Max Lucado by Facing Your Giants Page B

out!” (5:6 NLT).
    The Jebusites pour scorn on David like Satan dumps buckets of discouragement on you:
    â€¢ “You’ll never overcome your bad habits.”
    â€¢ “Born white trash; gonna die white trash.”
    â€¢ “Think you can overcome your addiction? Think again.”
    If you’ve heard the mocking David heard, your story needs the word David’s has. Did you see it? Most hurry past it. Let’s not. Pull out a pen and underline this twelve-letter masterpiece.
    Nevertheless.
    â€œNevertheless David took the stronghold . . .”
    Granted, the city was old. The walls were difficult. The voices were discouraging . . . Nevertheless David took the stronghold.
    Wouldn’t you love God to write a nevertheless in your biography? Born to alcoholics, nevertheless she led a sober life. Never went to college,
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    Wouldn’t you love God to write a nevertheless in your biography?
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    lege, nevertheless he mastered a trade. Didn’t read the Bible until retirement age, nevertheless he came to a deep and abiding faith.
    We all need a nevertheless. And God has plenty to go around. Strongholds mean nothing to him. Remember Paul’s words? “We use God’s mighty weapons, not mere worldly weapons, to knock down the Devil’s strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4 NLT).
    You and I fight with toothpicks; God comes with battering rams and cannons. What he did for David, he can do for us. The question is, will we do what David did? The king models much here.
    David turns a deaf ear to old voices. Those mockers strutting on the wall tops? David ignores them. He dismisses their words and goes about his work.
    Nehemiah, on these same walls, took an identical approach. In his case, however, he was atop the stones, and the mockers stood at the base. Fast-forward five hundred years from David’s time, and you will see that the bulwarks of Jerusalem are in ruins, and many of her people are in captivity. Nehemiah heads up a building program to restore the fortifications. Critics tell him to stop. They plan to interfere with his work. They list all the reasons the stones can’t and shouldn’t be restacked. But Nehemiah won’t listen to them. “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” (Neh. 6:3). Nehemiah knew how to press the mute button on his dissenters.
    Jesus did too. He responded to Satan’s temptations with three terse sentences and three Bible verses. He didn’t dialogue with the devil. When Peter told Christ to sidestep the cross, Jesus wouldn’t entertain the thought. “Get behind Me, Satan!” (Matt. 16:23). A crowd of people ridiculed what he said about a young girl: “‘The girl is not dead, only asleep.’ But the people laughed at him” (Matt. 9:24 NCV). You know what Jesus did with the naysayers? He silenced them. “After the crowd had been thrown out of the house, Jesus went into the girl’s room and took hold of her hand, and she stood up” (9:25 NCV).
    David, Nehemiah, and Jesus practiced selective listening. Can’t we do the same?
    Two types of thoughts continually vie for your attention. One says, “Yes you can.” The other says, “No you can’t.” One says, “God
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    Two types of thoughts continually vie for your attention.
One proclaims God’s strengths; the other lists your failures.
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    will help you.” The other lies, “God has left you.” One speaks the language of heaven; the other deceives in the vernacular of the Jebusites. One proclaims God’s strengths; the other lists your failures. One longs to build you up; the other seeks to tear you down. And here’s the great news: you select the voice you hear. Why listen to the mockers? Why heed their voices? Why give ear to pea-brains
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    Why listen to the mockers . . . when you can,
with the same ear, listen to the