Blessings to you all! Judges chapter 7.
I enjoy this account because it's neat to see how God takes the whole army of Israel and eliminates all the men except 300 of them. With the 300, he uses them to defeat the enemy. God does this because he does not want Israel to take glory for the victory.
God is to be given the glory for the things that happen in and through our lives. We are to trust His mighty power and not put trust in ourselves. Be careful how you “brag!” We all have our God given gifts and talents and can do things better than others in our gifted areas. Be careful, don't be quick to forget, they are God-given. Once we lose focus of that truth it becomes easy to say “Look at what I did.” When in reality we should be giving God all the glory and all our praise and thanksgiving! And when God works we should be giving testimony to others of God's greatness, instead of giving testimony to others of “our greatness!”
Who would ever want to go into battle with fewer soldiers than the enemy? It just wouldn’t make sense in our human understanding to even think about doing that, but God doesn’t want us to lean on our own understanding, but to trust Him with all our heart as we read in Proverbs 3:5.
Here’s what we see in Proverbs 21:30-31.
“No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.”
May we always be careful to give God the glory that He deserves and remember that victory belongs to God.
Today’s ApologetiX song is Gideon’s Coming, a parody of Gimme Some Lovin’.
https://youtu.be/mzKyVo4w3jE
One thing I found interesting about this chapter is that God shows how He anticipated Gideon would be afraid and He gave him the opportunity to be encouraged. God understood the human nature of Gideon and recognized the fear he would have bringing an army of 300 against and army of thousands. Gideon was faithful to the Lord, yet he was still afraid.
It leads me to this thought:
Trust vs. Fear
Different times throughout the Bible we have seen people punished of killed for their lack of trust (faith) in Gods promises. Lot’s wife when she looked back, the 12 spies that did not believe the enemy could be defeated, and many others.
So I asked- why did Gideon get the encouragement? I’m sure the others were fearful too? But what I think the difference is, Gideon fully trusted God would deliver the enemies into his hands. He was afraid, but still trusting. He felt fear but still had faith, and God recognized that in Gideon and He recognizes it is us as well.
It’s okay to feel fear. It’s human nature to be afraid when life brings us uncertainty and difficult situations. But we must TRUST and know that God will deliver us from our difficult season of life just like he protected Gideon and led him to victory. God will find ways to encourage us, just like with the man and the dream at the camp.
I pray we can all continue to trust God, despite the fears we are facing in our lives!