Readings for today: Judges 6-9
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say to me, “God won’t give us more than we can handle.” And first blush, it sounds good. It taps into God’s caring and compassionate nature and it makes us feel safe and secure and protected. The only problem is it isn’t true. I’ve read the Bible too many times and walked with too many people and seen too many things over the course of my life to believe this lie. In my experience, both personally and professionally, God often gives us more than we can handle so we will learn to rely on Him. He often takes us beyond our own strength and resources and abilities so we will learn to depend on Him. What God wants more than anything else is to teach us to walk by faith and not by sight and that doesn’t happen naturally. We must be pushed out of our comfort zones. We must be forced to come to grips with our weaknesses in order to experience God’s strength. It is only when we have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide and we’ve exhausted all our options that we experience the miraculous provision of God.
Consider the example of Gideon. Called to deliver God’s people from the hands of the powerful Midians, he would not be Israel’s first choice to be their leader. He comes from the weakest clan in his tribe. He himself is the youngest member of his family. He also lacks any kind of self-confidence which is why he has to test God’s call by putting out the fleece. Twice. And then when he summons the armies of Israel to fight against Midian, God removes almost all of them. He leaves Gideon only three hundred men to take on the combined might of the Midians and Amalekites. Their numbers were overwhelming. All the odds were against him. There is no way Gideon can succeed by human strength. Talk about God giving him more than he can handle! He’s sending Gideon on what looks to be a suicide mission by human terms! But Gideon trusts the Lord. Gideon takes God at His Word. Gideon believes God and obeys His will and follows through on His plan and the result is a miraculous victory. One only the Lord could orchestrate which is why He gets all the glory. And that’s really the point, isn’t it? God giving us more than we can handle so His power will be revealed in our weakness and we learn that His strength and grace and faithfulness is sufficient.
I don’t know about you but I can look back at several moments over the course of my own life when I was out over my skis. I was overextended beyond my resources and strength. I was failing and flailing as I tried every which way but sideways to extricate myself from my predicament. All to no avail. Finally, I prayed to the Lord. I asked Him to intervene. I stopped trying to strive in my own strength and instead began to walk in obedience to His will. Submit my life to His plan regardless of how crazy it seemed. Many of my friends and family didn’t understand. They gave me all kinds of advice and encouraged me to put my head down and work harder. But thankfully I knew the Lord was trying to teach me something important. And every time I opened my hands and opened my heart to His will, He came through. Faithfully. Miraculously. In abundance. Every single time.
Readings for tomorrow: Judges 10-13