Enslaved Freedom

And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days. (1Samuel 17:16)

What do you do with hemmed options?

Can there be any freedom in captivity?

I want us to look at this aspect in our spiritual lives.

The truth is that Israel had enough options out of the dilemma that was Goliath.

You see, he was just one giant.

And Israel had archers and slingers who were extremely accurate for a long time. Sample this

Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss. (Judges 20:16)

As we know that was something many people would aspire for since childhood. Meaning that in Saul’s army there must have been a sample of such.

Would the best option not have been to target that giant and take him off for there to be a level playing field?

Or they could have decided to refuse that offer and join the battle man to man.

But that was not the object of Goliath’s challenge.

His challenge was to cripple Israel to the point that they felt completely boxed in and had no options but the one they would be offered in their desperation.

It would be in order if I gave you similar situations.

And the elders of Jabesh said unto him, Give us seven days' respite, that we may send messengers unto all the coasts of Israel: and then, if there be no man to save us, we will come out to thee. (1Samuel 11:3)

Do you think the Ammonite army were offering Jabesh Gilead those seven days because they cared for fairness?

Of course not. They were confident that no help would be forthcoming. They were in actual fact fattening their prey by offering that option, only that it backfired.

Now as soon as this letter cometh to you, seeing your master's sons are with you, and there are with you chariots and horses, a fenced city also, and armour; Look even out the best and meetest of your master's sons, and set him on his father's throne, and fight for your master's house. (2Kings 10: 2, 3)

That was the same with this challenge.

One party is pretending to play fair when they are playing the foulest by using a very subtle weapon, intimidation.

And there are so many instances in the scriptures and in real life where this tactic has been successfully used.

In fact, there are very few instances of it failing. And they fail when a new element is introduced like David was in this.

Why did Goliath not tire at presenting himself for forty days?

That was the game plan.

The longer he stayed, the easier it would have been for his army to get a neater package at surrender without a single drop of blood being shed.

This because the army had been so fixated at that single object that it had stopped thinking. Or even praying. Or hoping.

And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him, and were sore afraid. (1Samuel 17:24)

And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. (1Samuel 17:33)

You wonder what they were doing on the war front in the first place.

A whole army runs away from a single man. Then the king confesses that David simply could not kill him. What then was Israel waiting for? Or even hoping for?

Until you realise that that was the strategy of the Philistine army.

Israel was vanquished so completely even before the armies could join arms as happened in the other examples I cited.

That was the power of those forty days.

It was just a matter of time before the whole army crawled on their knees in surrender under any terms the victor set. A victor who had not lifted any arm.

You see, intimidation does not rely on the facts at hand.

It is like an amplifier that takes a feeble sound and makes it so loud that other sounds appear nonexistent. Or like a lens that will focus one’s eyes on a single microscopic or nanoscopic microbe that nothing else can be seen.

Intimidation pretends to give options when in actual fact it is doing the opposite, locking out any options that may be available. It simply blocks the mind from thinking and the heart from hoping. And the spirit from believing.

Since this is a spiritual warfare post, allow me to get into the spiritual aspects by taking us to the classic example.

Remember Samson?

Do you think he was unaware that Delila was looking to sell him to her people?

I am sure he knew the consequences of his leaking his secret as he implied when leaking it.

But look at this.

And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; (Judges 16:16)

Delila swamped him with her ‘love’ and hemmed her in with her acts of devotion.

It is at that point that she then asked him where his heart was, who had his love.

And we know that it was not for a day or two, or even a week or two.

She caged him so effectively that he saw that death was preferable to the options Delila was offering.

No wonder he succumbed.

But he could have walked away. I know someone is saying.

We know he was not locked up in any way. He was free to go and come as he pleased, or at least he thought so.

Saul also could have faced Goliath since he was closest to his height. Or he could have sent someone more skilled to do so as we see here.

And he slew an Egyptian, a goodly man: and the Egyptian had a spear in his hand; but he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear. (2Samuel 23:21)

But that is not how intimidation operates.

Ask anyone who has fallen prey to the snare of illicit sex. Or the one who became unequally yoked with an unbeliever. Or the one who compromised their faith for this or the other. Or the one who drowned in drugs.

Rather than say I would rather die than sin, intimidation leaves the option it left in these instances.

Let me sin and die. Since that is what Samson did. And that is what Goliath wanted Israel to do.

Incidentally that is what the devil seeks to do with every one of God’s disciples.

Remember that is what Job’s wife offered him?

That you are in a relationship to die for may mean you are on the throes of spiritual death because even your faith is caged by that relationship.

That you are in a job that means the world to you may actually mean that you lost your faith long ago and are just waiting for the pin that will prick that balloon you call faith.

No wonder Christ said this

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)

He knew the entanglements possible when He is not the ultimate and only prize in our pursuit.

What is nagging?

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house. It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman. (Proverbs 21: 19, 29)

That is one aspect of intimidation many of us know. It is what happened to Solomon. And it is what Goliath was doing to Israel.

I do not know whether you know that spousal battery operates at that level.

This is because you will realise that many of the battered are not actually weaklings physically.

I remember an incident where a soldier of that crack paramilitary unit endured the battery of his wife.

A man who could effectively bring a whole village to submission alone was being battered by his wife who had no such training.

The reality is that long before the battery, there had to be intense intimidation in the spiritual realm that this war machine was completely emasculated before his feebler wife.

I also remember a neighbor who was battered to death by his wife who did not look like she could harm much from her frame. And I learnt of it because she had knocked him so badly on the market in the presence of their customers. I heard onlookers wondering what kind of man he was to allow such a weakly looking woman to beat him.

The truth is that the two men I have mentioned succumbed to intimidation in the spiritual long before their physical was attacked. Like Samson, the spiritual was battered to death.

But I want us to remember that this is a post about spiritual warfare and not domestic violence.

I am using these examples to open our eyes to spiritual realities involved in such issues.

Allow me to say something else.

Those situations do not just come around. We can easily see them as the culmination of a long and persistent weakening of someone’s spiritual resolve.

Samson did not start with Delila. Delilah was the finisher of Samson’s compromised lifestyle.

Remember his parents protesting his delving into heathen relationships? Remember his doing a similar thing with the girl he was getting married to? Remember him visiting a heathen harlot?

And we see the same thing with Saul.

It is compromise that many times opens us to the intimidation of the enemy.

No wonder David could see through the bravado of the giant. Because he was not compromised.

Rarely, if ever, will a marriage just become violent.

Either the victim was caught pants down as is said or the other sought demonic intervention, which would also be facilitated by the compromise of the victim since the devil has no authority over someone he does not own.

Intimidation has at its foundation in the compromise of the victim, not the power of the intimidator.

I hope I am not taking us in circles.

But I wouldn’t mind the circles if the message can sink as deeply as God would have it.

What I am saying in the clearest way is that intimidation rarely if ever happens outside a compromise.

It therefore means that the safest we can be from the same is uncompromised obedience, or what I call radical obedience.

But understanding intimidation can guide us into examining our lives to see where it is we have compromised because rarely (again, if ever) will intimidation work with an obedient servant.

A case in point is Hezekiah before his backsliding.

The Assyrian army was not only stronger, bigger and better equipped than the Jewish one. They had a history of unquestioned conquest before they came to Jerusalem.

Their intimidation, instead of making the king cower in fear, drove him to prayer. And that because he had no issues with his relationship with God.

Then he could hear what God was saying because he had no bones he was trying to cover before God.

And it was the same with Jehoshaphat. An army too big to even think of fighting is destroyed because the king could hear God give orders, and follow them.

Am I saying anything?