#David's Sling armored protection | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mybeautifulchristianjourney · 10 months ago

Text

Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by James Russell Miller

David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17)

The story of David and Goliath is one with which every reader of the Bible is familiar. It is full of interest. It reveals much of David’s character, and throws light on the training of the boy in his shepherd life. It is suggestive also for all of us, for we all have giants to fight, and we may learn from David, how to meet them and conquer them.

David had been chosen to be king. Now he was to be trained for the great task. All the incidents and events in his life were lessons set by the great Teacher. The Philistines had gathered for battle with the Israelites, and Saul and his men were facing them. One day there stalked out from the Philistine lines a great giant, named Goliath, and proposed that one from Saul’s army should come out and fight him, and that the outcome of this duel should settle the conflict between the two armies. At first no one of Saul’s men responded to the champion’s defiance. The king and his men were dismayed and greatly humiliated .

Then David came to the camp. He did not belong to the army. He was only a boy, and his place was at home with the sheep. His older brothers were with Saul.

Jesse one day sent David to the camp with provisions for his brothers. For forty days, morning and evening, Goliath had been coming out and calling across the valley, demanding that someone from the Israelite army should accept his challenge. David had just found his brothers and was talking with them when the giant made his appearance. The shepherd lad heard his haughty words. He learned also what had been promised by the king to the man who would kill the evil champion. David became greatly interested in the matter but the boy’s inquiries irritated Eliab, David’s oldest brother, who spoke scornfully to him.

The king heard of the lad’s interest and sent for him. David proposed to the king that he would fight the giant. Saul tried to dissuade him but David persisted, and at length Saul consented. “Go, and the Lord shall be with you.” “Then Saul put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head.” David’s simple shepherd’s garb did not appear to the warrior king to be suited for the battle with the great giant who was outfitted in all the armor of a man of war. Saul thought David could not fight a soldier, without a soldier’s armor. He did not know that he was better armed as he was than if he had helmet and coat of armor and shoes of brass to protect his body. David was clad rather in the panoply of God .

The best protection anyone can have in time of danger is the garment of truth, sincerity and holiness. Paul tells us of the Christian’s armor, which, he says, every follower of Christ should wear, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. Life is a constant warfare if it is life really worth living. Not to fight is not to try to get forward and struggle upward.

The king thought David should be armed before going out to meet Goliath, so he put on him his own helmet and coat of armor. But David told Saul he could not fight in armor. “I cannot go with these; because I am not used to them! So he took them off.” He tried to move about in Saul’s heavy armor but staggered under the weight. In a contest of pure arms sword and spear and helmet and coat of armor David would have been no match for Goliath; but armed with his sling the giant was no match for him. This was the one weapon which David had been trained to use to perfection.

Just so, stick to your little sling when you are fighting giants, and do not attempt to throw anything but choice stones out of the gospel brook. Too many of our modern Davids persist in fighting Goliaths in Saul’s armor, and it is no wonder they are defeated. One who knows how to use the Word of God is more than a match for any giant in the world. That was the weapon Jesus used when He met the great Goliath, Satan, and utterly vanquished him!

“Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.” We should remember that David’s fine throwing that day was not accidental, nor was it by a miracle that the stone went so straight to its mark. David had learned in his shepherd life to do this thing easily and surely. He had practiced with his sling until he could strike a hair’s breadth and never miss. He had spent his leisure to some purpose while watching the sheep. He did not know then what splendid use his skill would one day be to him but unconsciously, in his pleasant pastime, he was preparing for the great crisis of that day. Wellington used to say he learned on the Eton playground, how to fight the battle of Waterloo .

This teaches young people the importance of improving every moment, and taking every opportunity to acquire knowledge and skill. Someone may say to them, that they will never find any use for this or that branch of study in the curriculum, and might as well omit it but this is bad advice. Some day they will need all the knowledge and skill they can acquire. They will find need, too, for the particular bits of learning and knowledge they think they will never have occasion to use. David could not have met Goliath victoriously in that momentous hour if he had not unconsciously prepared for such a conflict in the quiet hours of his shepherd life.

Many a man fails in important moments in the critical experiences of life because he has failed to be diligent in his boyhood. If you would be ready for such occasions in your life you must prepare for them in the quiet days of boyhood and youth. If David had not been an expert slinger before that morning he could not then, in the hour before the giant came out, have prepared himself for the battle, nor could he have brought down the champion by any mere lucky stroke. Learn all you can in youth, omit no opportunity for acquiring skill in doing things, become skillful in whatever you do. You do not know what good service your experience, even in little, mundane things may some day do you!

We should not neglect spiritual training. When Jesus met the tempter, He fell back on the preparation He had made in His silent years at Nazareth. To each assault He replied with a verse of Scripture. But He did not go to His Bible scroll to get His text. He had the Words of God in His heart, hidden away in the storehouse of memory.

Some people have to take their concordance and look up the Scripture text they want, when any need demands it, either for their own use or in helping others. A concordance is a good thing to have but it is better if we become so familiar with our Bible and have it so in memory, that we can quote its words. It may seem to us that we do not need the Divine promises now but some time we shall, and if we fail to learn them we shall not have them ready in the day of distress.

When the Philistine “looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him.” He saw only a boy, unarmed, and scorned to fight with him. So the world disdains the Christian. It asks with contempt: “What can he do? What strength has he in his feeble hands? Where are the weapons he is going to fight with?” The giant saw only a shepherd’s staff in David’s hands; what was that against his own enormous spear? The world sees only a Bible in the Christian’s hand; what is that against all its philosophy and science and reason? Yet the Christian is not so defenseless and powerless as he seems. His weapons are not of the earthly kind and do not appear formidable but are really powerful, and, like David, he is able with them to subdue giants !

David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty!” The giant blustered, boasting of his own power and disdaining David’s littleness. He was angry that he had to fight with a mere boy. “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” Yet David was not scared by Goliath’s pitiful scorn of him. It was the Lord’s battle he was about to fight, and he knew the Lord would give victory.

The law of the heavenly kingdom is, “Not by might, nor by power but by My Spirit, says the Lord.” There are a great many things that human power can do but when we turn to the really essential things in life it is strengthless, and can do none of them. With all its boasted philosophy, science and wisdom it cannot convert souls nor change hearts; it cannot lift up the fallen; it cannot overcome sin and Satan; it cannot comfort sorrow nor give peace to the dying. Not one of the really great things of life, can it do. The Christian comes in the name of the Lord, and that name has in it the strength of omnipotence! Jesus said: “I have overcome the world.” He is Master of all things, and therefore is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

David talked very confidently to the Philistine but not boastfully. He gave God all the honor of the victory he was about to win. “I come to you in the name of the Lord Almighty!” “This day will the Lord deliver you into my hand.” “That all the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” We can conquer only as we fight in the name of Christ.

“As Goliath moved closer to attack, David quickly ran out to meet him. Reaching into his shepherd’s bag and taking out a stone, he hurled it from his sling and hit the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank in, and Goliath stumbled and fell face downward to the ground!” Just so, the believer in God may prevail over every Philistine that stalks out to meet him if he goes against him as David went that day against Goliath. The battle that wins the victory is the Lord’s. If we go in His name we shall conquer. Paul said: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

There are giants in our own hearts, even after the most thorough conversion. Like the Philistines in Canaan, the Philistines of sin also are terribly hard to subjugate. Your besetting sin, whatever it is, is a Goliath. It may seem to you that it never can be vanquished, and it never can until David comes our David Jesus. Call for Him to come and slay the giant for you!

There are giants in the world outside. Intemperance is one. Unbelief is another. Worldliness is another. These giants stalk out and hurl their defiance at the army of God’s people and there seems to be no one who can overcome them. Now is the time for faith in God. We must go out against these giants in the name of the Lord, not with philosophy, science and education but with the Cross, and then we shall prevail.

“And since he had no sword, he ran over and pulled Goliath’s sword from its sheath. David used it to kill the giant and cut off his head!” We should not fail to get a lesson on the importance of thoroughness in the conquest of evil, from David’s manner of dealing with Goliath. David was not satisfied with seeing the giant fall to the earth when the smooth stone struck him but ran and drew Goliath’s own sword from its scabbard and with it cut off his head. If he had not done this the old champion would probably have gotten up by-and-by, and walked away, for he was only stunned not killed, by the stone. David made sure that his work was completed.

A great many of our attacks upon sin in our own hearts, and in the world only stun and temporarily disable but do not kill the evil. We walk away, thinking we have done a fine thing, won a splendid victory; and presently we meet the old giant again, stalking abroad as before! He soon recovers from our blow, and we have to fight the battle over again, and perhaps we fight it again in the same half way, and thus on and on to the end of life.

Most of us have had just such experiences as these with our own lusts and passions. We overcome them often, and each time we think that we have entirely subdued them and that we shall have no further trouble with them; but they are soon active as ever again! We need to learn from David to finish our victories by cutting off the head of every giant we strike down! There is no other way of destroying our sins. The life is in the head and the head must come off or the enemy will be facing us again in a day or two with only a scar on his forehead!

The only way to get a real victory over vices is to decapitate them! Bruises and wounds are not enough. There must be thorough work done, in the name of the Lord. Half-way measures will not avail.

“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5

9 notes · View notes

dinaive · 2 years ago

Text

Story of Prophet Dawud/David (pbuh)

Ibn Kathir

When the two armies faced each other, Goliath challenged any soldier from King Saul's army to single combat, as was the custom of battle in those days. Goliath also wanted to show off his strength. The men were terrorized, and no one had enough courage to volunteer. The king offered the hand of his pretty daughter in marriage to the man who would fight Goliath, but even this tempting offer did not change the deadly silence among his soldiers.

Then, to everyone's surprise, a youth stepped forward. A roar of laughter echoed from the enemy's side, and even Saul's men shook their heads.

The young man was David (Dawud), from the city of Bethlehem. His elderly father had chosen three of his sons to join Saul's army. He had instructed the youngest one, David, not to take part in the fighting but to help the army in other ways and to report to his father daily on what was happening on the war front.

Although Saul was very impressed by the youth's courage, he said: "I admire your courage, but you are no match for that mighty warrior. Let the strong men come forward." David, however, had already decided and was willing to meet the challenge. Proudly, he told the king that only the day before he had killed a lion which had threatened his father's sheep, and on another occasion he had killed a bear. He asked Saul not to judge him by his appearance, for he feared no man or wild beast. Saul, surprised by young David's brave stance, agreed: "My brave soldier, if you are willing, then may Allah guard you and grant you strength!"

