‘The reason for this book is there are so many people [who] go through life … conscious in a physical sense but unconscious, going through life, in a spiritual sense, never awakening to who they are and who they were created to be. That’s the push behind this,’ says Minister Howie.
The popular, nail-biting biblical story of David and Goliath is not about a scrawny shepherd boy using a slingshot to hurl a carefully aimed rock into the forehead of a giant warrior. Not to Minister Eugene N. Howie anyway.
Howie, a First Baptist Church of Glenarden Sunday School teacher who recently published his first book entitled The Awakening, likes to step back, and take in the entire scene of the battle recounted in 1 Samuel 17 of the Holy Bible.
“What really happens in the interaction between David and Goliath is not about the fight,” he says passionately. “It’s not about them facing off. It’s not about the weapons. It’s not about war. It’s not about any of those things.”
In the familiar ancient story, the Philistines and the Israelites were fighting in Judah. The Jewish shepherd David tended sheep for a living, but his father asked him to take food and water to his brothers fighting near the front line of the battle. Israel’s King Saul was in charge, but all the Israelites were afraid of Goliath. The 9-foot Philistine champion wore gear weighing 125 pounds and terrorized his opponents by shouting insults against them and their God.
This part of the story gets Howie really excited.
“Day in and day out Saul and even David’s brothers heard the exact same challenge, … and the response to it was fear,” he notes, waving his hands for emphasis. “But the moment David hears it, David was essentially upset. That disturbed him, that [Goliath] would be out making this challenge. So, at that moment that was ‘The Awakening.’”
Howie explains that “Goliath talked at a level that only another giant could hear.”
“What happened was David awakened to the giant that was already in him,” he says. “So, the battle has nothing to do with what happened on the field. The battle was a forgone conclusion. What mattered in the moment was the exact same thing that mattered to David and David’s outcome – that was his faith.”
This is how Howie describes the purpose of his devotional book.
| Stay tuned to the Emunah Podcast for the complete discussion with Minister Howie, scheduled for May 5, 2023. |
“The moment you awaken by faith to who and what you are, any Goliath, the outcome is a foregone conclusion,” he says. “The book answers the question – ‘How do I awaken my giant.’”
Awakening the giant in us involves stripping away both tangible and intangible things that blind us to our true potential, Howie explains.
“As we grow up, we pick up things throughout life,” he says. “We pick up fears. We pick up insecurities. We pick up things our mothers said, our fathers said; things our families, our friends, people said to us. We pick up and we collect these things, and we keep them as if they are true.”
“We live it out as truth because of who told it to us,” he continues. “It has to be true because these are the people who love me. They said it so it has to be true. So, this is who I am.”
Howie says he wrote the devotional as a 29-day journey to help readers “strip away some of the layers of things” that have hindered, blocked, or blinded their view of themselves.
The goal, he says, is to “learn to really hear it from the view and vantage point of Someone who, without a shadow of a doubt, loves you – your good, bad, ugly, and indifferent. As you walk through this process each day, it kind of gets you to look at a section of scripture, challenges with a narrative, a thought for the day and then a prayer.”
The topics for the journey run the gamut, beginning with “The Plan,” “The Gift,” New Mercies,” and “A Promise” and then wrapping up with “Moving Forward,” “Courageously Strong,” “Kairos Moments,” and “The Giant Appears.” Since the publication of the book, Howie has selected special gospel songs for the different days to enrich the message.
Day 1, “The Plan,” is key, Howie insists. The scripture tied to the first day is Jeremiah 29:11 KJV – “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
“The first day is to help you adjust your perspective, a primary way is in planning,” he explains. “Yes, we are supposed to make plans, that is only the fair and right thing to do with the time that we are given, with the resources we are given, that we should plan. However, we shouldn’t plan without recognizing that we have a little plan that fits into a bigger plan.”
Howie notes that our plan “is just a solo thing that we’ve come up with.” However, he says that God’s plan involves all people and intertwines us in unique ways. For example, a flat tire may delay a plan we have to arrive at a certain point by a certain time. We see the flat tire as ruining our day.
“When a giant begins to wake up to that truth” of God’s sovereignty and “begin to look at the flat tire as God’s way of causing a delay so you can meet who you’re supposed to meet or miss who you’re not supposed to meet, that understanding begins to strip away a layer. We don’t always have to ‘spass’ out if things don’t go according to plan. We recognize there’s a great plan at work.”
