“Do you see what I see?”

Posted by Doug on Mar 19, 2012 in ALL POSTS, Most Recent Posts | 2 comments

Recently, I wrote about my Albany Half- Marathon experience.  Feel free to catch it HERE. There, I mentioned that two “giants” had to be killed in order for me to complete the race. The first was diet.  No way was I going to attempt to move some 275 lbs around Albany GA for 3 hours with just the use of, “Doug-power.”  The second was my (or should I say my former) lack of discipline.  To get help, I turned to the scriptures looking for a giant killer.  I figured if a teenage boy named David could kill the almost 10’ tall Goliath with a slingshot, then certainly I had a shot at defeating what opposed me.

The first thing that I noticed about David is how different his perspective of the giant was to that of the soldiers. Goliath’s physical appearance was so overwhelming that the Israelite soldiers ran in fear.  David, however, did not concern himself with what he saw but rather what he knew. David viewed the giant as a disgrace that needed to be removed from Israel.  For David, Goliath was nothing more than an, “Uncircumcised Philistine” who was taunting the army of God.  The soldiers saw Goliath with the natural eye while David saw the lens of God.

For me, it was food that did the most taunting. Being an Italian kid from New York, food was at the epicenter of all things good. Whether it was a family gathering, a holiday celebration, or just the family meal, food was always tied to my most beloved memories.  In my world, my best friend food equated to happiness.  Consequentially, food became not only an addiction but a drug-of-choice in times of trouble.  But once I began to find my comfort in God, the need for comfort food was gone. The only thing left to kill was the addiction itself. I did that through counting calories. You see, I had always seen my weight as a physical problem with spiritual connotations.  I have come to realize that the opposite was true. Once I put this giant of food into perspective, I saw it for the crutch that it really was. Now that I am 60lbs less of my former self, I can attest that the giant of obesity is dead.

I used the same strategy of to defeat the half-marathon as well.  Well others may have seen a 13.1 mile race, I chose not to look at it that way. Rather I saw a simple, “1 mile race” that I had to run just 13 times.  That perspective made completing it far more feasible. At the start of my training, the thought of a half-marathon was intimidating. However, I could see myself running a mile and training to gradually repeating that mile 13 times. Do you see what I see?

Now, grab a latte, open your bible, read the account for yourself in 1Samuel 17. Learn, as David did, to keep your giants in the proper perspective.