Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Giant?

By Cathy Irvin

Remember the nursery rhyme we heard as a child, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” The wolf responded and said, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down” every time each little pig built his house. Two out of three did not build very well, and they were left with houses that would not stand. The last little pig was smart, so he built his house out of bricks. He had an immovable house.

We must build our house -- our spiritual house -- on the solid rock, and that is Jesus. He is the only firm foundation. We build our foundation upon His Word and a reliance on the Holy Spirit to help us. All else is sinking sand.

In the Old Testament, a group of Israelites went to spy out some land and came back utterly intimidated by the giants they saw there:

The only thing is that the people who live there are fierce, their cities are huge and well fortified. Worse yet, we saw descendants of the giant Anak. Amalekites are spread out in the Negev; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites hold the hill country; and the Canaanites are established on the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan.

Caleb interrupted, called for silence before Moses and said, "Let's go up and take the land--now. We can do it."

But the others said, "We can't attack those people; they're way stronger than we are." They spread scary rumors among the people of Israel. They said, "We scouted out the land from one end to the other -- it's a land that swallows people whole. Everybody we saw was huge. Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers." Numbers 13:28-33, The Message

Notice the statement in the last verse. Some of the Israelites commented, “We felt like grasshoppers.” If that is how they visualized themselves, then they would surely be afraid of the giants. The giants saw their fear and knew they didn’t have any confidence in themselves.

Caleb, however, had a different response: “Let us take the land. We can do it.” He was smart like the third little pig in the nursery rhyme. He put faith out there to see a land of milk and honey, not in what he saw in the natural, with those giants.

As children of God, we must know who we are in Christ. The Bible says, “We are more than conquerors.”

Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him who loved us. Romans 8:37, Amplified Bible

We are not defeated. The Lord gives us weapons of warfare to defeat every onslaught of the giants.

For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds. 2 Corinthians 10:4, Amplified Bible

Sure, there are giants of every kind, but we are the ones who will put those giants on the run if we grab hold of the Word of God. We need to rise up and claim what rightly belongs to us as believers in Christ.

Fear and depression are giants, just to name a few. But there is good news:

Little children, you are of God [you belong to Him] and have [already] defeated and overcome them [the agents of the antichrist], because He who lives in you is greater (mightier) than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:4, Amplified Bible