Judges 6.16 And the Lord said to him, “But I will be
with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.”
To me, the sadness of the book of Judges
is overcome by the power of God and His love for Israel. Take the story of
Gideon. I think I’ve heard a thousand sermons on Gideon and they all sound the
same: goofy and corny, as if the story of Gideon is some kind of sitcom. You
know: Gideon responding to the Lord: big eyed, super surprised face, asking in
a loud and clownish way: Who dat!?
Alright, I get it, in the midst of being
starved to death, we all need a bit of comic relief to get over the horror of
an enemy utterly destroying the landscape and devouring all of the produce of
the land. Right? Imagine trying to get to your local store tonight and finding
the building surrounded by men with guns, not letting anyone in, and you watch
as all of the food is being loaded into vans and being carted off somewhere and
you can’t get your Twinkies, or a carton of milk, or creamer for your coffee.
Let’s all have a big laugh over that one.
We need to remember in the midst of all
the comedic relief, Gideon was, out-of-his-mind desperate. He was not telling jokes; he was at his wit’s end as to
how to deal with this human pestilence that was making his life truly
miserable. Also we need to remember that Gideon was weak in his faith and dangerously
low on belief. That leads to trouble every time. Nothing real funny about that
either.
Gideon wanted answers because most men
are ‘fixers’ – you have a problem, they have
a solution. You want to pour out your soul, they want to fix you. Gideon
wanted to fix his situation. It doesn’t appear that God was his first choice in
resources for aid and assistance. That’s tragic. True, but tragic because it
persists to this day. The fixers want to fix, and will go to whatever means to
do so. When is the last time you saw a fixer on his face, crying out to God
that he was in too deep, and didn’t know what else to do?
The fixer asks: how can I do this? God says, I
will be with you. Gideon looked at his own resources and said, No way! God knows all things and knew
that Gideon’s biggest problem, aside from the Midianites, was his penchant for
depending on himself. That sound familiar?
In my days these days I find me routinely
trying to do what only God can do. God seems almost obsessive over my dependence
upon Him – sometimes to the point that it’s like trying to breathe underwater;
or free oneself from the crocodile-like jaws of adversity: they don’t let go.
But if Anyone was going to fix Gideon, it was God, and God sought to fix Gideon’s
heart by exposing him to greater and greater uncertainty, underscored with the
words: I will be with you.
I need God with me; and need to believe
it’s true: He is…leading, guiding, directing, orchestrating. I need to humble
myself daily to the words God gave to Gideon: I will be with you!
Father,
fix me from fixing and find me on my face crying out for Your power and
presence (I don’t want one without the other). My life is not a sitcom; it’s
reality. Help me to live it accordingly as I am: a mighty man of valor, not a
bit player in a silly show that always seems to somehow work things out in the
end… Amen
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