Is Favour enough?

Hello Friend. Welcome to this blog post.

I will be periodically writing to you here henceforth, sharing scriptural wisdom as God inspires my heart.

I am happy to have you reading.

Let's begin our first ride!

Do you know the biblical story about David and Goliath?

I imagine it's a very popular story that is even quite fairly known outside of christain circles. The story of how David defeated Goliath in the bible is described in great details about how the battle went. 

It is in two halves.

The first part of it tells us how David shot a stone with a sling to hit Goliath in the forehead; Goliath went down after this action.

The second part explains how after David saw Goliath had fallen, David moved close and used Goliath’s sword to cut off Goliath’s head which then completely eliminated Goliath and the philistines fled from the battle.

A lot of us focus on the first half of the story and hold on to that to make some faith confessions and wish/believe big things into existence and we leave the second half out of the picture, however we must consider the full story completely.

Faith confessions are absolutely good, scriptures encourage us to do so, but that does and should not take the place of diligence and skillfulness.

Let us go back to the David story.

David went before Goliath with a sling and stones having refused the armour from Saul because he was not skilled to use those.

“Reaching into his shepherd’s bag and taking out a stone, he hurled it with his sling and hit the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank in, and Goliath stumbled and fell face down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with only a sling and a stone, for he had no sword.”

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭17‬:‭49‬-‭50‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Many of us stop short here and go on to say David defeated Goliath with a shot of stone from his sling. This is however not entirely true.

Further down the next verse, we see that David didn’t stop at that.

“Then David ran over and pulled Goliath’s sword from its sheath. David used it to kill him and cut off his head. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they turned and ran.”

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭17‬:‭51‬ ‭NLT‬‬

This is where the victory happened.

David had to take an action that was instrumental to the Israelites winning that battle - using the sword to cut off Goliath’s head.

We can only imagine if David didn’t do that, it would have maybe taken some minutes or a couple of hours before Goliath was back on his feet and we can only imagine what would have happened afterwards.

I said that to say, there are times you can come into an instance of winning by the favour of the Lord, however for you to continue to hold that position of a winner, you have got to take action and put some skill to work.

The scriptures are replete with records of how David went on to different other battles before and after he became king, and he didn’t show up to any of the battles with a sling and stone.

Safe to say David went on to learn the art of being a man of war and how to use the necessary weapons of war.

Take Paul as another example.

He was not one of the disciples of Jesus while Jesus walked the earth, rather he was on the other side of the Church, persecuting her. Paul however had an encounter with the Lord on his way to Damascus and afterwards he began to preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He said of himself:

“For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I’m not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church. But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favour on me—and not without results. For I have worked harder than any of the other apostles; yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace.”

‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭15‬:‭9‬-‭10‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Paul recognised he became an apostle because of the Lord’s favour, however he went on to work harder than the others, making use of that favour he has received as a leverage to even do better.

He wrote more letters to the churches than all the other disciples of Jesus put together ever wrote.

Those letters of Paul now serve as epistles for us the body of Christ today.

He not only said it by word of mouth that he worked harder, there are evidences of his hard work for us to see today.

Another example will be our walk of faith as believers.

We are saved by grace through faith, however our walk as Christians requires some work from us.

Paul writes and instructs the church in this manner:

“Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭12‬-‭13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

This points out that there are actions involved in order for our walk as Christians to be well spoken of.

The phrases: ‘work hard’, ‘to do’ are not passive words, they imply activity.

What further application for a believer today?

Someone can get a job by God’s favor without having requisite knowledge or skill for the role. However to do well at the job, the person definitely needs to learn the skills relevant to the role and put them to use else they are bound not to excel at the job and it will only be a matter of time before they are ousted from the job.

As a child of God, we ought not to remain at the level of believing and trusting that the favour of God will cover for our lack of skilfulness or diligence.

“Do you see any truly competent workers? They will serve kings rather than working for ordinary people.”

‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭22‬:‭29‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Competence is not anti-Christ or anti-scriptures, if anything the favour of God should compel you to be more diligent at what you do.

Enough of seeing believers in schools or at work being the least diligent or skilled yet making faith confessions ‘I have the favour of God’.

As you are making that faith confession, lady and gentleman GET TO WORK!