The king dressed David in battle armor and handed him a sword, but David was not used to wearing battle dress. He felt uncomfortable in it, and it obstructed his movements. He removed the armor, then collected a few pebbles and filled his leather pouch with them. He slung it over his shoulder next to his sling. With his wooden staff in hand, he began to walk towards the enemy. Saul was worried and asked him how on earth, with a sling and a couple of stones was he going to defend himself against the giant? David replied: "Allah Who protected me from the claws of the bear and the fangs of the lion will certainly protect me from this brute!"

When Goliath set eyes on the lean young man who looked like a boy, he laughed loudly and roared: "Are you out to play war with one of your playmates, or are you tired of your life? I will simply cut off your head with one swipe of my sword!"

David shouted back: "You may have armor, shield, and sword, but I face you in the name of Allah, the Lord of the Israelites, Whose laws you have mocked. Today you will see that it is not the sword that kills but the will and power of Allah!"

So saying, he took his sling and placed in it a pebble from his pouch. He swung and aimed it at Goliath. The pebble shot from the whirling sling with the speed of an arrow and hit Goliath's head with great force. Blood gushed out, and Goliath thumped to the ground, lifeless, before he had a chance to draw his sword. When the rest of his men saw their mighty hero slain, they took to their heels. The Israelites followed in hot pursuit, taking revenge for their years of suffering at the hands of their enemy, killing every soldier they could lay hands on. In this battle the Israelites regained the glory and honor that had been lost for a long time.

David became a hero overnight. Saul kept his word and married his daughter Michal (Miqel) to the young warrior and took him under his wing as one of his chief advisors.

Almighty Allah declared: So they routed them by Allah's Leave and David killed Goliath, and Allah gave him (David) the kingdom (after the death of Saul and Samuel) and wisdom, and taught him of that which He willed. And if Allah did not check one set of people by means of another, the earth would indeed be full of mischief. But Allah is full of Bounty to the Alamin (mankind, jinns and all that exist). (Ch 2:251 Quran).

David became the most famous man among the Israelites. However, he was not inveigled by this; he was not a prisoner of fame or leadership but a prisoner of Allah's love.

Therefore, after killing Goliath he went out into the desert in the company of nature, glorifying Almighty Allah and contemplating His favors. Verily, We made the mountains to glorify Our Praises with him (David) in the Ashi (after the mid-day till sunset) and Ishraq (after the sunrise till mid-day). And (so did) the birds assembled: all with him (David) did turn (to Allah, glorified His Praises). We made his kingdom strong and gave him wisdom and sound judgment in speech and decision. (Ch 38:18-20 Quran)

Creatures such as the plants, birds, beasts, and even the mountains responded to his voice glorifying Allah. Allah had chosen David to be a prophet and revealed the Psalms to him. As He the Almighty said: And to David We gave the Psalms. (Ch 17:55 Quran).

David recited his scripture and glorified Allah while the mountains joined him praise and the birds rallied around him. Almighty Allah directed: Be patient (O Muhammad) of what they say, and remember Our slave David, endured with power. Verily, he was ever oft-returning in all matters and in repentance toward Allah. (Ch 38:17 Quran).

David's sincerity was not the only factor responsible for the birds and beasts joining with him in glorifying Allah, nor was the sweetness of his voice. IT was a miracle from Allah. This was not his only miracle, for Allah also endowed him with the faculty of understanding the languages of birds and animals.

David (pbuh) fasted every other day. Abdullah Ibn Amr Ibn Al-As narrated: Allah's Apostle (pbuh) said to me: "The most beloved fasting to Allah was the fasting of the Prophet David, who used to fast alternate days. And the most beloved prayer to Allah was the prayer of David, who used to sleep the first half of the night, and pray for one third of it and again sleep for a sixth of it.'" (Sahih Al-Bukhari).

Abdullah Ibn Amr Ibn Al-As also narrated: "The Prophet (pbuh) said to me: 'I have been informed that you pray all the nights and observe fast all the days; is this true?' I replied: 'Yes.' He said: 'If you do so, your eyes will be weak and you will get bored. So fast three days a month, for this will be the fasting of a whole year. (Or equal to the fasting of a whole year).' I said: 'I find myself able to fast more.' He said: 'Then fast like the fasting of (the Prophet) David (pbuh) who used to fast on alternate days and would not flee on facing the enemy.'" (Sahih Al-Bukhari)

Allah granted David great influence. His people had a great number of wars in their time, but they had a problem in that the iron armor was too heavy for the fighter to move and fight as he wished. It is said that David was sitting one day, contemplating this problem while toying with a piece of iron. Suddenly, he found his hand sinking in the iron. Almighty Allah had made it flexible for him: And We made the iron soft for him. (Ch 34:10 Quran)

The people praised and loved David. However, the hearts of men are fickle and their memories short. Even great men can feel insecure and become petty-minded. One day David found Saul in a worried state. He sensed something strange in Saul's attitude towards him. That night, when he shared his feeling with his wife, she started to weep bitterly and said: "O David, I will never keep any secrets from you." She told him that her father had become jealous of his popularity and feared that he would lose his kingdom to him. She advised him to be on his guard.

This information shocked David very much. He prayed and hoped that Saul's good nature would overcome the darker side of his character. The following day, Saul summoned David to inform him that Canaan had gathered its forces and would march on the kingdom. He ordered David to advance on them with the army and not to return unless victory was gained.

David sensed that this was an excuse to get rid of him; either the enemy would kill him, or in the thick of battle, Saul's henchmen might stab him in the back. Yet he hastened with his troops to meet the army of Canaan. They fought the Canaanites brav, without thinking of their own safety. Allah granted them victory, and David lived to return to Saul.

Unfortunately, this only increased Saul's fear, so he plotted to kill David. Such is jealousy that not even a daughter's well-being mattered. Michal learned of her father's plan and hurried to warn her husband. David gathered some food and things, mounted his camel and fled. He found a cave in which he remained hidden for many days. After a time, David's brothers and some citizens joined forces with him. Saul's position became very weak, for he began to rule with a heavy hand. He ill-treated the learned, tortured the reciters of the Talmud, and terrorized his soldiers. This worsened his position, and his subjects began to turn against him. He decided to go war against David. Hearing this news, David marched to confront Saul's army.

The king's army had traveled a great distance and was overcome by fatigue, so they decided to rest in a valley, where they fell asleep. Quietly, David crept up to the sleeping Saul, removed his spear, and cut off a piece of his garment with the sword. David then awakened the king and told him: "Oh king, you come out seeking me, but I do not hate you, and I do not want to kill you. If I did, I would have killed you when you were asleep. Here is a piece of your garment. I could have hacked your neck instead, but I did not. My mission is that of love, not malice." The king realized his mistake and begged for forgiveness.

Time passed and Saul was killed in a battle in which David did not take part. David succeeded Saul, for the people remembered what he had done for them and elected him king. So it was that David the Prophet was also a king. Allah strengthened the dominion of David and made him victorious. His kingdom was strong and great; his enemies feared him without engaging in war with him.

David had a son named Solomon (Sulaiman), who was intelligent and wise from childhood. When the following story took place, Solomon was eleven years old.

One day David, was sitting, as usual, solving the problems of his people when two men, one of whom had a field, came to him. The owner of the field said: "O dear Prophet! This man's sheep came to my field at night and ate up the grapes and I have come to ask for compensation." David asked the owner of the sheep: "Is this true?" He said: "Yes, sir." David said: "I have decided that you give him your sheep in exchange for the field." Solomon, to whom Allah had given wisdom in addition to what he had inherited from his father, spoke up: "I have another opinion. The owner of the sheep should take the field to cultivate until the grapes grow, while the other man should take the sheep and make use of their wool and milk until his field is repaired. If the grapes grow, and the field returns to its former state, then the field owner should take his field and give back the sheep to their owner."

David responded: "This is a sound judgment. Praise be to Allah for gifting you with wisdom. You are truly Solomon the Wise."

Prophet David was a just and righteous ruler who brought peace and prosperity to his people, and whom Allah honored as a messenger. He delivered Allah's message to the people through the precious gift of his melodious voice. When he recited the Psalms (Zaboor), it was as if the rest of creation chanted with him; people listened as if in a trance. The messages David delivered are famous and well remembered. They are known in the Bible as the Psalms or Songs of David.

David divided his working day into four parts: one to earn a living and to rest, one to pray to his Lord, one to listen to the complaints of his people, and the last part to deliver his sermons. He also appointed deputies to listen to his subjects' complaints so that in his absence people's problems might not be neglected.

Although a king, he did not live on the income of his kingdom. Being well-experienced in the craft of weapon-making, he made and sold weapons and lived on that income.

One day, as David was praying in his prayer niche, he ordered his guards not to allow anyone to interrupt him, but two men managed to enter and disturb him. "Who are you?" he asked. One of the men said: "Do not be frightened. We have a dispute and have come for your judgment." David said: "What is it?" The first man said: "This is my brother, has ninety nine sheep, and I have one. He gave it to me but took it back." David, without hearing from the other party said: "He did you wrong by taking the sheep back, and many partners oppress one another, except for those who are believers."

The two men vanished like a cloud, and David realized that they were two angels sent to him to teach him a lesson. He should not have passed a judgment without hearing from the opposing party.

Almighty Allah told us of this incident: And has the news of the litigants reached you? When they climbed over the wall into (his) Mihrab (a praying place or a private room). When they entered in upon David, he was terrified of them, they said: Fear not! (We are) two litigants, one of whom has wronged the other; therefore judge between us with truth, and treat us not with injustice, and guide us to the Right Way.""Verily, this is my brother (in religion) has ninety nine ewes, while I have only one ewe, and he says: 'Hand it over to me,' and he overpowered me in speech."David said immediately without listening to the opponent: "He has wronged you in demanding your ewe in addition to his ewes. And, verily, many partners oppress one another, except those who believe and do righteous good deeds, and they are few."And David guessed that We have tried him and he sought Forgiveness of his Lord, and he fell down prostrate and turned to Allah in repentance. So We forgave him that, and verily, for him is a near access to Us, and as good place of final return Paradise.O David! Verily! We have placed you as a successor on earth, so judge you between men in truth and justice. And follow not your desire for it will mislead you from the Path of Allah. Verily! Those who wander astray from the Path of Allah shall have a severe torment, because they forgot the Day of Reckoning. (Ch 38:21-26 Quran).

