“What are you doing here?! You are conceited with a wicked heart!” I can imagine the glare in the older brother’s eyes as he stared down at the boy before him approaching the battle lines.

I can also imagine the fair headed boy, looking up with wide-eyed wonder at that accusation. “Dad sent me here with some food. What’s going on up there?” The boy likely pointed ahead to the commotion at the front lines of the fight.

“Don’t go up there, David. This is big men stuff.” Maybe he said it, maybe he didn’t, but what we know is that David wasn’t dissuaded.

Boldly, he walks up to the front line, to the side of Saul, and looks over his opponent, and likely the cowering form of their King, “I can take him.”

This where the accusation of conceit must have come from. This is where the conceit is then twisted into the title of a wicked heart, but the truth of the foundation of that statement is declared not to Saul who feebly tried to equip the boy and failed, but to the opposing gargantuan man that stood a mere stone’s throw away, no doubt laughing, and said, “You fight me with sword, and javelin and spear, but I come against you in the Name of the Lord Almighty!”

And we know how it ends.

David – 1, Goliath – Dead.

Confidence is often mistaken for cockiness. Faith is often misinterpreted as pride. But, the source of the Confidence and Faith is where the answer lies. David without God wouldn’t have even approached Saul much less Goliath, but David didn’t have to worry about that. He stood on the side of the biggest Giant of the world, and with faith, knew that he would win.

I know the feeling. My giant isn’t quite as formidable but no less foreboding. And maybe it isn’t what my giant is as much as where my taunters stand. I can understand the sense of confusion that might have crossed David’s face when his brother attacked him, maybe not in that moment, but no doubt that wasn’t the first time he was accused of being wicked.

A wicked heart. It’s laughable when we remember that this was said of the very man that God, Himself, named “A man after my own heart.” But, then again, the accuser usually speaks the very opposite of what God sees into the heart of man. I can relate…to the accusation as well as the accused.

When someone stands up in adamant faith with unquenchable love well, it doesn’t sit well. It makes people uncomfortable and with that fear comes doubt and skepticism. I fought it forever. “I’m not who you think I am!” But, recently, I realized that the more I fight the more it seems I can’t win… but I have one stone…The Cornerstone…the Name that defies and stands against ALL names or giants that stand before me.

And I have come to use it…often. When the doubts or accusations come, and my heart and flesh threaten to fail, I speak it. “Jesus.” It’s the only Name that matters to me, in my life, to my life. And, if you will notice, David doesn’t argue why he is there… he merely states that he was sent and gets straight to the matter at hand.

That’s me.

My brothers and sisters hurl insults, and I am finding the strength to look past them to why I am where I am and dealing with the matter at hand but most importantly, in Whose Name I come!