The Day I Faced My Mine Shaft Giant
The dust of Akasia settles in the evening light as I look out from my veranda. I recall standing at the edge of a different kind of precipice just months ago—staring into the deep darkness of a professional crisis that threatened to swallow me whole. The email arrived at 3:17 PM on a Tuesday: "Position eliminated. Effective immediately." The words glared from my screen like a Goliath's taunt. Thirty years of work, vanished in a digital instant. My stomach hollowed out, my hands trembled, and the familiar dread of uncertainty coiled around my heart. This, my friends, was my giant—not a Philistine from Gath, but the terrifying spectre of irrelevance and financial collapse in a South Africa where nearly 33% cannot find work .
But something shifted in me that afternoon. As I read David's words once more—"The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the bear will deliver me from this Philistine"—a revolutionary thought emerged: What if this giant was not my obstacle but my ordained opening? What if this crisis was my Christ-appointed stage?
The Theology of the Giant: More Than a Metaphor
We often misinterpret our giants. We see them as heaven's neglect or divine displeasure. We pray for their removal, begging God for easier terrain. But Scripture sounds a different alarm. The Israelite army saw Goliath and trembled at his size. David saw the same giant and perceived his slaying as the gateway to his destiny.
Let us define our terms clearly. A "giant," in biblical terms, is any formidable opposition that stands between the people of God and their promised inheritance. It is always oversized, always intimidating, and always vocal in its threats. Yet throughout Scripture, these giants consistently become the platforms for God's greatest displays of power and for believers' most profound growth.
Consider the logical formulation:
1. Major Premise: God is sovereign over all circumstances, including the arrival of giants (1 Samuel 17:45-47).
2. Minor Premise: God promises to work all things for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).
3. Conclusion: Therefore, giants must be redeemable instruments in God's hand, designed not to destroy us but to display divine power through our faithful confrontation.
A common objection arises: "But what about the giants that actually do defeat people? What about those who face business failure, persistent illness, or even martyrdom?" This objection fails because it misunderstands victory. Our ultimate victory is not in the giant's removal but in our faithful stance before it. Even if the giant seems to prevail temporally, the eternal victory is secured through Christ's resurrection.
The African Giant: Confronting Ancestral Shadows and Present Realities
Here in our South African context, we face unique giants. We see them in the alarming statistics of gender-based violence where murders of women increased by 7.9% this past year . We see them in the persistent poverty that leaves 23% of our children in severe food poverty . We see them in the xenophobic rhetoric that poisons our political discourse and the corruption that still plagues our nation, like the cancelled R10 billion school feeding scheme tender .
But perhaps our most subtle giant is the spiritual syncretism that tempts us to doubt Christ's supreme power. In our African spiritual worldview, where ancestors are revered as mediators , we must sound the alarm against any theology that diminishes Christ's unique and all-sufficient mediation. The writer to Hebrews declares, "There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5).
Jesus Christ is not merely another ancestor in a hierarchy of spiritual beings. He is the eternal Son who became flesh, the cosmic Christ who holds all authority, and the suffering servant who bore our griefs. He is the Lion of Judah who roars with authority, not merely a celestial guide who whispers advice. When we face our giants, we do not come in the name of our ancestral lineage but in the name of Jesus Christ, the one before whom "every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth" (Philippians 2:10).
The Apologetics of Adversity: Answering the "Why" Question
The most formidable giant many face is the intellectual one: "How can a good God allow such suffering?" This objection must be met with logical precision and theological clarity.
The argument from evil suggests:
1. If God were all-good, He would want to eliminate evil.
2. If God were all-powerful, He could eliminate evil.
3. Evil exists.
4. Therefore, an all-good, all-powerful God does not exist.
This formulation, however, contains fatal flaws. It assumes we can recognize "evil" without an objective moral standard that requires God's existence. It also ignores that God may permit evil for greater purposes, including the cultivation of courage, compassion, and character—virtues that often only develop through adversity.
The biblical response is not a philosophical treatise but a person: Jesus Christ. In Christ, we see a God who does not remain distant from our giants but enters into our struggle. On the cross, He faced the ultimate giant of sin and death, absorbing its blow to secure our eternal victory. The resurrection confirms that no giant has the final word.
Your Giant, Your Gateway: A Call to Courageous Confrontation
Today, as I look at the transformed landscape of my life—the new ministry opportunities born from that professional death, the deeper trust forged in the financial uncertainty—I see with startling clarity that the giant was indeed the gateway. Not a pleasant one, certainly. Not one I would have chosen. But one through which God ushered me into broader places.
Your giant may be:
· The financial pressure that keeps you awake at night
· The health diagnosis that terrifies you
· The broken relationship that seems beyond repair
· The career stagnation that frustrates your gifts
· The spiritual dryness that makes prayer feel futile
I challenge you today: Stop praying for God to remove what He may be using to advance you. The same giant that threatens to block your path may be the very platform from which God will display His power in your life.
Take up your five smooth stones—prayer, Scripture, community, obedience, and faith—and run toward your giant. Do not cower in the Israelite camp of fear. For when you confront your giant in the name of the Lord, you don't just defeat a foe; you discover a faith so formidable, it forges your future.
Prayer: Lord God, we confess our tendency to flee our giants. Give us Heaven's perspective on earth's problems. Help us to see, with eyes of faith, the victory already secured in Christ Jesus. May we face our giants not in our strength but in Yours, knowing that the battle belongs to You. And when You give the victory, may we use it not for our glory but for Yours. Amen.
Stand firm in Akasia. Stand firm in Soweto. Stand firm in Cape Town and Durban and Gqeberha. Our God reigns, and no giant can withstand His power when we face it in faith.
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