David worshipped Allah, glorified Him and sang His praise until he died. According to traditions, David died suddenly and was mourned by four thousand priests as well as thousands of people. It was so hot that people suffered from the intensity of the sun. Solomon called the birds to protect David and the people from the sun, and they did so until he was buried. This was the first sign of his dominion to be witnessed by the people.

1 note · View note

megahumblepie · 4 years ago

Text

What’s Your Giant?

David was a young boy, albeit a boy handpicked by God to rule over his kingdom, but still...just a young boy. He wasn’t known for his great strength or ferocity. He was a sheep herder, not a great warrior. He was only at the battlefield in the first place to bring his brothers lunch. Despite this, when he saw Goliath, a 9 1/2 ft tall bully of a man, taunting the Israelite army on the daily, he was the only one with the courage to fight him. He knew God walked with him so he did not fear Goliath. He slew Goliath. He did it without armor. He did it without sword or shield. All David had was a handful of rocks and a sling yet he took down a giant. How did he do that?

Giants still exist today, though beyond a few professional atheletes, they rarely take human form. Today, they mostly exist in our minds. They are the challenges that we choose to let keep us down or choose to fight each day. Some examples would be loneliness, addiction, depression, marital discord, unemployment, social division or my personal giant...pride.

Just like David, we do not need armor or swords to battle these giants. The most important weapon is already in our arsenal. It’s God. With God all things are possible. David believed that God would protect him and help him slay Goliath. He had seen God help him before when his sheep were attacked by lions and bears. He knew God would have his back against Goliath and that was his greatest weapon.

Faith wasn’t enough, however. He did, afterall, also bring a sling and five rocks. What rocks could we bring to own giant battle? Belief doesn’t slay giants, action on those beliefs does. Might I suggest a few excellent rocks you can keep in your pocket for successful giant slaying:

Prayer: This mighty rock is a doozy. When we pray, we can speak to God personally. We can plea to him one on one for strength and protection through trials. We can build a relationship with God that will help guide us to the right path.

Scripture Study: Scriptures are own personal how-to handbook. Have a question? Look it up! Think your alone? Read about someone who went through something similar as you. Need inspiration? Is there anything more uplifting than the words and gospel of Christ? I think not. Scripture study gives us the know how to tackle our personal giants.

Church Attendance: There’s a reason strong people have muscles. It’s because they exercise and build muscle. We can build our faith muscles through weekly church attendance. By exercising our faith weekly with other faithful church goers we can build our faith until it is as strong as Hulk Hogan is huge.

There’s a reason these “primary answers” are the answer to most questions asked in church. They are our best tools against the adversary. They are our best weapons against the giants that try to keep us down. If we can do these three things consistently, God will have our back. You can have faith in that.

2 notes · View notes

blxsscd-x-fxrsakcn · 5 years ago

Text

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT MEME repost, do not reblog.

full name: Michael, Mikha'el / Mikhail / Mika'il, Sabbathiel, Shemesh, Adam ( as an alias in dire times )

gender & sexuality: male / demisexual & biromantic

ethnicity & species: various; angel / archangel

birthplace & birthdate: The Ether / Heaven, dawn of creation

hometown & current residence: Las "Vega" Vegas, Nevada / Earth

guilty pleasures: cooking, fishing, impromptu camping and outdoorsy activities, cats, doves, meditation, baking, opera music, keeping Alex out of harm's way , weaving, geology, geography, military and naval strategy, swimming, chess, recounting history he influenced , piano, plant-care

phobias/fears/weaknesses: electricity / empyrean steel / mass explosions (maybe) / losing his siblings, Father, twin, (and Alex) / becoming wingless & graceless / ultimately forgetting the faces and names of those he cares about

what they would be infamous for: saving humanity and protecting/raising the Chosen One, transferring the Markings to Jeep so Father can return, establishing Vega as a safehaven from his twin, building up walls that surround the city and advising Riesen on his way to power, promoting the Archangel Corps, casting Lucifer from Heaven (and killing him) on Father's orders, punishing human blasphemers via the Flood, gifting David the stone to sling towards Goliath

what have they / would they have gotten arrested for: ... (killing a Vega senator)

character most likely to murder them: (Lucifer), Julian, Duma, Whele

favorite book genre: biography

least favorite book cliche: ...

talents & / or powers: immortality (age unspecified - possibly 11 to 16 billion), superhuman strength/stamina/agility/etc., heightened senses, claws, expert marksman, expert swordsman, expert hand-to-hand combatant, wings (blades/flight/bulletproof shields), psychic bond with his twin and eldest siblings, sphere/rank demotion, spiritual manifestation, controlling & unleashing god's wrath, omnilingualism

why someone might love them: much concern for his friends and family, willingly will walk in line of fire to protect them. caring, dutiful, mercurial. stickler for rules but is willing to bend them. has a soft spot for nature and creatures his Father created.

why someone might hate them: as the youngest and most impulsive of his siblings, he can be somewhat sadistic in executing his duties. he doesn't mean to be, it's hard to take the skill from the soldier. stoic and walled-off to all except those who manage to pry chinks in his armor. he does not discuss tender subjects lightly. his past is paved in blood, having followed every one of His commands down to the letter - no matter how violent.

why you love them: a sweetheart with a hidden heart of gold once he learns how to unravel complexities between warriordom and potential father-figure problems with Alex, navigate the tricky highs and lows of love, learn to grow and change

#❝ nothing is ever certain ❞ ✧☾ { headcanons }

7 notes · View notes

inspirationaldiaries · 4 years ago

Text

Be Yourself

We all know about bible story of David and Goliath. I have heard so many teachings on the meaning of this chapter, that God has given us the ability and authority to slay the giants in our own lives, we should trust God to deliver us from the giants that threaten to destroy us and that Satan will never prevail when we have God as our protector.

I want to take you to a section in this chapter that I believe will give perspective on what God expects from us so that he can help us overcome the giants we face.

1 Samuel 34-40 (NIV) “But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”

Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”

Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

Saul offered David his suit of armor to protect him against Goliath. He offered his personal protection to David before he went out onto the battleground. I want to draw your attention to verse 39 “…I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off”.

For me, this is the most significant part of the chapter. I know that I sometimes look at some of the spiritual leaders and wish I were like them and could deliver a message with the biblical understanding that they have. I even find myself wishing that I had more money, a bigger house, a nicer car. But I believe that God is saying that He made us just the way He wants us to be. He gave us our own unique abilities and personalities. Stop trying to be someone else. Stop wishing for a different life and come before His throne and be vulnerable, be humble and be you.

#inspirationdiaries #behumble #beyourself #beyou #bible #jesuslovesyou #jesussaves

4 notes · View notes

tiand · 2 years ago

Text

Today's Word With Joel and Victoria Osteen - Be Confident In Who You Are

Today’s Word With Joel and Victoria Osteen – Be Confident In Who You Are

Today’s Scripture 1 Samuel 17:40, NLT He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine. Today’s Word When David went out to face Goliath, he didn’t have any protective armor, and his only weapon was his slingshot. King Saul had good intentions when he…

View On WordPress

#1 Samuel 17:40

0 notes

uma1ra · 3 years ago

Text

Story of Prophet Dawud/David (pbuh)

Ibn Kathir

Then, to everyone's surprise, a youth stepped forward. A roar of laughter echoed from the enemy's side, and even Saul's men shook their heads.

David became a hero overnight. Saul kept his word and married his daughter Michal (Miqel) to the young warrior and took him under his wing as one of his chief advisors.

David became the most famous man among the Israelites. However, he was not inveigled by this; he was not a prisoner of fame or leadership but a prisoner of Allah's love.

David had a son named Solomon (Sulaiman), who was intelligent and wise from childhood. When the following story took place, Solomon was eleven years old.

David responded: "This is a sound judgment. Praise be to Allah for gifting you with wisdom. You are truly Solomon the Wise."

Although a king, he did not live on the income of his kingdom. Being well-experienced in the craft of weapon-making, he made and sold weapons and lived on that income.

The two men vanished like a cloud, and David realized that they were two angels sent to him to teach him a lesson. He should not have passed a judgment without hearing from the opposing party.

"Verily, this is my brother (in religion) has ninety nine ewes, while I have only one ewe, and he says: 'Hand it over to me,' and he overpowered me in speech."

David said immediately without listening to the opponent: "He has wronged you in demanding your ewe in addition to his ewes. And, verily, many partners oppress one another, except those who believe and do righteous good deeds, and they are few."

And David guessed that We have tried him and he sought Forgiveness of his Lord, and he fell down prostrate and turned to Allah in repentance. So We forgave him that, and verily, for him is a near access to Us, and as good place of final return Paradise.

O David! Verily! We have placed you as a successor on earth, so judge you between men in truth and justice. And follow not your desire for it will mislead you from the Path of Allah. Verily! Those who wander astray from the Path of Allah shall have a severe torment, because they forgot the Day of Reckoning. (Ch 38:21-26 Quran).

1 note · View note

theapostlesnigeria · 3 years ago

Text

THE UNSUNG FAITH OF KING SAUL

"Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.”... The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.” - 1 Samuel 17:33-37.

King Saul and Abner quietly watched as David approached the famed Philistines warrior who was armed to the teeth, with a sling and stones. With his left index finger, Abner wiped off the breaking sweat from his face. Against all advice, knowledge, oppositions and war practices, King Saul had ALLOWED David into the fray. Abner whispered: "Haven't you taken this gamble too far?" King Saul replied: "The Nation and the Kingship are too much for one to gamble with. No, I have not gambled on David. Though against all reasoning and hope, I have faith in him." What a faith, an unsung faith! Without King Saul exercising faith in David, David couldn't have had the opportunity to demonstrate his timeless faith in God.

David couldn't go into the battle with Goliath in the standard battle armor that enhanced one's protection and safety but yet King Saul ALLOWED him to go and confront Goliath. Despite the risk of losing the fight and it's consequences, that is, loosing his Kingship and his Nation becoming subject to the Philistines - 1 Samuel 17:8-9, King Saul STILL ALLOWED the - young, untested, unamored - BOY into the battleground with Goliath. What a faith! What an unsung faith in believing in David against all odds! Every time I hear the reference to David and Goliath fight, I always bow my head in honor of the uncommon faith of the unsung hero of that battle - King Saul.

