The reward of relying on God
And the Lord said to Gideon; they are still too many, bring them down to the water , and I will test them for you there. And he of whom I say to you . This man shall go with you ,shall go with you and he of whom I say to you, This man shall not go with you , shall not go.
Judges 7:4
In this Verses we see instead of telling Gideon that He would give him more men.God told him he had too many men to gain the victory. Interestingly sometime God work through our weaknesses better than through our strength. There is times when we have too much on our side in the natural for God to give the victory. If we depend on ourselves and our own strength too much , God cannot work.Our problem is not big enough for God to give us miracle if anyone can help us but God .God was telling Gideon that his men were too strong in themselves and that He wanted in a position where they would have to depend entirely on Him. God cut their army down to a size that made it impossible for them to experience victory without His divine intervention.
Pride and boasting ruin the best of people, so God has to help us stay humble and totally dependent upon Him. Israel had repeated the same cycle over and over since their exodus from Egypt.They would lean entirely on God, and He would help them. Then they would become self- sufficient, disobedient,rebellious, thinking that they did not need God, and their circumstances would once again become bad. When they trusted God , they defeated their enemies, when they didn’t their enemies defeated them. Trust God and experience victory in your life.
God instructed Gideon to tell the men who were fearful to turn around and go home. (Judges 7:3); twenty-two thousand of them left, leaving ten thousand behind to face the enemy . That tells us there were more men who were afraid than were courageous.
How many times does God put something on our hearts to do but then we cower when fear comes along causing us to hesitate and become double- minded? in this circumstances, we may feel fear, but we can do things afraid.God’s word to us is , “Fear not,for I am with you .” When fears knoks on your door, let faith answer !
Praise God preemptively
As soon as Gideon receive a personal word from God , he began to talk about the battle before him as though it were already won(Judges 7:14; 15)He did not wait to see the result of the battle before the proclaimed the triumph of the Lord , but he began to praise and worship God as though he already had the victory.
In the book of Exodus , the Israelites sang the right song after they had passed through the Red Sea and their enemies had been drowned. For He had triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider…..has He thrown into the sea (Exodus 15:1)However, they sang this song of victory on the wrong side of river. They were all excited. They had their tambourines out and were singing and dancing. They went into a long dissertation about the greatness of God -after they had seen the manifestations His power. They sang the right song at the wrong time . It would have been so much better if they had sung their victory song before they crossed the river.
We would certainly be remiss if we did not praise and worship God after the victories, but Gideon did the right things worshipping before he won his battle .All he needed was to hear from God that he would win – and then he started worshiping . Learning to worship God before the battle gets His attention demonstrates our faith , and inspires us to boldly enter any challenge we face ..
Conclusion
As believers we are not to be self confident but God -confident and that kind of confidence comes only by the Holy Spirit.The Bible says repeatedly that we are not suppose to have confidence in ourselves instead , we are to have confidence in God – that He will mightily through us, just as He did through Gideon (Judges 6:34)
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father you are Alfa and Omega, Creator of this Creation,
All glory belong to you .
Amen
Sol Kamal