It is the 2014 olympics that are happening in Sochi Russia, lots are around the world are watching the athletes from their country compete for gold. As this devotion is gonna talk about challeges, it makes me also relise the athletes face many challenges of their own too! 

1 Samuel 17:32-51 (New Living Translation)
David Kills Goliath

  These verses that you've just read may seem like alot to get your head around to understand what God is saying, but as I break it down it should hopefully all make sense, as we take a look further. 

  When you graduate from high school, its quite common that people give you cards, gifts and what not. I had got an audiobook called Facing Your Giants as one of my grad gifts and through out the audiobook it talked about different things, I dont remember them all but one of the things that I picked up on was when it was talking about challenges that are or may come in our lives. The audio book had talked about these verses of David fighting this giant named Goliath, in a couple verses before 1 Samual 32-51 Goliath challenged the army of Isreal each day to see who could fight him. David hears about this and decides to check this challenge out, so David gose to king Saul that he will fight, but David's brother Elab and king Saul didn't think he could fight Goliath because they thhought all he wanted to do was to watch this fight happen instead of helping his father with his sheep.

  David keeps telling them he can because he's had experiance fighting off lions and bears that try to steel a lamb from his father's livestalk by clubbing them on the head. David keeps standing his ground that he can do it with the help of the Lord. Saul finally gives in and lets him. The rest of the verses say he was given armor to fight Goliath, but David said I don't need all this armor, all i need is acouple of stones, my shepards staff, and my sling. David approched Goliath who had a sheild and weapons and laughed at David because Goliath didnt think he could be beaten with so little stuff. David didn't care what Goliath thought because he knew and told him " I have the Lord Almighty on my side, I don't need weapons to fight!!" with that inspiration, David was victorious like he said he would, why? because he had faith and trust in God that he will be kept safe to help him fight this battle and over come the challenge. With a throw of a rock David knocked Goliath off his feet. 

 This story of David and Goliath reminded me one day I was playing Mario on my DS and in Mario there's levels that you go through to beat. Your goal in this is to rescue the princess from Bowser, and so with that as your going through the levels there's challenges and opsticles that Bowser sets up so you would fail like those turtles, or those fish or flowers that eat you, etc. You fight them off with fire or jumping on them, just like when David was fighting off the lions and bears from his fathers sheep. When you have gotten past that challenge you have an even bigger challenge!, you have to fight Bowser!! Oh no!! Like David came to fight Goliath without armor protection, Bowser who has armour is fought by Mario, with acouple of fire throws and jumping on him.

 With that example/comparrision in reality our lives are challenged by the world by there views and pressures, things like careers, peer pressure, addictions or maybe even making bill payments that need to be met, whatever it may be can be a challenge. I think not only David had to challenge Goliath, but also the challenge of the people that didn't belive he can do it. It's hard to achive something when there's some people that don't have comfidence that you can do something. God is there to help us win the fight if we ask and putting our faith and trust in Him just like David did. I also believe God puts those people in our lives to encourage us to help us face our challenges that is going in God's direction.