There are many of us who are not physically in the battlegrounds of Village Evangelism in hostile and challenging Villages of the ends of the earth. Like King Saul, they have come to believe in the Visions of ordinary and willing Believers and to allowing them go into battle in these Villages for the Souls of these perishing Villagers by funding them. Many of these unsung heros of Village Evangelism have quietly sacrificed fortunes and niceties of life to sustain these raging battles for the Souls of the perishing ones. I bow my head in honor of their uncommon and unsung faith. They are the greater Evangelists, the greater Missionaries. "Remember them for this, O my God, and do not blot out what they have so faithfully done for Your House and its services." - Nehemiah 13:14.

Friend, look around you, you may see someone who may need your faith in him irrespective of all the facts against him. Despite all you know about him, despite all the odds against him, he might still be worthy of your taking risks on him. Yes, unworthy, unqualified and risky, he still may need to be given that chance; he may still need to hear the words - "Go, and the Lord be with you" from you. Give him a BREAK. Who knows, he might turn out to be the David against your Goliath.

GOD BLESS YOU - BRO KINGDOM EGEJURU.

0 notes

fandomaddictwut · 5 years ago

Text

I mean, David and Jonathan loved each other more than their own lives.

1 Samuel 18:1-3 (this is right after David killed Goliath and single-handedly/with Divine Intervention turned the tide of war against the Philistines, then called Saul out for not trusting God)

“When David finished talking with Saul, Jonathan felt very close to David. He loved David as much as he loved himself. 2Saul kept David with him from that day on and did not let him go home to his father’s house. 3Jonathan made an agreement with David, because he loved David as much as himself. 4He took off his coat and gave it to David, along with his armor, including his sword, bow, and belt.”

Excerpt From

NCV The Everyday Bible

Thomas Nelson

https://books.apple.com/us/book/ncv-the-everyday-bible/id618126897

This material may be protected by copyright.

The crown prince of all of Israel and Judea literally told David, by putting his clothes on David, that David should be in the position of crown prince, not Jonathan. The length of fringe and colors told you a lot about someone’s rank and position. He literally acknowledged to David that he believed God had chosen him as the future/rightful king, and he would not only give up his position as Crown Prince and legal heir upon his father’s death, but betray his family and COMMIT FUCKING TREASON to get David where he believed he belonged.

Btw, if you look at the timeline, Jonathan would be almost twice David’s age, around his early 30’s, while David might not even have been 18 when he killed Goliath. So, not only was he giving up the kingdom, he was giving it up to a young man (adulthood starts at 13, in Jewish culture, I believe, even then), a NOBODY, the youngest son of a SHEPHERDING family, from bum-fuck NOWHERE (aka Bethlehem). Also, his grandma Ruth was a granddaughter of the former king of Moab, so he already had a claim, however tenuous, to the throne OF ANOTHER KINGDOM that didn’t really get along with Israel at the best of times. So, theoretically, he could’ve been an enemy of the state.

And Jonathan just fucking......gives everything up for this baby who probably has a tan from working outside all the time, has already fought a lion AND a bear with nothing more than a sling and probably a small belt knife, fucking MURDERED A 7-9 FOOT TALL MAN IN FULL ARMOR AND WEAMONRY IN SINGLE COMBAT WITH ONE ROCK, then WENT AFTER THE GIANTS BROTHERS AND DAD, and then came back and chewed out the king, probably still sweaty and covered in blood and probably wounded himself (adrenaline is a hell of a drug)?!?!?!

Oh, yeah, and he can sing and play the harp/lyre so well, Saul was cured of being possessed, apparently?!?!?

Bitch, I��d love him, too.

that one extremely homoerotic painting of a babylonian man listening to a babylonian twink playing babylonian harp. that one

420K notes · View notes

mybeautifulchristianjourney · 4 years ago

Text

Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by Rev. J.R. Miller

David and Goliath 1 Samuel 17

The story of David and Goliath is one with which every reader of the Bible is familiar. It is full of interest. It reveals much of David's character, and throws light on the training of the boy in his shepherd life. It is suggestive also for all of us, for we all have giants to fight, and we may learn from David, how to meet them and conquer them.

David had been chosen to be king. Now he was to be trained for the great task. All the incidents and events in his life - were lessons set by the great Teacher. The Philistines had gathered for battle with the Israelites, and Saul and his men were facing them. One day there stalked out from the Philistine lines - a great giant, named Goliath, and proposed that one from Saul's army should come out and fight him, and that the outcome of this duel should settle the conflict between the two armies. At first no one of Saul's men responded to the champion's defiance. The king and his men were dismayed and greatly humiliated .

Then David came to the camp. He did not belong to the army. He was only a boy, and his place was at home with the sheep. His older brothers were with Saul.

Jesse one day sent David to the camp with provisions for his brothers. For forty days, morning and evening, Goliath had been coming out and calling across the valley, demanding that someone from the Israelite army should accept his challenge. David had just found his brothers and was talking with them - when the giant made his appearance. The shepherd lad heard his haughty words. He learned also what had been promised by the king - to the man who would kill the evil champion. David became greatly interested in the matter - but the boy's inquiries irritated Eliab, David's oldest brother, who spoke scornfully to him.

The king heard of the lad's interest and sent for him. David proposed to the king - that he would fight the giant. Saul tried to dissuade him - but David persisted, and at length Saul consented. "Go, and the Lord shall be with you." "Then Saul put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head." David's simple shepherd's garb did not appear to the warrior king to be suited for the battle with the great giant - who was outfitted in all the armor of a man of war. Saul thought David could not fight a soldier, without a soldier's armor. He did not know that he was better armed as he was than if he had helmet and coat of armor and shoes of brass to protect his body. David was clad rather in the panoply of God .

The best protection anyone can have in time of danger - is the garment of truth, sincerity and holiness. Paul tells us of the Christian's armor, which, he says, every follower of Christ should wear, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. Life is a constant warfare - if it is life really worth living. Not to fight - is not to try to get forward and struggle upward.

The king thought David should be armed before going out to meet Goliath, so he put on him his own helmet and coat of armor. But David told Saul he could not fight in armor. "I cannot go with these; because I am not used to them! So he took them off." He tried to move about in Saul's heavy armor - but staggered under the weight. In a contest of pure arms - sword and spear and helmet and coat of armor - David would have been no match for Goliath; but armed with his sling - the giant was no match for him. This was the one weapon which David had been trained to use to perfection.

Just so, stick to your little sling when you are fighting giants, and do not attempt to throw anything but choice stones out of the gospel brook. Too many of our modern Davids persist in fighting Goliaths in Saul's armor, and it is no wonder they are defeated. One who knows how to use the Word of God - is more than a match for any giant in the world. That was the weapon Jesus used when He met the great Goliath, Satan, and utterly vanquished him!

"Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine." We should remember that David's fine throwing that day was not accidental, nor was it by a miracle - that the stone went so straight to its mark. David had learned in his shepherd life - to do this thing easily and surely. He had practiced with his sling until he could strike a hair's breadth and never miss. He had spent his leisure to some purpose while watching the sheep. He did not know then what splendid use his skill would one day be to him - but unconsciously, in his pleasant pastime, he was preparing for the great crisis of that day. Wellington used to say he learned on the Eton playground, how to fight the battle of Waterloo .

This teaches young people the importance of improving every moment, and taking every opportunity to acquire knowledge and skill. Someone may say to them, that they will never find any use for this or that branch of study in the curriculum, and might as well omit it - but this is bad advice. Some day they will need all the knowledge and skill they can acquire. They will find need, too, for the particular bits of learning and knowledge they think they will never have occasion to use. David could not have met Goliath victoriously in that momentous hour - if he had not unconsciously prepared for such a conflict in the quiet hours of his shepherd life.

Many a man fails in important moments in the critical experiences of life - because he has failed to be diligent in his boyhood. If you would be ready for such occasions in your life - you must prepare for them in the quiet days of boyhood and youth. If David had not been an expert slinger before that morning - he could not then, in the hour before the giant came out, have prepared himself for the battle, nor could he have brought down the champion by any mere lucky stroke. Learn all you can in youth, omit no opportunity for acquiring skill in doing things, become skillful in whatever you do. You do not know what good service your experience, even in little, mundane things - may some day do you!

Some people have to take their concordance and look up the Scripture text they want, when any need demands it, either for their own use or in helping others. A concordance is a good thing to have - but it is better if we become so familiar with our Bible and have it so in memory, that we can quote its words. It may seem to us that we do not need the Divine promises now - but some time we shall, and if we fail to learn them - we shall not have them ready in the day of distress.

When the Philistine "looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him." He saw only a boy, unarmed, and scorned to fight with him. So the world disdains the Christian. It asks with contempt: "What can he do? What strength has he in his feeble hands? Where are the weapons he is going to fight with?" The giant saw only a shepherd's staff in David's hands; what was that - against his own enormous spear? The world sees only a Bible in the Christian's hand; what is that - against all its philosophy and science and reason? Yet the Christian is not so defenseless and powerless as he seems. His weapons are not of the earthly kind and do not appear formidable - but are really powerful, and, like David, he is able with them to subdue giants !

David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty!" The giant blustered, boasting of his own power and disdaining David's littleness. He was angry that he had to fight with a mere boy. "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" Yet David was not scared by Goliath's pitiful scorn of him. It was the Lord's battle he was about to fight, and he knew the Lord would give victory.

The law of the heavenly kingdom is, "Not by might, nor by power - but by My Spirit, says the Lord." There are a great many things that human power can do - but when we turn to the really essential things in life - it is strengthless, and can do none of them. With all its boasted philosophy, science and wisdom - it cannot convert souls nor change hearts; it cannot lift up the fallen; it cannot overcome sin and Satan; it cannot comfort sorrow nor give peace to the dying. Not one of the really great things of life, can it do. The Christian comes in the name of the Lord, and that name has in it - the strength of omnipotence! Jesus said: "I have overcome the world." He is Master of all things, and therefore is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

David talked very confidently to the Philistine - but not boastfully. He gave God all the honor of the victory he was about to win. "I come to you in the name of the Lord Almighty!" "This day will the Lord deliver you into my hand." "That all the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands." We can conquer - only as we fight in the name of Christ.

