Jeffin

Let me continue the story of Gideon from my previous post because I am reading the Bible in that order. Previously I told you that God chose a man called Gideon to gather a group of warriors and fight their enemy, the Midianites. It turns out that the men chosen by Gideon were many. In Judges 7:2, the Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many warriors with you. If I let all of you fight the Midianites, the Israelites will boast to me that they saved themselves by their own strength”. Now here’s what caught my attention. In chapter 4, God says to Gideon to go with the strength you have and now in chapter 7 when their collective strength is known to be great, God says that there are too many of them. The reason he gives is that He do not want the people to boast in their own strength after they have won the battle. God knows they will win because that is what he wants, so why not let all of them take part?

You see, the primary purpose of the mission is for God to bring Glory to Himself and therefore bring praise to his children and not the other way. So often He lets us fight our battle with a limited amount strength or number which under normal circumstances would never bring us victory. But when we get through all of that and come out victorious, suddenly we realize that we could not have made it through without a supernatural encounter. God’s name is lifted up when we begin small. Much grace is needed for us to move forward.

I keep hearing the same or a variation of the question “Why does God allow suffering?”. If you do a search on the internet, there are tons of links relating to this topic. In fact, there is even a movie about it. You can view the trailer below.

Anyway, today when I was reading about Gideon in Judges 6 and I could see the same sort questions being asked many many years ago. At the start of the chapter, it says that Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight. And this has been happening over a long period of time. God rescues His people from bondage. The people forget what God did for them and fall into their old ways. They even worship other gods along with the people of the land they are living in. The process of restoration and falling keeps repeating over and over again through many generations. This is no different from the time we are in. We have been rescued from the bondage of sin by the blood of Jesus and yet some of us keep sinning along with the world. As a result, we have invited disease from the world to rule our body, calamities, suffering, poverty and so on.

Gideon was called to rescue his people. In the beginning he doubts his calling just like us. He even asks questions such as “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.” (See Judges 6:13). These questions are very similar to what we ask today.

The Lord replies “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”. I believe this is the Lord’s reply for us too. Without blaming God for all the problems that we see around us, we need to know that we are the hands and feet of Jesus to bring Goodnews to the needy and to set the captives free. We have been given the burden to preach the Saving Word of God with all the world. Jesus, our role model and Saviour has already addressed this issue when he declared publicly in Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

Psalm 81:3 says “Blow the ram’s horn at new moon, and again at full moon to call a festival!” (NLT).

Today my Pastor explained what it means to blow the ram’s horn at new moon and full moon. He said, life is full of events. There are times when we experience severe darkness. It is during this time, when we feel sad and we are down and we feel that nothing is happening for us. It is may be a time when we have lost our loved ones or lost our job or lost something that is dear to us. The scripture says even during this time, we need to stay positive and praise God. Job was a rich person who had everything he ever wanted. One day he lost it all. In Job 1:21 He said, “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” Wow, he just praised God when he lost everything. We read later in the book of Job that God restores everything back to him. In fact, he increased all that Job had twofold (Job 42:10).

Full moon, are times when we have been blessed to the max. It is very easy during this time to forget what God has done for us and be absolutely soaked in the blessing, so much that we lose sight of our heavenly father. I have had times in my life when I have absolutely forgotten God and those were times when I had everything I could imagine. God brought me back to square one. I can’t say I lost everything but I have certainly been brought back to a situation where I have no one except Him. It is important that we praise our Father during the full moon even when we are in the best of our situations.

I hope these words are a blessing to you as they have been a blessing to me. If you have any comments, you are welcome to put them down below. Thank you for reading.