Greetings in the Strong Name of Jesus!

Judges 7:2 - “The Lord then said to Gideon, "There are too many of you! I can't let all of you fight the Midianites, for then the people of Israel will boast to me that they saved themselves by their own strength!” TLB

Fact: we do too much in our own strength!
Fact: God desires to do more for us than we are willing to let Him do!

I remember an old saying when I was growing up that went something like this, “You need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”  Now I never wore any boots with straps on them, so I am sure this came from the frontier days, but I got the message of the saying.  However, there was another saying that for years I thought was straight from the Bible and it was similar to that one.  “God helps those who help themselves.”  Hmmm.  When I got old enough to do a scripture study, I found out there is no such verse in the Bible and it really runs incongruent with scripture.

We have this wonderful account from the Word about Gideon and the Children of Israel.  They were about to go into battle and God told Gideon he had way too many soldiers.  If they won, and it seemed God even knew they would with that many soldiers, God knew the Children of Israel would claim the victory and once again forget God’s almighty hand of strength.  He told Gideon to get rid of a bunch of guys and by the time he was ready to go to battle he only had 300 men left.  How can you win a war with so few soldiers?  Well, as you know, God gave them the victory, the people knew it was God’s hand that delivered them, and they rejoiced giving praise to God.

How does that apply to us?  We live in a day when we can buy just about anything, we have just about anything available to us, we can borrow untold thousands from the bank, and we can get nearly any drug to cure nearly everything.  All the things available to us are kind of like the thousand of soldiers available to Gideon.  We get in trouble and we whip out he plastic card and charge our way out of emergencies.  We get sick - call the doctor and go to the pharmacy.  When we get done taking care of business, we are often forgetful of the One who enables us to do anything and we take the credit, or give the doctor credit, or worse, give no credit to anyone.  I believe God would have us work with a smaller army.  I believe He would like to provide for us to demonstrate His power and His love for us.

The next time you have a need - think first, how can God get the victory in this if I take it to Him?  Think first, how can I let God show me how do get through this.  Then second, give Him all the praise for the victory.  The battle belongs to Him and the praise belongs to Him, too.

You are loved, Pastor Roger