"As Goliath moved closer to attack, David quickly ran out to meet him. Reaching into his shepherd's bag and taking out a stone, he hurled it from his sling and hit the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank in, and Goliath stumbled and fell face downward to the ground!" Just so, the believer in God may prevail over every Philistine that stalks out to meet him - if he goes against him as David went that day against Goliath. The battle that wins the victory is the Lord's. If we go in His name - we shall conquer. Paul said: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

There are giants in our own hearts, even after the most thorough conversion. Like the Philistines in Canaan, the Philistines of sin also are terribly hard to subjugate. Your besetting sin, whatever it is, is a Goliath. It may seem to you that it never can be vanquished, and it never can until David comes - our David - Jesus. Call for Him to come and slay the giant for you!

There are giants in the world outside. Intemperance is one. Unbelief is another. Worldliness is another. These giants stalk out and hurl their defiance at the army of God's people - and there seems to be no one who can overcome them. Now is the time for faith in God. We must go out against these giants in the name of the Lord, not with philosophy, science and education - but with the Cross, and then we shall prevail.

"And since he had no sword, he ran over and pulled Goliath's sword from its sheath. David used it to kill the giant and cut off his head!" We should not fail to get a lesson on the importance of thoroughness in the conquest of evil, from David's manner of dealing with Goliath. David was not satisfied with seeing the giant fall to the earth when the smooth stone struck him - but ran and drew Goliath's own sword from its scabbard - and with it cut off his head. If he had not done this - the old champion would probably have gotten up by-and-by, and walked away, for he was only stunned - not killed, by the stone. David made sure that his work was completed.

A great many of our attacks upon sin in our own hearts, and in the world - only stun and temporarily disable - but do not kill the evil. We walk away, thinking we have done a fine thing, won a splendid victory; and presently we meet the old giant again, stalking abroad as before! He soon recovers from our blow, and we have to fight the battle over again, and perhaps we fight it again in the same half way, and thus on and on - to the end of life.

Most of us have had just such experiences as these with our own lusts and passions. We overcome them often, and each time we think that we have entirely subdued them and that we shall have no further trouble with them; but they are soon active as ever again! We need to learn from David - to finish our victories by cutting off the head of every giant we strike down! There is no other way of destroying our sins. The life is in the head - and the head must come off - or the enemy will be facing us again in a day or two with only a scar on his forehead!

The only way to get a real victory over vices - is to decapitate them! Bruises and wounds are not enough. There must be thorough work done, in the name of the Lord. Half-way measures will not avail.

"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry." Colossians 3:5

#Devotional Hours Within the Bible #Rev. J.R. Miller #David and Goliath #victory #sinful vices #putting to death your earthly nature #1 Samuel 17 #February 22 #2021

13 notes · View notes

un-enfant-immature · 5 years ago

Text

How Freight master Flexport’s Ryan Petersen learned to CEO

“I didn’t know what the term ‘freight forwarder’ meant until a year into starting the business.” Considering his shipping logistics startup Flexport was last valued at $3.2 billion, that quote from my first interview with CEO and founder Ryan Petersen back in 2016 seems even more surprising now.

But it also hints at why he’s one of the most talented and exciting executives in tech: He learns. Humbly. Relentlessly. About whatever the role requires as it evolves.

Right now, it means learning that 3 million medical masks can fit in a pasenger plane if you strap boxes to the seats like they’re people. Flexport has delivered around 62 million pieces of personal protective equipment, with delivery of over 7.7 million of those funded by the company’s non-profit arm Flexport.org. Petersen and Flexport meanwhile helped create the Frontline Responders Fund that’s raised over $7 million for COVID relief.

Flexport.org packed 3 million pieces of PPE into a repurposed passenger plane to get them to frontline responders

“He’s one of the most impressive founders I’ve known” said fellow FRF leader and Science co-founder Peter Pham . “Ryan just wants to solve problems without ego.”

In this profile, TechCrunch charts Petersen’s growth across our six interviews with him over the past four years as he raised $1.3 billion and reached hundreds of millions in revenue.

Overcoming Shlep Blindness

Petersen soon found out that ‘freight forwarding’ means coordinating all the shipping and hand-offs to get pallets and containers of goods on one side of the world, through trucks and boats and planes, to a retailer on the other. By then Flexport was going through Y Combinator in 2014, preparing to take on the trillion-dollar freight industry.

Ryan Petersen

“I thought the problem was too big, and that I wouldn’t be able to solve it” he recalls. “How am I going to fix global trade? Only much later did I realize that, well, let’s try it! It can’t just sit there broken forever.” Somehow, freight forwarding was still being organized with faxed logs and paper manifests, or Excel files and email if a client was lucky.

Freight forwarding had plagued plenty of founders but none had tackled it because it seemed so insurmountable that it engendered ‘schlep blindness’, as YC’s co-creator Paul Graham termed it.

“Schlep blindness is something so hard that your brain won’t think about it. I think it’s a necessary feature of our brains. Otherwise we’d sit here contemplating our mortality all day and never be able to do anything” Petersen explains. “Anyone who ever sold anything on the internet pre-Stripe went through this terrible process. 100% of internet entrepreneurs saw that problem and then went about their way.” With its 100 year-old shipping incumbents and endless regulatory acronyms, who’d want to wade in?

“Ryan is what I call an armor-piercing shell: a founder who keeps going through obstacles that would make other people give up” says Graham, who donated $1 million to Flexport.org’s COVID-19 relief efforts. “But he’s not just determined. He sees things other people don’t see. The freight business is both huge and very backward, and yet who of all the thousands of people starting startups noticed?”

Petersen. What really irked him was that the big freight forwarders didn’t want those clients to learn what influenced prices and timelines to keep them in the dark about how sub-optimal their routes were. “They just made money off the fact that I didn’t understand how it all works. And I assumed at the time that that was just something about entrepreneurs who are new to this space but it turns out even the biggest companies struggle with this stuff. They’re afraid forwarders are trying to take advantage of them.”

But Petersen wasn’t so naive. He’d actually been in the freight business his whole life.

From Slinging Soda To Founding Startups

“Maybe without her realizing it, she was training us to be entrepreneurs” Petersen reflects. He and he brother David grew up with a biochemist mom who ran her own food safety business while their dad did the company’s programming. “All of our childhood conversations were around using software to make government regulations more accessible.” When would Flexport would eventually be jumping through the hoops of the 43 different US trade regulators, it felt natural for its CEO.

Ryan Petersen back in 2015 before Flexport had its own planes

Petersen exudes a kinetic energy that subtly coveys that he’s always itching for the next knot to unwind. “At the time I was terribly bored by everything”. So his Mom put him to work. “She paid my allowance as a kid by having me deliver sodas to stock their office. My dad would drive me to Safeway to buy sodas for four bucks a case and sell them for nine.” With a laugh, he considers, “It was potentially a way for her to make my allowance tax-free.”

Soon Petersen was moving bigger items longer distances, buying scooters in China and selling them online in the States. By 2005, Petersen was living in China to get closer to the supply chains. The next year, he co-founded ImportGenius with his brother and Michael Klanko. They’d realized there was a ton of valuable information locked up in paper shipping manifests, so they began scanning and selling the data to importers and exporters so they could keep tabs on competitors.

Petersen’s first moment in the spotlight came in 2008 when he accidentally butted heads with Steve Jobs. ImportGenius had identified that Apple was shipping a large number of “electronic computers”, a new classification for the company. “We scooped the launch of the iPhone 3G with our public manifest data. Steve Jobs called US Customs, who called me” he told me back in 2016.

Though ImportGenius eventually plateaued, Petersen had accumulated the knowledge to lift the veil and pierce his schlep blindness. “I realized the largest problem was staring me in the face. Global trade is too hard, and there’s not software to manage it” he remembers. “I thought there was no software for SMBs. What I discovered was that there’s NO software.”

At first he wanted to build what would become Flexport inside of ImportGenius, but it was tough to get existing investors to stomach the risk. It’d be scary, but also exciting to start something separate. “My brother is my best friend and my best advisor” Petersen tells me. They’d always pushed each other with a jovial sense of competition — Ryan’s Twitter handle is @TypesFast. David’s is @TypesFaster.

So David made the first move, founding BuildZoom, which has gone on to raise $23 million to coordinate the logistics (are you sensing a pattern?) of hiring contruction contractors. In 2013, Ryan lept. “I think part of me wanted to go out on my own and prove myself . . . to prove that I was capable of running the show. It was a really, really challenging to do it. Then the day I did it, it was the most liberating, awesome feeling ever.”

They Laugh At You, Then You Raise $1 Billion

It took a few years to get all its regulatory approvals and develop the basis of the Flexport product. But with early capital from Founders Fund, Petersen built the freight software he’d spent so long pining for. Still, “Senior execs at big companies were making fun of us. One of them compared us to Doc Emett Brown [from Back To The Future] and his ‘flex capacitor’ but we he missed is that Doc invented a time machine and it worked.”

By 2016, Flexport was serving 700 clients across 64 countries. I described it as the unsexiest trillion-dollar startup, attacking an enormous industry that was so boring that it repelled earlier innovation. Oversaturation in consumer startup verticals was pushing investors to look to where tech was evolving previously untouched markets. Flexport raised a high-profile $110 million round led by DST at a $910 million post-money valuation in 2017, and Silicon Valley was starting to take notice.

The Flexboard Platform dashboard offers maps, notifications, task lists, and chat for Flexport clients and their factory suppliers.

Luckily, the freight big-wigs were still laughing despite Flexport moving 7000 shipping containers per month for 1800 customers. “I don’t worry about startup competitors. I worry the big guys will stop thinking of us as such a joke” Petersen said that year. Soon incumbents like 25-year-old Chinese private delivery giant S.F. Express were allying with Flexport, leading another $100 million round in 2018. Meanwhile, Flexport was trying to sound more like its older competition. Petersen told me “We’re trying to retire the word ‘startup’. [Our clients] want a company that will help them grow, not the fly-by-night startup.”

At that point, Petersen didn’t care if freight was appealing or not. “I never thought it was sexy or unsexy. I just thought it was a backstage pass to the world economy” he’d later say. Yet SoftBank’s Saudi-backed Vision Fund felt the attraction. Flexport was vertically integrating, adding freight financing so retailers could pay factories for good they’d sell months later. It was also chartering its own plane and building its own warehouses where it could experiment with next-generation logistics, scanning the physical dimensions of everything that came through its doors to optimize future shipments.

