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A while back I had a David and Goliath experience.

I’ve certainly thought about the faith David had when he faced the giant. But I’ve never really thought much about what it was like for him when he first arrived there on the battlefield and saw that giant, saw him for the first time.

David . . . you know, he was just a young man delivering lunch to his brothers. That’s all he was.

And I was just an old woman meeting someone at a coffee shop. That’s all I was.

And when he saw the giant, well, he was a young man of faith, great faith, faith in the living God who can kill lions and bears and giants.

And when I saw the giant, well I have faith too but somehow it didn’t look quite the same as David’s.

He had the faith to stand unafraid and face the giant and do what needed to be done.

Did I?

You might say I thought I was . . . delivering lunch to my brothers, so to speak . . . and suddenly I saw a giant–a giant of evil. I quailed with fear. I lost my balance. My equilibrium. And it took some time to get my feet steady again.

(The giant of evil I was facing wasn’t one of the typical ones that are so often named–like the sin in my own heart, or the terrorists so many fear, or the social workers the peers of my homeschooling years feared. No, this giant didn’t look like any of those at all.)

There are some Christians–a few, so few–who acknowledge that we face giants like what I saw. They pay attention and might not have been caught off balance the way I was.

So I pondered the David and Goliath story again, one of my favorites, and I remembered how, when David saw the giant, there was no evidence that he was afraid at all.

David’s anger, his righteous anger, his strong stand for the glory of God, his horror that the honor of God’s Name was being besmirched–all of these overcame any shred of fear.

He proclaimed that he’d already killed a lion and a bear. Then I wondered–was he afraid when he faced them?

I faced a lion and a bear too, and I’ve written about them obliquely in the past.

I was afraid. Both times. But God proved faithful anyway.

This time, when I was afraid of the giant I saw there in the coffee shop—though it wasn’t a literal giant but a figurative one because this is an analogy—what restored my heart was worship. When I got home and worshiped the Lord, as I put aside the regular prayer list and simply worshiped, I saw how my heart was strengthened to face what was ahead.

And I remembered David.

I longed for the day when I could “take lunch to my brothers,” so to speak, suddenly see a giant, and not quail with fear but instead stand strong and say,

“What are you thinking, O my soul? God has got this.  Why are you afraid? We are the armies of the living God.”

In the midst of my worship, the Lord said to me—and He didn’t speak in an audible voice, but he said to me—Recall the four character qualities you said you wanted to be true about yourself when you spoke at the conference.

And I said yes, the character qualities I want to be true about myself are integrity.

And love, because of John 7.

And faithfulness.

And what was the other one . . . umm . . . umm . . . I couldn’t remember.

Then it came to me. Oh yes, boldness. That was the other one, boldness.

I want to be bold.

That’s what I said.

I want to be bold to stand firm against giants of evil, in the armor of God in the Name of Jesus Christ.

There are giants in the land.

But we are well able to overcome them.

We will overcome them by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.

We are the armies of the living God.

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I wrote this in November of 2017 not long after speaking at the Called to Peace Ministries Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, but I chose not to publish it at that time. It felt unfinished.

This coffee shop experience happened in conjunction with the Lord’s continued question to me over the course of many months,
“Are you ready to go into darker places?”

And my continued reply, “Yes, Lord, if You will go with me.”

The giant I didn’t want to name back then I can name now. It had to do with the kinds of intensely dark and evil abuses that are taking place virtually under our noses. Abuses that even respected Christian leaders have participated in, abuses that many trusting Christians have not been aware of.

It was an account from this new acquaintance about satanic ritual abuse and sophisticated, high-level trafficking.

I certainly knew these things happened. I had even been to a training about helping these survivors.

I just didn’t expect them to be all around me. I didn’t expect to hear such a story the first time I met with a stranger at a coffee shop.

Back then, that is.

Not long after this experience, the woman I met with in the coffee shop moved out of state, taking her giant with her. But within days, another similar giant came in its place, as the Lord brought me “from out of nowhere” yet another person who was an SRA and high-level trafficking survivor, and worse.

All in response to His words to me in 2013, “You will know them.” (Read that in the “My Own Story” section here.)

Recently, when I rediscovered this article from 2017 and read it again, I realized something:

The Lord has granted my desire for boldness.

He has increased my courage in helping the satanic ritual abuse survivors He’s brought into my life.

He has increased my boldness to speak out against those who are trying to say that SRA doesn’t exist and is only “false memories.”

And He has increased my boldness in speaking with stability and clarity about “organized abuse” (that is, abuse that has been organized systematically) at the Called to Peace Ministries retreats of the last couple of years. I’ll be speaking in the Organized Abuse track again in May of 2026.

Through each step, with each survivor He has brought into my life, He has shown Himself to be faithful.

 

There are giants in the land. But we are well able to overcome them.

We will overcome them by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.

We are the armies of the living God.

 

 

 

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