Giant-killing Favour
[Part 6, Chapter 42]
Wyatt is one of our grandchildren. His middle name is David.
His father’s middle name is Thomas.
His younger brother’s middle name is Thomas.
One day, we were talking about names, and it must have dawned on him that his middle name was different. “I don’t want to be Wyatt David Bisset, I want to be Wyatt Thomas Bissett.”
Uh-oh!
Thankfully Holy Spirit gave me a quick—and deep—response.
“You know how in the bible there was that big giant, Goliath? And you remember how it was David, the shepherd boy, who killed Goliath with just a sling shot and he went down thump dead and then David chopped his head off?” (Like all youngish boys, Wyatt likes the drama in these accounts).
“Yes Gramps, I remember.”
“Well, you’re Wyatt, the giant-killer!”
He stared straight ahead, eyes fixated somewhere, while his Spirit-fuelled imagination kicked in. Click … click … click. I could almost hear the cogs turning in his head. Then a smile started to appear on his face.
“Yes!” he declared emphatically. “I am Wyatt-the-Giant-killer!”
And off he went, marching left-right-left around the loungeroom, killing all the giants he came across.
We need giant-killing favour.
The bible says Satan is both an accuser and an adversary.
Jesus, however, comes as our advocate (1 John 2:1) and also sends his Spirit to be our advocate (John 14:6, 26; 15:26; 16:7).
Jesus has stood for us against the claims of the adversary—accusations that we’re worthless, we’ll always be defined by our sin, we aren’t gifted, love isn’t possible for us, God isn’t always good. Through Holy Spirit, Jesus still stands against those deceptions and their attacks.
Jesus is our giant killer. When the bible records that Jesus grew in favour with God and man, it is saying he grew in a profound sense of his identity as Son. He didn’t see himself as weak and helpless, outnumbered and defeated. He knew that part of his destiny-releasing identity included: giant-slayer. He got that, not by putting on anyone else’s armour, but through living in the fullness of Father’s love and favour for him. He knew Father’s character and what his Abba thought of him.
When you feel intimidated by life’s situations, you can take it as an opportunity to upgrade your intimacy with God and experience what he is really like?
Favour releases you to become a spiritual warrior.
You fight the giants in front of you by living out of the identity of your sonship, absolutely certain of his unchanging favour towards you.
You are in Christ, Holy Spirit lives in you, and both of them place you on Father God’s lap, where you live from his heart. For the devil—or any of his low-down weapons like despair and defeat—to get to you, he has to go through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, an absolute impossibility for him to do uninvited.
After Wyatt had finished marching around the loungeroom, slaying giants, he came and sat on my lap and we read a book.
For you too, nestling up to Abba Father, secure in his unbridled affection for you, is still the best way to do battle that I know.