I love sports, and I enjoy the Olympic Games very much. I like to watch all sports matches whenever I can, even if I don’t have a favorite to root for.

One thing that has always fascinated me is my behavior towards a match where two athletes or two teams that I don’t root for compete. As soon as I know that one of them is the favorite, I start rooting for the other one. Actually, I think most people do the same thing.

In fact, one of the most special moments of sports is, in my opinion, when the underdog beat the favorite one.

But we don’t like it to be unfair. We want the underdog to rise to the occasion and beat the favorite, and do it fairly so.

When we talk about an underdog, we are often reminded of David’s story, when he faced Goliath, an episode from the Old Testament (1 Samuel 17). It’s one of my favorite stories of an underdog.

One thing that the story of David and Goliath teaches us is that sometimes the underdog is not actually the underdog. In David’s case, it was everyone’s perception, but it wasn’t true.

David knew for sure that he would beat Goliath because God was with him. Check out what he said to king Saul to convince him to let him fight Goliath:

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.” (1 Samuel 17:34-37)

David argued that he was capable of facing the giant, not because of him, but because of God. But everyone else saw only a small young shepherd that didn’t have a fighting chance against the huge experienced warrior.

But that was not what God saw. He saw a trusting heart, a heart that loved God above all things. And He liked that…

David mentioned that he had already killed a lion and a bear, but he didn’t consider himself better or more capable for that. He knew that God had helped him in those occasions, so he didn’t trust his own strength, he trusted God.

With that episode, God shows us that for Him there are no underdogs. There are people who trust their own strength, like Goliath, so it’s all they’ve got, and people who trust the Lord and His strength, people that know that they are only strong when they are weak, for God is their strength, like Paul said:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

In our weakness God makes us capable of accomplishing anything. And in an unexpected way, God makes the underdog become the favorite one. Not only that, the underdog becomes the winner even before the challenge begins.

With God, I am glad to be the underdog.