Skip to main content

 


Israel too quickly turned from their singular worship of the Lord God. They looked pragmatically at the pagan gods that seemed to “produce”, when it was the Lord God that had blessed His people. Syncretism: they never totally stopped worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they just added idols to the mix. God judged them and sent the pagan Midianites to steal crops and cattle as soon as the fields were ripe.
Judges 6:7-10 “When they cried out to the Lord because of Midian, the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites. He said, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of slavery in Egypt. I rescued you from the Egyptians and from all who oppressed you. I drove out your enemies and gave you their land. I told you, ‘I am the Lord your God. You must not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you now live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
So, soon after, the angel of the Lord came to a man named Gideon. He was the youngest son of the weakest clan of the tribe of Manasseh. He was hiding in a wine press threshing wheat to hide it from the Midianites. The angel said, “Mighty hero! The Lord is with you!” Well, from Gideon’s perspective, that was a laugh! The angel told him that God was sending him to rescue Israel from the Midianites
Gideon in essence said, “No way! That’s not going to happen.” But the Lord God said, “I will be with you, and you will destroy Midian as if it were one singular man.”
What God says about you, what He is calling you to do may seem to you and the world around you as sheer madness. But when God speaks, things that were once non-existent come into being.
Remember, God took a highly educated, stuttering man with anger issues that led to murder from the wilderness and sent him to Pharoah to liberate the people of Israel.
The fact is, since Adam’s fall in Eden, all God has had to work with are deeply flawed human beings. It wasn't because some were naturally gifted, splendid examples of humanity that God chose them. God has constantly been trying to tell us through person after person throughout the entire text of the Bible that when He is WITH US, all things are possible. It's about Him, not us!
It wasn’t about Gideon’s credentials. He was validated by God. As St. Paul writes, “We are not sufficient in ourselves to think of anything as if it were coming from ourselves. Our sufficiency is Christ Jesus.” The signs and wonder that Jesus stated the church would continue to minister in His Name would be the work of the Holy Spirit, not as a result of any inherent, latent ability in any human being.
God was telling Gideon what God was going to do in him and through him. It would be God doing the work, just as He had done at Jericho. All Gideon had to do was listen, believe and obey; just DO IT because God asked him to. More tomorrow about what God did.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  PRAYER Jesus Christ NEVER taught on what we call "unanswered prayer." James wrote that a divided loyalty between trusting the Lord God for life and at the same time relying on the world's systems to get what you want will result in you not getting anything from God you may have prayed about. God will never reinforce the unbelief that flows from divided loyalty. THAT is not unanswered prayer. That is God saying, "No." to your request. God saying, "No." to your requests is not unanswered prayer. It is His grace. His "No" is just what I would want if I knew what He knows. The Lord also answers with, "Not now; not yet." because we are not yet prepared to receive what we think we need. God works in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. If I am praying for something God wants to do in me and the Holy Spirit is working in me preparing me to receive what God has in store, His "Not yet." is NOT unanswered prayer. As we see...
Post a Comment
Read more
 HIS POWER...HIS PROMISE Helping people walk in the Spirit the devotional below is seminal! The devotion below is today from Oswald Chambers. I makes me think of some I have known that have assumed that the Lord doesn’t want them empowered by the Holy Spirit or that He won’t manifest Himself in them because they have reasoned otherwise. Given ministry opportunities to have the Holy Spirit confirm the Word of God with demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power, they rely on how they feel, their experience thus far and not on the reality that the will of God in mission and ministry is either done in the Holy Spirit’s Power or not at all. Our capacity to do what Jesus does has nothing to do with our imagined capacity, but upon the indwelling power of God through is. Now to Him who is able to do far above and beyond what we could ever imagine or think, by His power at work in us now, to Him be glory…   Matthew 25:14-30 Jesus told the parable of the bags of gold as a warning ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 HE IS RISEN! IT IS FINISHED! After the Israelites had passed through the Red Sea by God opening the way for them to be saved, the whole of Pharoah's army, his horsemen and chariots pursued God's people into the opened way. Once they were all in, the waters flowed back into their place with suddenness and fury. Not one of the enemies survived. All perished in those waters. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross, all that sin contained, the full measure of the rebellion of mankind for all time, all the wickedness that was ever in human hearts were absorbed into the Lamb of God as He died our death, received our just judgement from God for all time, taking all that sin and death contained. In Him, sin and death died once and for all. They were overwhelmed, covered and drowned in the sea of His precious blood, poured out for the sin of the whole world. Not one enemy remained alive, all were stripped of their power to hold us in slavery to sin any longer. All their weapons were confis...
Post a Comment
Read more