slicing through the enemy's lies with truth every single time. And we have the proper footgear to be ready to run and spread the gospel as we sprint towards the finish line. The pieces of armor talked about here in Ephesians 6 are essential to being a capable warrior in this invisible war. With them, we can boldly take our stance with no fear. Now imagine hundreds, thousands, even millions of couples putting on each piece of armor, taking their stand. Every couple arming themselves, doing exactly what Ephesians 6.13 says, putting on every piece of God's armor so we will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle, we will still be standing firm. At first glance of Christian marriages, we may look like the underdogs, but with God on our side, who can be against us? David was battle ready despite how it appeared on the outside. And now it's time to make our marriages battle ready. David took up five stones, but really he only needed one. Jesus tells us in John 15, 12, love each other in the same way that I have loved you. That's our stone. It seems too simple to be effective enough to win what appears to be an impossible battle. But in all of its simplicity, we see the gospel of Jesus for our own souls. We see who loved us first, why we should love, and how we should love. Simple yet so profound, so unique in its application in a world full of sin that people won't be able to help but notice there's something distinctly beautiful about the love between a Christian husband and wife. This love is our one stone. And when this love bears its fruit in our marriage, the other stones in our bag follow suit.

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When we display Christ's love in our marriage, we pick up our stone of forgiveness. We display Christ's love in our marriages when we pick up the stone of unselfishness and eagerly look for ways to give. We display Christ's love in our marriages when we pick up the stone of gentleness. When we display Christ's love in our marriage, we pick up the stone of joy. Our faces actually reflect a happiness that the world only wishes that it had. When we display Christ's love in our marriages, we pick up a stone of faith, remembering that the God that we serve has the ability to do above and beyond anything we could even imagine or ask. David picked up these stones and was ready to take down a giant. We've got a giant before us, we already know his plan. We've got the living God to win the war for us. So get up off the couch and pick up your stones. As our marriages follow Christ and obey his word, we stand immovable. Our joy, our faithful marriages, a testimony all of the goodness of God. We march out to the front lines with evidence that God's original design for marriage is not only not outdated, it is relevant today. God is using your marriage to build his kingdom. Remember, we're laying waste to the foundation of our marriage with our sin. And when we do so, we compromise God's kingdom. The sin in our marriages always gives the enemy the advantage. But as we stand strong in our marriages, living out godliness in our homes and bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, we begin to recognize that God is calling you and me to fight in the battle in a different way than we once thought. As Christian marriages stand and stand strong, the enemy begins to retreat. The evidence of his work may still be seen, but the final victory belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

Forgiveness, Gentleness, Joy, Faith

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Don't get disillusioned. Don't think that the enemy is gaining the upper hand in the fight for God's plan for marriage. You are equipped. You are battle ready. You are prepared as you arm yourself with the gear it takes to stand strong in the midst of a siege. Don't let divorce or separation be a part of your vocabulary. Don't let the world's way be an option for you and your wife. You don't have to lament the lame tactics Satan is deploying in our culture. The battle is more easily won than you realize. Fight this fight at home. There is something you can do. You are not helpless, nor is marriage as a whole hopeless. Instead, know God's word and then live it out in your marriage. Pick up your stone. Love your wife like you've been loved. That's where the battle is won. Fortify your marriage by building on the strongest, most immovable cornerstone there is, Jesus. That's an opponent that cannot be destroyed.

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You've been listening to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. Vows to Keep offers Christ-centered marriage resources for couples wishing to prepare, enrich, and renew their marriages.

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Have you ever struggled with God's sovereignty? If so, get a hold of my new book, Romantic Historical Suspense called Roots Reawakened. Follow the story of a young woman's journey from anger at God to a renewed relationship with Him. This is the first book in the Roots Run Deep series. More details about the trilogy on our website, vowstoKeep.com.

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This program is sponsored by Vows2Keep of Zanesfield, Ohio.