1 Samuel 17:42-43
And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.  And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

David really couldn’t catch a break from anyone.  When he shows up to the battlefield and wants to know what is going on, his brother gets angry with him and belittles him.  When he talks to Saul, he tells David he’s just a youth and he can’t fight Goliath.  But the truth is, the whole army of Israel had been paralyzed by the presence of Goliath.  No one else had been willing to stand up before him.  And then when David finally confronts the giant, he is ridiculed and hated by him.

But though everyone else had written him off and underestimated him, David would not be deterred.  Even if he was but a youth, he was confident in his faith in God.  Though he may have been looked down upon by everyone around him, he wouldn’t let that stop him from stepping up to the challenge.  It didn’t matter if David was “but a youth” to everyone else because he knew it didn’t really matter that much who he was.  It didn’t matter what other people thought of him.  It didn’t matter what they judged him to be or how he measured up in their eyes.  There was really only one thing that mattered, and that was that God was with him.

In our own lives, it can be easy to get discouraged when everyone is telling us we can’t do something or that who or what we are disqualifies us from something we know we need to do.  We may be but a youth or just one person or only this or only that, but does that matter when God goes with us?  When we are trusting God, does it matter what experience we lack or what other people think about our abilities or where we’ve come from or what our occupation is or how many times we’ve been on the battlefield?  Will we let those kinds of things hold us back from stepping out in faith?

Of course, we know the end of this story.  David with his sling defeats the seemingly unbeatable champion of the Philistines.  But surely David’s efforts had very little to do with the outcome of this famous battle.  The battle was the Lord’s, after all, and so the victory was His, as well.  So in our own lives, let us not allow ourselves to be defeated before the battle even begins by giving in to fear or allowing what others say to dissuade us from stepping out by faith.  Let us be confident in God to lead us into His will for us and equip and enable us to handle whatever may come our way.  That way we are obedient to the only one whose opinion of us really matters and our great God receives all the glory.