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen

By then, Flexport had plenty of exit options. But Petersen was enjoying the ride. “I’m just having fun. You have a purpose. You get invited to interesting things. Once you sell your business, you’re just another rich guy. I never want to sell the business.” Luckily, the potential to grab more of the freight forwarding profits convinced SoftBank to invest a jaw-dropping $1 billion into Flexport in early 2019 at a $3.2 billion post-money valuation.

“It was controversial with our board. They thought it was a lot of dilution to take on but I convinced them that, this was going to go up and down and we wanted we to have cash to ride out the cycles. My view is that the world’s uncertain. You should be prepared for all outcomes” Ryan explains. As long as it could weather the storm, “we’re going to win on some time horizon.”

That strategy soon paid off. When trade with China effectively halted as COVID-19 exploded in the country and Flexport had far fewer containers to coordinate, it didn’t have to execute mass layoffs like fellow late-stage startups. It proactively cut 3% of its staff or around 50 people on February 4th, centered in recruiting that it plans to slow. “It’s painful to disappoint people” Petersen reveals.

Flexport chartered its own plane for several years to ship freight

Transitioning to a recession-era CEO and learning to reduce headcount with empathy became Petersen’s new objective. “I wanted people to know that I take personal responsibility for it. I wanted people to know that there’s transparency here” he tells me, his voice straining under the gravity of the situation. “If people feel fear and then they look at the leadership and they think the leadership is not feeling fear, then the fear amplifies. Whereas if people feel fear and they see, ‘oh the leaders are feeling fear also? Then okay, they’re going to behave appropriately.'”

Taking decisive action before COVID-19 spread widely stateside kept Flexport’s momentum strong and its runway long. Petersen is proving he can guide the company through bust as well as boom.

Flexport’s Tricks To Management

“My big learning in the last 18 months or so is that you can’t do everything. You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything” Petersen outlines. “I see good ideas and I say ‘DO THAT!'” he tells me with a wry smile. “Soon, you’re spread pretty thin. You need some top down discipline to say ‘no’ to things. We really lacked that in the early years.”

The quest for discipline led him to develop and lean on two major frameworks for prioritizing customer needs and preserving company culture. They’re crucial now that Flexport has grown to 1800 employees across 14 offices and 6 warehouses, and 10,000 clients including Sonos, Kleen Kanteen, and Timbuk2.

Ryan Petersen whiteboards his management frameworks

The first framework is from Petersen’s mentor and American business mogul Charlie Munger. It lays out the six stake-holders or ‘customers’ a business must satisfy to succeed. Here’s how Petersen describes them:

Clients: The people who pay you money. For Flexport, we have both importers and exporters

Vendors: The people you pay. For Flexport, who own the planes, ships, and trucks

Employees: Make sure they’re treated well. It has to be a win-win trade.

Investors: They deserve a return on their money. They took a risk

Regulators: They decide who to give licenses to. For Flexport, there are 43 regulators in just the US who take an interest in imported products.

Communities: Where you operate. Maybe one day that’s global society

“If you don’t have at least a B grade in everything and ideally an A, you’re probably not long-term sustainable” Petersen explains. It’s a smart lens for anyone assessing companies, whether that’s ones to work at, invest in, work with, or one you’re leading and trying to improve.

Take Airbnb for example. Clients generally love its alternative to hotels, they’ve been able to continuously recruit employees effectively, and investors have offered it billions and kicked in to help it survive COVID-19. But its vendor hosts and their neighbors have struggled with disruptive guests, and communities and their local regulators have clashed with the startup over its impact on housing supply. The six customers concept identifies where Airbnb needs to work harder.

The second framework Petersen developed himself for how to ensure a company’s core values persist as it scales. It lays out the six culture questions:

Why?: Why do you exist? What’s your purpose, mission, vision, and impact?

Who?: Who do you hire and what values and behaviors do you look for?

What?: What are you focused on and what metrics do you use to measure success?

How?: How do decisions get made and how do you shorten the feedback loop for improvement?

When?: When should things get done and when should you ship your product?

Where?: Where does your team feel like it belongs and how do you become more inclusive?

Petersen likens these tenets to addressing a medical condition. It’s easier if leaders build them into their culture early than trying to fix them later. “If you were to get these things right in any company, you’ll outperform” he believes.

To execute on these, Petersen built a team close to him that just “makes sure our OKRs (objectives and key results) are clear, that we’re running inclusive meetings with good documentation, that we’re holding people accountable.” The method is heavily influenced by Amazon’s corporate style. As Petersen told me last year, “The English language lacks a positive word for bureaucracy.”

Ryan Petersen

Taking process seriously has made the CEO a hit with his employees. “Working for Ryan accelerated my career at least a decade. He has the uncanny ability to push people to their peak performance” said Flexport’s long-time former VP of product Sean Linehan, who went on to found Placement. “Ryan is building the playbook for operationally-intense tech businesses. Building a global logistics behemoth from scratch is an insanely complex job. But Ryan thrives in complexity. Where most entrepreneurs fall apart, he hits his stride.”

With the economics headwinds we’re facing, Petersen will need that drive if he wants to bring Flexport public. As you might expect, he’s learning about it. “I like reading annual reports. It’s like a hobby of mine, particularly with my competitors” Petersen says. “I want to go public. But I don’t want to go public until we’re profitable because I don’t want to be at Wall Street’s whims. If you’re losing money and you’republic and Wall Street doesn’t like your stock, you can get into this death cycle.”

Being the CEO of a company that outperforms has opened doors to new mentors too, like executive coach Matt Messari, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Petersen asked Nadella “How can you make learning and development measurable?”. Redmond’s head honcho answered “You don’t have to measure everything.” Petersen took the note. Sometimes, you just do what you think is right.

The Wartime CEO

Leading with his heart has steered Flexport to join the coronavirus relief effort in huge ways. “We were not put on this earth to lay in bed staying warm under the blankets. It’s time to step up and do something for the world” Petersen tweeted.

Flexport’s response started in Januarury with multiple blog posts per week laying out how COVID-19 was impacting global trade, how aid organizers could navigate supply chain issues, and how governments and private companies could help. Then it launched the Frontline Responders Fund and began routing all Flexport.org contributions to the cause, massively discounting freight forwarding costs to help get PPE wherever it’s needed.

Flexport.org launched the Frontline Responders Fund

“100% of your donation to this cause will go directly toward shipping masks to people on the front lines as fast as possible. I give you my word that we won’t waste a penny of your money” Petersen tweeted. Despite his business encountering its own troubles with global trade and demand disrupted, he shifted to spending his full time running Flexport.org and promoting the FRF. With the help of celebs like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Edward Norton, it’s raised over $7 million. The FRF has delivered over 6.9 million masks, 240,000 gowns, 1,000 ventilators, 155,000 gloves, and 250,000 meals for vulnerable populations.

Petersen hasn’t been shy about rallying more leaders to the cause, writing this expansive guide to the major bottlenecks blocking relief. “Philanthropists should also step up, lending money to organizations that have received purchase orders for PPE, but that can’t afford to buy the equipment unless they are paid upfront. Because they’ll get their money back when the pandemic subsides, this is one of the highest impact forms of philanthropy out there right now.”

That willingness to get involved has inspired his employees to roll up their sleeves too. “During a crisis, leaders really show the values they embody” says Susy Schöneberg, head of Flexport.org. After the COVID-19 outbreak, Ryan immediately offered us more resources to support our commercial and nonprofit clients. Over the last weeks, my days started and ended by talking to him – no matter what time is was.”

Ryan Petersen

From his vantage point, Petersen also has special visibility into who is trying to exploit the crisis. “Effective immediately Flexport will not ship personal protective equipment unless the customer can demonstrate which hospital system or other frontline emergency responder they are being provided to” Petersen wrote. “There are global shortages of these products, and it is immoral to allow war-profiteering from entrepreneurs looking to make an easy dollar.”

In the absence of proper federal crisis management, Petersen has become a defacto general in the war against coronavirus. “Given the scale of the problem and the complexity of the market failures outlined above, there’s no way for the US government to solve this on its own. But it can and must provide leadership, breaking down obstacles and coordinating the response of the private sector.” Until then, Petersen’s learning as fast as he can to become the wartime CEO needed right now.

Paraphrasing Kobe Bryant, Petersen concludes, “When you know what your goal is, the entire world is your library.”

For more of this author Josh Constine’s thoughts on tech, subscribe to his newsletter Moving Product

#TechCrunch

0 notes

oldtestfanatic333-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Armor Up!

Hello everybody and Happy 4th of July! J Today I wanted to talk about a certain idea behind a certain story. This story is very well known, even among those who aren’t very religious. A lot can be learned from this story, and I’d like to share it with you. This story is the one and only story of

DAVID AND GOLIATH!

This story starts out with a war between the Israelites and the Philistines. One of the Philistines was deemed a “giant” whose name was Goliath [This dude was seriously big. He was said to have been 6 cubits and a span, which means he was about 9 feet tall!]. He was very big and very strong and many feared him, especially the Israelites. Goliath shouted at the Israelites and told them to choose a man to fight him, but none would step up for 40 days. David was sent to bring food to his brothers in the Israelite army, where he soon sees Goliath and decides to challenge him.

Now David had a testimony that God would help him defeat this giant with the help of 5 stones and a sling. Goliath looked at David and made fun of him as he saw how small and young David was. David told Goliath that the Lord would help him defeat Goliath [1 Samuel 42-47]. As Goliath made his first move at David, David put a stone in his sling and threw the stone at Goliath, which hit him in the head and caused him to fall to the ground. David then took Goliath’s own sword and cut off his head. The Philistines saw David take down the giant and they fled.

What can be learned from this well-known story?

President Gordon B. Hinkley stated, “There are Goliaths all around us, hulking giants with evil intent to destroy. These are not nine- foot-tall men, but . . . evil things that may challenge and weaken and destroy us… You have the stones of virtue and honor and integrity to use against these enemies [anything that can ensnare us such as pornography, drugs, tobacco, laziness, pride, etc.]…You can triumph over them by disciplining yourself to avoid them. You can say to the whole lot of them as David said to Goliath, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.” Victory will be yours. There is not a person in this Church who needs to [surrender] to any of these forces. You are a child of God. You have His power within you to sustain you. You have the right to call upon God to protect you. Do not let Goliath frighten you. Stand your ground . . . , and you will be triumphant. . . . When temptation comes your way, name that boastful, deceitful giant “Goliath!” and do with it as David did to the  Philistine of Gath.”

