1 Samuel 14
One day Jonathan son of Saul said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side.”

I can almost hear myself as the armor bearer, “excuse me, what did you just say?”

I love this story of Jonathan. We don’t know why the idea came into his head and we don’t see further acts of heroism from him but this one is so cool.

The story goes that, as they went toward the outpost, they agreed that, if the Philistines responded by telling them to come up, God had given them a victory. And sure enough, they killed twenty men in their initial attack.

A couple of things stand out to me.

They took the threat as an answer to a promise. We often look at trouble as a sign that we’re going the wrong way. The enemy has threatened my kids, my family and I ran the other way. Jonathan didn’t see it that way.

The Philistines had no intention of killing them, right away. “We’ll teach you a lesson,” they cried. I think that the Philistines thought they were cowards, deserters. They wanted them to come up to take them captive, make examples of them. We hear the threats, the condemnation, the condescension of our enemy and accept it. We hear the voice of no hope and believe it more than the voice of faith.

They went looking for a fight. Why show themselves? Why not take the army with them? Their agreement was that if the Philistines said they were coming down, they would wait for them. They were going to fight no matter what. We go into fights with our enemy hoping we can figure out a way to avoid fighting. We come against him hoping he’ll just run away.

I am looking for a fight. I’m going after the enemy. I will have faith to know that, as I stand for Jesus, He will give me the victory.