“The Gift” for Day 2’s topic is important because “each day we wake up, we receive this gift,” Howie says. The scripture is Lamentations 3:22-23: “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is they faithfulness.”
Howie explains Day 2 this way: “Inside the plan that’s happening, there’s all these little gifts, every little relationship and interaction and people He placed in our path. That is a gift.”
“Between the plan and the gift, it sets you on the path to begin to awaken to all that you are. So, you can strip away all of these things that society has told you what you are or what you are not. This is coming from a narrative but it’s coming from God’s perspective of what he’s given, what he’s provided, what he’s planning.”
While there is no special order to the topics, Howie stresses that “The Plan” of Day 1 and, “Kairos Moments” of Day 29 are very important. Day 30, “The Giant appears,” should be viewed as the readers’ chapter, where they can begin to write what they have learned and what challenged them during the journey, he says.
Howie says he has personally experienced every aspect of the book.
“This journey was me first,” he says, explaining that he began to write the book seven years ago as he faced numerous challenges, including moving from a religious “structure” to missions work while struggling with family matters. He juggled scriptures the Holy Spirit shared with him, thoughts and experiences that challenged him to dig beneath the surface for meaning and a multitude of notes, journals, and other writings he felt compelled to put on paper.
Howie, a native Washingtonian who has been a licensed minister for more than 10 years, offers a tribute at the beginning of the book to the women in his life. This sets the tone, he notes, adding that his mother had five sisters who mainly had boys. He explains that his family had “a lot of men in number but not a lot of men in presence.” He and his cousins were raised with the wisdom, knowledge and guidance of his mother and aunts.
The Awakening forces readers to deal with themselves and their unique issues, he says. A second book Howie plans to write and publish by December will focus on relationships.
Following are excerpts from a conversation Howie had about the book with Women of the Word. The length has been edited for clarity.
Q: The idea of Awakening parallels today’s notions of “Woke” and “Sleep” – all of which are essential for the African American community, black men in particular.
HOWIE: You hit on something that is true. In every community, especially if you are looking in the African American community, there is a need for a revival and a resurgence. If we look at a little bit of history, there are dramatic developmental programs aimed at keeping people, men – men of color especially – sleep. But we don’t call it sleep. We tend to call it anesthetized. That’s right in between being unconscious, but conscious enough to do damage but not conscious enough to feel it. Now, we can live in our community, do damage, and not feel it,
What this [book is] about trying to make sure we awaken to who all of us are designed to be, no matter what race you are …
This is a thing that people say, but how many people are really “woke?” It’s a nice saying but does your living match what you say? If your living says it, your mouth doesn’t.
Q. Looking at the David and Goliath battle, can you tell of moments in your life where you know without a doubt that God is working on your behalf, that God is showing that He is the most powerful God, THE God, not A god?
HOWIE: We must come to that place of finding out … who God is. And that is how a person knows how big God is, not because we put him in a competitive state but by the way we live. You show who he is day in and day out, in the middle of adversity …
I am a firm believer that body language speaks volumes. Day in and day out how we consistently live our lives speaks volumes. If you are awake, there is a clear difference between when you are conscious and when you are not. That’s why this is so important.
Look at David’s life from the moment that giant call went out to him. Not that he wasn’t living by faith. But he was awakened. Not only that he was awakened but other people began to see him for what he was and able to see Goliath for what he wasn’t. Nobody had to say what Goliath wasn’t. It became evident.
David said in 1 Samuel 17:45 “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s armies – the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.”
The outcome didn’t have to be broadcast; it was shown.
[Another view of the battle] the way this worked was how God, when this giant was awakened, he was a king in the making while a king was on the sidelines watching. So, there’s never even a competition and Goliath, the challenger, had a chance to see who the king was. So, it’s a matter of where he is with you. No one else matters.
Q: Name three things that keep some people asleep or anesthetized?
HOWIE: What we learn is that Satan has not changed his tactics. There’re a couple of things that he uses: Compromise. Will you compromise? … Distraction and the age old out and out deception. The way to guard against [those things] is the same way that Eve was to guard against it. What do you know? How do you hold on to what you know? Study the scriptures that are suggested with each day in the book. You combat the prince of the air with the word.