[Pres Hinkley always makes me tear up inside *sniff sniff*]

There so many different forms of Goliath in this world, as previously mentioned. Because these evil temptations can be acquired so easily [because our nature still resides with the natural man], it is best that we show the same courage that David did when he faced Goliath. When we want to know what is right, we inquire of the Lord. When we obey him and pray to him, he will readily help us in a time of need.

SO LETS SUM IT UP KIDDOS

Symbols – lets break it down

Goliath – temptation; evil

David – Us

Stones – faith, obedience, service, prayer, and the Holy Ghost

All of the “stones” help protect us from certain evil. It is our job to use those “stones” so that we may remain in the Lord’s light.

Goliaths’ may rise at any time throughout our lives. We must be armored with the Lord before they strike.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?�� (Psalm 27:1).

Lindsey [7/2/17; Lesson 12]

#Love LoveandLaw LDS Mormon LatterDaySaint ldsconf #Repentance LDS LDSconf LatterDaySaints Mormon Religion #Forgiveness LDS LDSConf Christ #davidgoliath #staystrong

2 notes · View notes

anchorsandjesus · 8 years ago

Text

I pray that one day, each of us can be like David. David who? David, the one who took down Goliath, the giant. Man, the scrawny, youngling everyone thought couldn't handle the job. Even his brothers, who were on the frontline, were angry with him and couldn't believe his younger brother was going to attempt to take down Goliath...especially with nothing. Nothing but a few pebbles and a sling shot. But to many of the men of Israel, that's all it was. However, David had Someone so much stronger and mightier than any giant on his side. He had the Lord. And David bravely and boldly confessed that. And guess what? David took down the giant. Took him right down. Boom. Man, how many times during our busy days or weeks or months do we face our own giants? The tasks that seem absolutely humongous and like they are going to take YEARS to complete. Maybe it's the work that's piling up on your desk or the due dates for papers and exams for your classes. And there's those reoccurring lies that don't seem to leave. You can't do it. You won't get it done. You'll never finish it on time. Geez, when did giants become Negative Nellies? But it sure feels like it. Like the world is doubting our capabilities or what we have to offer because it seems like too much to handle or we are too small or too weak or too messy. Um, David took down a 7ft giant that wore at least 200 pounds of armor with a single pebble. Boom, right in the middle of Goliath's forehead. David, the youngest of eight sons, the kid who constantly obeyed his father, tended the sheep, and who Saul doubted could fulfill the task--a task so many people couldn't even bring themselves to attempt. But David...he was fearless. He was victorious. He knew he had the Lord to protect Him and he went straight into battle and defeated the giant. We all gotta have a God-fearin', David kinda attitude. It's a new week. It's a new day. Don't listen to the world that doesn't know what you are capable of. Listen to the God who made you in His mighty and perfect image! He has knit you together and has woven your days. You were made to conquer giants. So now watch the giants fall. {Bible references: 1 Samuel 17; 2 Timothy 4:12}

#writings #faith #hope #love #strength #courage #david and goliath #1 samuel 17 #2 timothy 4:12 #bible verses #God #Jesus Christ #giants #inspiration #encouragement #fearless #bravery #victorious

122 notes · View notes

woman-of-destiny · 5 years ago

Text

Romans 8:31-32

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall he not with Him also freely give us all things?

Samuel refers to Goliath as the philistine champion in the build up to Goliath and David's historic battle.(1 sam 17:23). Confident Goliath challenged the Israelites to proffer their champion to fight him, knowing that in this battle of champions, the loser and his nation would become subjects to the victor.

The Israelites became distraught at Goliath's taunts and threats that continued twice a day for forty days. Even more so, they were demoralised and terrified by this bold, gigantic philistine because of a feeble faith in God.

The philistines were certain that Goliath could defeat any foe based on his valor size and experience, and they designated him their champion.But David toppled the nine foot giant arrayed in huge glistening armor, with one smooth stone slung from his low-tech slingshot.With Goliath hung the arms of flesh, but with David stood the Lord God.

When the philistines saw David kill their hero they took to their heels while hotly pursued and slaughtered by the invigorated Israelites. God’s pledges to his children are faithful and true. He promises that he will cause our enemies to be defeated and that when they pursue us from one direction, they will flee in seven directions.

The defeat of philistines testifies that if God be for us, then no one can defeat us. God is the indomitable champions who guards his faithful ones.Through his great power, we always prevail over our enemies. God is our defense in the midst of the battle of our lives as we fight enemies both physical and spiritual.

God is also our strength in whom we trust, our deliverer who rescue us from danger. He is our buckler sorrounding and protecting us with defensive armor. God is our power and strength and our high tower to spot the enemy's approach. It is amazing to know we are unconquerable. Regardless of what you have been through, its encouraging to know that God is always on our side.

He came through for the children of Israel through a source they did not expect a shepherd boy with a sling. May be in your life things don't seem to add up but am encouraged to know that if God is for you and me, no one can be against us.

Today be encouraged to know that we serve the unconquerable God. He has never lost a battle. Any battle that is raging in your life the Lord of host has already taken control. He will give you all things. For with God nothing will be impossible in your life as God is entirely for you

Have a victorious Wednesday

0 notes

ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

Text

Treasures of the Savage Frontier: Confederacy of Dunces

This should have been clearer a lot sooner.

Treasures consisted of three major phases. The first was the introductory section in Llorkh, Loudwater, and Secomber. The second was the foiling of the evil plots in the various Lords’ Alliance cities: Waterdeep, Daggerford, the Way Inn, Leilon, Triboar, Yartar, Longsaddle, Port Llast, Mintarn, Orlumbor, and Neverwinter. (Of these, Port Llast is odd in that it seemed to be completely optional.) This also involved trips to Luskan and Ruathym. The section culminates at a council meeting in Mirabar, where you present your evidence on the Hosttower/Zhentarim/Kraken scheme and thus forestall war in the area. Part three has you explore a few villages and a cave in the frozen north to recover a magic gem from a dragon named Freezefire. I’ll cover the third phase in my final entry.

Part two manages to be satisfyingly non-linear. Amanitas gives you the next-easiest city every time you contact him, but you can do the towns in any order. More important, visiting cities “out of order” does not trigger events prematurely or otherwise break the plotline. You can go to Mirabar early in the game, for instance, but it’s just a regular town with various shops and services until events elsewhere trigger the council meeting and the Zhentarim presence.

Good descriptions replace banal graphics as we arrive in Longsaddle.

In my case, I went from my last entry to Longsaddle, a somewhat goofy “frontier” town in which honest, plain-spoken folk run farms and ranches and use words like “reckon.” Members of the Kraken Society had been invading farmsteads and tying up the residents, but I kicked in front doors and liberated the places one-by-one. The ruler of the town, Malchor Harpell, wasn’t around–his doorman said he was at the Tower of Twilight to the west–but after I defeated all the enemies in the town, his apparition showed up to congratulate me.

Residents of Longsaddle are mostly caricatures.

Amanitas suggested I hit Mintarn next, but that’s an island and I wasn’t sure which port town would take me there. Thus, I decided to complete the loop of road I was already on, which took me prematurely to Mirabar. I was happy to find a couple of stores selling magic items. One sold +1 magic weapons, including magic arrows, which are the traditional “money sink” of the Gold Box series. Here, they screwed it up a bit because they made 10 of them cost only 30 platinum pieces, not the several thousand per batch that you find in other games.

This shop took a small percentage of my money.

These magic shops showed up in a couple of other towns, too, some of them selling some +2 items. I did my best with them. I bought anyone not wearing a cloak a Cloak of Protection even though I don’t think they stack with leather armor. I bought everyone Belts +2 even though they also don’t seem to do anything with armor. I upgraded my two clerics to staff slings +1. I bought hundreds of arrows +1 for anyone with a bow. I bought my wizard Wands of Ice Storm and Lightning Bolt for occasions when he can’t cast, and I also bought him every mage scroll I could find to increase the spells in his book. I bought Potions of Giant Strength for everyone and would have bought dozens of them to use in front of every battle but they don’t stack and I was already having issues with inventory space. Despite all these purchases, I never exhausted my supply of gems, let alone having to sell the more valuable jewelry. In fact, at one point I actually lost my entire pile of gems by accidentally having an NPC pick them up (you can’t trade items or wealth from an NPC), and yet I still made up enough in the subsequent hours that I never had to appraise a piece of jewelry.

This shop would have taken a lot more of my money if scrolls and potions stacked.

Mirabar is divided into north and south sections, the south run by humans and the north populated by dwarves. The dwarves work a mine, and even though I was visiting the city prematurely, there were some mine-related encounters that had nothing to do with the Zhent plot. After I fought some giants and purple worms, the dwarves rewarded me with a two-handed sword +3.

One of the few battles available in Mirabar this early in the game.

I took a break between Mirabar and continuing on, which turned out to be lucky. When I reloaded the game, the copy protection question asked me for a word after the heading “Tower of Twilight.” This reminded me that the Tower is a real place and not just a throw-away reference in Longsaddle. So I backtracked a bit to find it, which wasn’t hard.

The Tower of Twilight, directly west of Longsaddle.

It was a small, weird experience. After I entered the tower, a voice said we’d have to overcome some beasts before he’d help us. These turned out to be a bunch of electric spiders and (in a separate encounter) an iron golem. The electric spiders were annoying, firing lightning bolts with every attack, but I managed to take them out with swords, “Hold Monster,” and “Charm Monster.” The iron golem fell to physical attacks from anyone with a +3 weapon or higher, slowed with a “Lightning Bolt.”

When these creatures were dead, Malchor Harpell agreed to tutor my mage, Monitor. She went away for a little while and then came back “very satisfied” with a new Black Crystal Ring. The game said she got experience, but it wasn’t enough to rise a level. She didn’t get any extra spell slots from the ring or otherwise, and the ring never seemed to do anything. I’m not sure what the entire purpose of the side-journey was.

Are you sure you’ve been studying magic, Monitor?

My first visit to Luskan was a bust. All the high captains wanted tribute, but none were available to just attack. Trying to bash my way into the Hosttower of the Arcane just triggered an impossible battle against a bazillion mages who all went first, blasting us to smithereens with “Ice Storm” or paralyzing us all with “Hold Monster.” I want to see how this battle plays out with my Pools of Darkness party later.

