“Dornick”.
Maybe like me you haven't a clue what
that word means.
I was looking up another definition on
my phone's dictionary app, when “dornick”
popped up as The Word of the Day for that particular date. Intrigued,
I clicked the button and found out that it means a small stone that
is easy to throw. And then I smiled, because what Bible-reading
Christian hears that definition and doesn't immediately think of
David, who picked up a pocketful of the same to sling Goliath's way?
It's an old word and a long-ago story that together can have a
powerful impact on the enemies we face today.
Thankfully we don't deal with 9-foot
giants on a daily basis...or do we? The problems we face loom as
large in our sight as that mountain of a man did when he stood before
David, and their taunts are eerily the same. “Who are you to
think that you can battle this successfully with your own weak
resources?” “You have no chance of overcoming a challenge
as large as this!” Morning, noon and night our problems rise
and roar at us, and we cower and run like the Israelite army did at
the sight of Goliath. Only David stood before him unafraid.
He knew he was just a boy, untrained in
the ways of warfare. But he wasn't relying on his own abilities when
he volunteered for the job; he was relying on God's. For that reason
he shunned the offer of King Saul's armor, that the people would know
that it was the size of his God rather than the size of his
sword that would bring the victory. And he had a history of successes
in fighting enemies with God on his side.
Don't we, as well? Oh, how powerful our
testimonies are in the battles we face! They remind us of the
goodness of God, the power of God...the faithfulness of our Father.
From them we gain faith and courage and hope for the current
struggle. And just as David had his dornicks, we have weapons of
warfare, as well...five smooth stones known as faith, prayer,
authority, power and grace. It is essential that we perceive, pick up
and pocket those pebbles before entering the fray...and then have
the wisdom to know which to use on any particular day.
We know the One we serve and the love
He has for those He has made. We all have been given a measure of
faith, but there were times in the Bible when a person approached
Jesus with such extraordinary belief in Him when faced with a
particular problem that it moved Jesus to action. His words, “Your
faith has healed you” indicate which stone the individual
had hurled at his disability and that it had hit its mark.
God longs to intervene in all our
situations, large or small, and so He invites us to ask for what we
need...to approach Him in prayer with our requests
(accompanied by thanks-in-advance!). And He promises that those who
ask, receive an answer...those who seek, find what they are looking
for...those who knock on the door of His heart find it opened to them
in response. The action to take in anxious times is simply to ask God
for His help.
Sometimes we ask God for help that He
has already placed in our hands! He reminds us of the authority
He has given us over all the power of the enemy. We just need to
recognize it, pick it up and put it into play.
What about those times when we don't
know what we need or to ask for; we simply know that He does?
It is for these that He has given us the supernatural power of
the Holy Spirit to sling a stone on our behalf for what we do not
even know how to ask...and the Holy Spirit simply never misses.
And finally, there are times when He
floods us with His anointing to accomplish a particular task,
to do what we otherwise could not do without the grace He bestows
upon us for that particular need.
I pocketed a whole lot more than just a
new word in that “dornick” dictionary lookup; I found I carry
extraordinary power in my pouch! My part in my battles is simply to
select the right ammunition, run toward the enemy and sling it his
way! The power in the stone is in the Rock who has already defeated
the one who wants to rock our world.
“He is the Rock, his
works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does
no wrong, upright and just is he.”
(Deuteronomy 32:4 NIV)
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