Experiencing God's Deliverance // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 5

We all end up in tight spots at sometimes. Big or small. Just annoying – or tragic. And if God’s God – well shouldn’t He show up on those days? If He loves us – wouldn’t He help?

Every now and then, we find ourselves in a tight spot. Sometimes we've behaved our way into a problem; maybe a wrong diet or no exercise and we get diabetes. Or a neglected relationship and we end up with tension and strife. Or just a day-to-day thing, a difficult "what do I do?" kind of situation.

Lots of people have lots of different spiritual beliefs and practices, meditation, yoga, crystals but when it's crunch time, what difference can they really make? When we need help surely help comes in the form of someone not something. When you or I are in a tight spot, can we have the confidence that someone will deliver us out of it?

This week on "A Different Perspective", we're looking at the whole question of experiencing God as King David wrote back in Psalm 34, three thousand years ago, "We need to taste and see for ourselves that the Lord is good." And over this last few days we've been looking at the fact we need to come to God just as we are, trusting that all the rotten stuff in our lives – the stuff that God calls sin, is dealt with because Jesus paid for it on the cross. And then we need a desire, a God-given desire, to have a relationship with Him and then enjoy walking in God’s plan for our lives.

But as we do that, as we walk in God’s plan for our lives, and if that sounds a bit strange, I would really encourage you … if you are seeking an authentic spiritual experience; if you've been looking around, shopping around in the spiritual market place; if we want real, authentic, loving, powerful spiritual experience that makes a difference – try Jesus. But as we walk in God’s plan every now and then, we hit a crunch time.

We hit a time where things are difficult … there's a pressure. There's something that we don't seem to be able to get through. There's something that scares us. There's something that unsettles us. Maybe it's sickness, maybe it's physical, maybe it's spiritual, maybe it’s financial. Well, from where I sit; if God promises that He will be my God, if He loves me so much that He sent Jesus, His Son, to die for me; then the real proof of the authenticity is in those crunch moments.

Where's God? If God says to me through the Son, "Taste and see that the Lord is good", then when I'm at that pressure point, where pressure is coming in from all sides, surely God should be in that space too.

Now, I'm not talking about having a perfect life, I'm not talking about God taking all those pressures and problems away. I'm not talking about some sugar-coated unreality. When you're a kid, a perfect parent is someone that gives you lollies whenever you want them and we all know, as a parent, that’s not the right thing to do. So it's not some unreality that we're talking about, it’s God being in the middle of that reality with us.

There's a great story in the Old Testament, in the Bible about David and Goliath. Most of us will know that story. The army of Israel and the army of the Philistines were having a stand-off. And the Philistines had challenged a soldier from the Israelite army to come to dual with their soldier and their soldier was Goliath. He was a big, big man and it turns out there was not a single soldier among the Israelite army that was prepared to go and fight this man.

And then this young David, young kid, comes along to the battle scene – not because he was a soldier, not because he's been invited but because he was bringing food to his brothers who are soldiers. He's the runt of the litter and his job is just to be a courier. And he goes and sees what’s going on. And he sees this Philistine over there and he says, "Hang on a minute, how is it that no one is going to fight Goliath? I'll go and fight Goliath."

So he went to see the King, Saul and they all laughed at him. But this is what David said to them:

I've been a shepherd tending sheep for my Father, whenever a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I'd go after it, knock it down and rescue the lamb. If it turned on me, I'd grab it by the throat and wring its neck and kill it. Lion or bear it made no difference, I killed it and I'll do the same with this Philistine who's taunting the troops of the living God. God who delivered me from the teeth of a lion and the claws of a bear will deliver me from this Philistine. (1 Samuel 34-37)

And Saul was amazed and said, "Well go. God help you."

Now, just consider this David for a minute. The youngest of all these sons. His dad was Jessie and the prophet Samuel had come to see Jessie because he felt that God had a new king for Israel amongst all of these sons. And so Jessie, dad, lined up all his sons in front of the prophet Samuel except one, little old David because little ol' Dave was out tending the sheep and surely he wouldn't be a king. And Samuel looked at one after the other and said, "I don't know, it's someone else." And ultimately he chose David.

What would that do to your self-esteem if you're David? Out in the back blocks, lonely, no-one to see you, just David and God tending some useless sheep. Every now and then a lion comes and a bear comes and somehow you get the courage and God gets you through that.

This David spent time alone experiencing God on those lonely nights, on those nights when he felt insignificant and unrewarded, and the beautiful mornings and the sunrises and those dangerous times. And I'm sure he used to sit there with his slingshot practicing over and over and over again, hundreds and thousands of times being accurate with that sling shot.

And so when he goes out now and he fights Goliath who, let’s remember had a full set of body armour on and only had one small part of his forehead exposed, and the whole army of Israel didn't have the guts to get out there and do this. This young, small, insignificant David, who in God’s presence had learned to fight lions and bears. And use his sling shot and experienced God’s faithfulness in the tight spots, it's this young David who'd experienced God that went out and did the job.

You get it? When we experience God’s faithfulness through the tough times. And we see that God is good in the tough times, our faith and our belief and our trust in Him grows and so often we're hidden, the tough times aren't public, no-one else sees except God and us and it's lonely.

As I look back, I could quickly rattle off several dozen of those times in my short ten-year walk with the Lord. And each one God was there and was a part of it. And it was like each one built on the last one and out faith and our confidence in God grows.

Just recently I was sitting with a CEO of a large Christian radio network of 350 stations in the USA and as I was sitting talking to this lovely man, I felt like David. I thought 'what am I doing here? Who am I to be sitting down with this man and with these people?' What we do, is we look around at all these other people, all the people that were in that army that had ranks and they were officers. David wasn't even a private. He was bringing food to his brothers and we look at these people and we say, "Gee, I'm not as clever as they are or as big or important. I'm just a nobody; I'm just some young stupid kid out there in the back blocks of nowhere minding a bunch of useless sheep."

David became the greatest king that Israel ever had because David learned through experience – through fighting lions, through fighting bears, through being alone and trusting in God. That right when he needs God, God is in that place with him. And it’s when we're alone and it's when we're going through those tough and difficult times that we experience God’s faithfulness. And we get to look back afterwards and see how God worked it out and see how He was there in all of that.

When we've done that, we can look back and we can say with everything that we are, "You know something … I've tasted it for myself and I know that God is good."