The voices of 'cannot do': Lessons from David and Obama

Never give up. Keep on fighting. The victory is near. Many people are eagerly awaiting to enjoy freedom when you eventually win.

When the Biblical Shepherd boy David killed the Philistine giant, Goliath, he did not only free the Israelites from fear and oppression, but he built the faith of others in the God he spoke about in Psalm 23. That the Lord was his Shepherd… who leads him through difficulties (sic).

Many people, including King Saul and his heir apparent, Jonathan, were revived of their faiths. They came to believe in the long-forgotten Israeli God.

In an imaginative cinematic representation by Hollywood, there will be doubters who discouraged David in his attempts to go to the battlefront and challenge to fight Goliath, who has been a warrior since his youth.

King Saul's daughter, who has been offered as an appreciation maiden to be married to any man that can kill Goliath will with tears, join her entreaties to that of David's brothers to stop the Shepherd Boy not to embark on a suicide mission.

Others will ridicule David and call him a mad boy.

David, like people with dreams that change the world, will attempt to use his faith to explain why and how he can kill the dreaded Philistine Giant.

He will vividly convince them that when he watched over his father's sheep in the desert he chased and bludgeoned to death the beasts that seized his lamb, the heads of the lion and the bear were some of his hunting trophies.

But the threatening and bullying voice of Goliath calling on the coward Israelis to choose a warrior among them to face him will make David a laughingstock.

Ah, look at this crazy boy, men of valour, trained and armoured soldiers are running for shelter when Goliath appears, and this boy says what? Kill him without any armour?

Ordinary Israelis will with disbelief say these discouraging words about David.

A voice of reasoning will call it foolhardiness if David picked a stone and put it in his catapult to face a sword-wielding and fully armoured over six-foot giant, Goliath, who proclaims himself a god.

The fear, voices of 'cannot do' that discouraged David when he made a bold decision still fight against you, me and every living soul.

You may be the next freedom fighter. Never give in to the voices scaring you.

Your experiences in life are the preparations arming you for the battle. Step forward, win and free those in bondage of fear and faithlessness.

Your victory against the feared giant will reward you a King's beautiful daughter and his throne.

Barack Obama wrote in his Audacity Of Hope that: “people laughed at me when I told them I dream of being the President of the United States, and as a black man, occupying the White House. Even, my wife-to-be, and his family thought I was going crazy. Fearing the giant in the likeness of Goliath I was to face in my quest, not even my earlier exploits in education and positions occupied in my career will have a mustard seed belief in all that I say”. (sic).

A voice of reasoning should have discouraged Barack Obama. But today (19th March 2023) as I write, history records Obama as the first Black person to occupy the White House. The 44th President of the USA, sworn into office in 2009.

The faith that propelled President Obama to realise his dream still lives. It's not different from what led Moses to stand at the shores of the Red Sea and command it to part ways for passage by God's Children as the Egyptians pursued him and the Israelis he led from bondage.

My native Goka people say: bɛɛbɔ w'apampam ke na bɛɛhyɛ wokɔn mu dene. To wit: those who knock you in the head strengthen your neck.

Discouragement from others should encourage you to prepare well for the battle ahead. Opportunity will always meet the prepared.

If they tell you, 'you can't', tell them: 'Yes I can because others did it.'