The Giant Killer Was Terrified

You remember the first time you handed your teenager the car keys.

Or the night in the emergency room, watching a nurse work on your child while you stood in the corner with nothing to do.

Fatherhood introduces you to a kind of fear you did not know existed. You love someone so much that the thought of losing them can take your breath away.

So you try to manage the fear. You check the location app again. You make another rule. You raise your voice when they are late, not because you are angry, but because you were terrified.

Most Bibles print a small heading above Psalm 56 that people skip right past: “A Miktam of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath.” That heading tells you exactly where this prayer was born, and the story behind it is remarkable.

David was on the run from King Saul. Desperate, he fled to Gath, a Philistine city. Gath was Goliath’s hometown (1 Samuel 17:4). And David had just picked up Goliath’s own sword before he went (1 Samuel 21:9). Imagine walking into the hometown of the giant you killed, carrying his sword.

He was recognized immediately. The king’s servants said, “Is this not David, the king of the land? Did they not sing about him in their dances, saying: ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’?” (1 Samuel 21:11).

The Bible says David “was very much afraid” (1 Samuel 21:12). The giant killer was terrified. So he pretended to be insane. He scratched marks on the city gate and let spit run down his beard until the king threw him out.

That is the man who wrote “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.” Not a calm hero. A frightened man who had just done something humiliating to survive.

Notice what he does not say. He does not say, “I am never afraid.” He says, “When I am afraid.” And a few verses later he writes one of the most tender lines in the Psalms: “You have taken account of my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle” (Psalm 56:8). God noticed every sleepless night.

Fear is not the sin. Where you run with it can be. Control, anger, and silence are all ways of trusting yourself to keep your family safe.

And here is the hard part. Trusting God does not guarantee that nothing terrible will happen. Faithful fathers have buried children. The psalm does not promise otherwise.

What it gives you is Someone to run to.

In Gethsemane, Jesus “began to be deeply troubled and distressed” (Mark 14:33). He prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). Jesus knew the cross was coming, and He did not pretend it would be easy. He said to His Father, “Yet not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36).

Jesus went through that anguish so that death itself would not have the final word. Hebrews says He came to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15).

That does not take away every danger your child will face. It means no danger, not even death, can take them out of the hands of a Savior who has already walked through it and come out alive.