Attacking the Hosttower is a good way to get hit with 50 “Ice Storms” in a row.

Port Llast was similarly uneventful. There were a few random battles. I had thought to find the ship to Mintarn here, but the only thing I could do in the city was take a sea tour, which led to an episode in which pirates attacked the boat, which led to us firing a cannon (through text menus) at the pirates and sinking them, which gained us some experience.

That finally brought us to Neverwinter. I had only explored a little of the city when I visited Lord Nasher and he had us arrested, apparently still believing that we had kidnapped the ambassadors. There was no opportunity for us to show evidence or plead our case, so we were treated to another scripted sequence in which Nasher declined to execute us because of our heroism in Ascore. Instead, he had us exiled to Farr Windward.

So maybe listen to our pleas of innocence now? Are we even pleading?

Farr Windward turned out to be on the same island as Orlumbor–the two cities are connected by a series of caverns. It was easily the most bizarre sequence of the game. Our boat crashed as we neared the city, which turned out to be a good thing, because we had to crawl ashore. If we’d entered through customs, they would have branded us with a mark that basically made us permanent outcasts. Everyone in Farr Windward had this brand, and their exile had either driven them insane or that’s why they were exiled in the first place. As we arrived, the town was having a parade for one of its members who had died. Everyone we talked to was slightly goofy. Unfortunately, the city seems to have been invented for the game and is not otherwise discussed in Forgotten Realms lore.

A shop selling “Certificates of Normalcy” was par for the course in Farr Windward.

A weird fighter/cleric named Ougo joined the party. Or, I guess, he was just acting weird. As we explored the town and defeated a series of Kraken spies, it turned out he had a plan to free the people of Farr Windward. It involved recovering the brand used on the exiles in the first place, then using it on Tulgar Wrighttson, leader of Orlumbor, so that he’d have to either go into exile himself or annul the entire branding system and thus free Farr Windward. At the same time, the party was trying to convince Wrighttson that the ships blockading his harbor were not from Waterdeep, despite their false flags, but rather the Luskan pirates.

It all worked out, but the plot started to annoy me a bit. It seems far too easy for the evil forces to convince the members of the Lords’ Alliance that they’re being betrayed. Has this part of the world never heard of false flags and stolen uniforms before? If my party hadn’t come around, would they have even bothered to contact each other and straighten things out? And here’s a tip for time travelers: When you go back to 1930s Germany, just kill Hitler. Don’t try to stop the Holocaust by slipping a Star of David armband on him at night. There are ways for the wealthy and powerful to get around such things. This is the second game I can think of that uses this trope, the other being Dishonored, and it didn’t make any more sense there.

“Guards, take him away!” “Sorry, sir, we have to arrest you now, even though if you had acquired that brand through any legitimate process, we almost certainly would have heard about it.”

A store in Farr Windward sold indecipherable equipment called “Farrberjiks.” But because I had more money than I knew what to do with, I bought everyone “Farrberjik Lined Boots,” and damned if they didn’t subtract a point from armor class.

I have no idea.

The caves in between the two cities had some interesting encounters with enemies I’ve never heard of before: giant kampfults, great vilstraks, and rock reptiles. Kampfults seem like giant collections of vines; vilstraks look like earth elementals; and rock reptiles are, like their name suggests, giant lizards made out of stone. None was terribly hard, but kampfults seem to have some kind of “smothering” attack, much like shambling mounds, that keep a character immobile until the beast is killed.

Both responded satisfyingly to “Fireball.”

As we prepared to sail away from Orlumbor, Siulajia got kidnapped by some sailors who hauled her off in a burlap sack. The captain of the transport ship refused to follow the kidnappers, and I had options to stay or take the ship to its original destination. Since the game didn’t give me enough information to determine which option would get me closer to Siulajia, I decided to stay with the ship and head for Mintarn. Broadside was sad.

The problem in Mintarn was the same as in Orlumbor: Luskan pirates pretending to be the Waterdeep navy, blockading the port. About half of the city’s available squares were water, and it didn’t take long to clear out the rest of the buildings and warehouses of the various groups of giants, Hosttower mages, Kraken spies, and Zhentil lords that were gathered there. One battle introduced an efreet.

The “Lucky Paper” outlines the group’s plan for Orlumbor. But do the Luskan pirates and the Waterdeep navy really use the same ships? Is the flag itself really the only way to tell?

We were joined for a time by Princess Jagaerda of Gundarlun, also a companion from the first game, who as a powerful fighter was a nice replacement for Siulajia. I found her late in my explorations of the city, though, and she departed when we returned to the mainland.

Eventually, we found the necessary enemy papers to prove that they were using fake Waterdeep uniforms and flags, and we presented these to the leader of Mintarn, ominously named The Tyrant, who gave us a +3 trident as a reward. My ranger used it for the rest of the game.

My party really is just the most pathetic group of do-gooders.

We returned to Neverwinter. During our absence, Lord Nasher apparently discovered the truth about things, as he was extremely apologetic for disbelieving us and exiling us in the first place. He asked us to hunt around the city for the missing ambassadors, and we found them both in secret areas after defeating their captors in battle.

This has never gotten old and never will get old.

We went back to Luskan at this point but still couldn’t find anything new to do in the city, with one exception. We ran into Princess Jagaerda again just as she defeated a band of evil forces, and she recommended that we take a ship for Ruathym, where the leader, Captain Redleg, had either been captured or turned by the conspiracy. It was another map of clearing buildings before convincing the leader of our cause and getting his support.

Now I want to rewatch The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Redleg joined the party for a while and helped us clear out the rest of the town. He departed just as we ran into Jagaerda again, and she joined us for the second time.

Jagaerda tempts a blogger to devolve into crudity.

My party had gained a couple levels, and I wanted to try the Luskan Hosttower again. Unfortunately, upon return to the Hosttower, it was just locked. I couldn’t trigger the same battle again. Fortunately, the game now let us assault the homes of the pirate captains and otherwise have our vengeance on the city. In some building, we came across a bunch of guards holding Siulajia. She and Broadside were joyously reunited–just as Ougo decided to return home. Jagaerda also left us when we left Luskan.

The male NPCs have a strange way of bowing out every time female NPCs appear.

Some documents suggested that the conspirators had kidnapped Siulajia because of her family, which confused her because she said they were just normal people living in the High Forest. As we’ll discuss next time, I’m pretty sure the developers were establishing High Forest as the setting for the sequel.

For the record, that’s not very far from where we started the game.

At last, it came time to visit the council in Mirabar. On our second visit to the city, we ran into numerous encounters with enemy forces not present the first time. They culminated with our visit to the Council Chambers, where the representatives were talking of war–until we presented the various “lucky papers” along with our report on the conspirators’ activities.

The game is being kind here. I didn’t save all 10 lucky papers.

The leaders were in the middle of thanking us for our work when the doors burst open and a very large group of Hosttower sorceresses, Kraken agents, and Zhentarim lords. They were the same types of enemies I had faced in countless previous battles, but they were very hard in this one.

The final battle starts you with groups to the north, west, and east of the party. More appear after the first round.

The key problem–as a couple of commenters have pointed out–is that if enemy spellcasters get the drop on you, the battle swiftly becomes unwinnable. This one featured at least 12 mages in the opening round, and maybe another 8 joined in subsequent rounds. (By the way, I came to hate that particular addition to the game mechanics.) They started in three groups in different locations, so they couldn’t all be targeted with one “Fireball” even if my mage had a chance to act. Almost all the spellcasters started with “Hold” spells, and each spell was capable of targeting three or four characters. On my first two attempts at battle, I ended up with all or most of my party held and slaughtered by the end of the first round.

Properly prepared this time.

It was only after a few reloads (informed, now, with buffing spells) that I got a handle on the battle, using hastened fighters to charge and occupy the mages and hastened clerics to charge and “Hold” them long enough for my mage to get a chance to damage them en masse. But I made the mistake of wasting all my best spells in the first couple of rounds, thus having nothing left to deal with groups of mages gating in during the third and fourth rounds. Altogether, it took me five attempts to win the battle. Both this battle and some of the others late in the game require you to carefully note the location and status of each spellcaster, and in particular whether you’ve already damaged him or he’s already cast a spell that round. You have to be willing to pull characters out of melee combat (giving enemies a few free swipes) and switch them to ranged weapons so they can target undamaged spellcasters who haven’t acted yet. Since the original Pool of Radiance, only the final battles in Pools of Darkness required this much attention to detail.

Miscellaneous notes:

Gateway and Treasures have seven locations in common. Of them, Llorkh, Yartar, Luskan, and Neverwinter use the same maps between the two games. (And as a bonus, Neverwinter’s is the same as used in 1991’s Neverwinter Nights.) There are only a couple of minor changes, such as doors where there were once arches. Neverwinter’s map in Treasures adds a couple of docks. The map of Secomber in Gateway is half of the map of the city in Treasures. Loudwater is unrecognizable between the two games, as is Port Llast, although in the latter case I think the maps are showing two different areas of the city.

One consequence of having two characters in love: when either gets knocked unconscious or killed in combat, the other “frenzies” and is taken out of my control.

“Quick” combat is pretty good about transitioning between melee weapons and missile weapons as necessary, with one exception: It does not recognize staff slings. Characters who possess them and cannot get to enemies in melee range just dither around doing nothing. It otherwise works well enough that I don’t know why the developers couldn’t give me a command to toggle between missile and melee weapons rather than forcing me to go into the inventory screen.

For a series that does a great job overloading you with so much money that you never have to worry about it, there are an awful lot of times where you’re asked, “Who will pay?,” and you have to try several options because you don’t remember exactly how much each character is carrying, and then sometimes you have to leave and go find a shop to sell a gem because you can’t pay in gems or jewelry even though they’re worth a lot more that what you’re being asked for. Why does the party have individual wealth at all?

I have a theory that the events described above, culminating with the battle in Mirabar, were originally supposed to end the game. The battle was about as difficult as an endgame battle should be, and we clearly resolved the main plot. The only reason I can see for phase three, which feels completely superfluous, was that someone decided that the game wasn’t long enough. See if you agree when we wrap up the game in a few days.

Time so far: 23 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/treasures-of-the-savage-frontier-confederacy-of-dunces/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

0 notes