Slay the Giants in Your Life Bible Study

Listen … Can you hear them coming? You can run, but you cannot hide. You might as well come out and fight.

Yes, the giants are abroad. We’ve encountered them in the Scriptures, where they’re known primarily as the Anakim. From the very first pages of Genesis, they’ve been there, snarling and threatening: “giants on the earth … mighty men” (Genesis 6:4).

They cast their long shadow over everything we aspire to do, every new land we seek to inhabit, every dream we hope to pursue. Today we’d call them bullies, but they’re the same old giants, and they have us intimidated in the same old way. After years of cowering in fear, we begin to measure ourselves against them: “Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?” (Deuteronomy 9:2). Who will come out to fight Goliath? Who will climb into the ring with the champion? Who will go for us?

The people of God paid a great price to reach the land of their dreams, but what did they find when they arrived? Giants! Naturally they would be in the land of milk and honey; the giants always get there first, and they take what they want. Our first impulse is to listen to the delegation that brings back a recommendation to surrender. It’s a big world; why not find some other land? Maybe milk and honey are too rich a diet, anyway. Perhaps water and stale bread will be enough. We can learn to settle for less.

But God won’t have us accept that recommendation. He expects a bit more:

“Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?’ Therefore understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you.” (Deuteronomy 9:1–3)

Of course, the Anakim aren’t found in our telephone directories. The giants we face have different names: Fear. Discouragement. Loneliness. Worry. Guilt. Temptation. Anger. Resentment. Doubt. Procrastination. Failure. Jealousy. Call them what you will; they’re only giants, after all, like Goliath. He was a shade over nine feet tall, but it only added up to a bigger dent in the pavement once he fell. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

Which giant is giving you grief? Perhaps Fear has your number. Maybe Loneliness has locked you out. Whatever giant may be bullying you, the message of this book is that God is the greatest Giant of all. He goes before you like a consuming fire. It’s clear from the Scriptures that we serve a God who sends. He is constantly sending His children into new and wonderful lands—lands of marriage enrichment, lands of career fulfillment, lands of rich spiritual abundance. You probably know exactly what kind of land He has led you to; and now you stand on its outskirts, yearning to place a tentative toe over the borderline—except for the shadows of those giants. But can’t you feel it? The hand of God Himself is on your shoulder. He whispers to you, as to the Israelites, Go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven.

I don’t know about you, but those marching orders send my heart racing. They send a chill up my spine and leave me restless, eager to move. I want to see the wonders God has laid out for me. I want milk and honey and not another scrap of stale bread. And you know what else? I want to see those giants get what’s coming to them. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you. What a great day that will be.

Isn’t it about time we stand tall and face the giants in our lives?

David Jeremiah, Slaying the Giants in Your Life (Nashville, TN: W Pub., 2001), xi–xii.