What if the trial you are going through right now is your training ground to be a mighty warrior? What if what you are going through is teaching you to hear the voice of your Commanding Officer? What if your desperation is the very situation that is intended to cause you to cry out to God for an answer, a sign, so that He can show you He is with you?
Would you respond differently knowing that your impossible situation is actually intended to change you from who you are today into the mighty warrior God calls you to be?
What if the greater purpose of your difficulty is that God wants to show you that He is the God of the impossible so that you will be forever changed?
God doesn’t intend for you to stay as you are.
God calls you to be a mighty warrior for the Kingdom of God!
Gideon took his fleece in his hands and rung out a bowl full of water while the ground around him was dry. He took up a dry fleece when the ground around him was wet. He saw and he touched the supernatural signs from God. He experienced the answers to his prayers in real, tangible ways. His true couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t explain it with human reasoning.
God heard Gideon’s prayer.
God answered Gideon’s prayer.
God showed Gideon that He was with him.
Isn’t this what we really want to know, that God hears us, that God answers us, and that God is with us?
Every time we realize that God hears us…
Every time we see God’s answers to our prayers…
Every time we see evidence that God is with us…
We are changed, we are never the same!
Gideon was going through training…being changed… being prepared as a mighty warrior.
“And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’ Now therefore, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn and depart at once from Mount Gilead.’” And twenty-two thousand of the people returned, and ten thousand remained.” Judges 7:2-3
“What?”
“God, did You just say what I thought You said?”
“I was afraid when I was in my winepress. I was afraid when I tore down the false gods. I’m still afraid, yet I’m suppose to tell all these soldiers who are afraid to go home? Can I go with them?”
Fear was being eliminated.
Fear has no place in the impossible.
Fear weakens
Fear paralyzes
Mighty warriors have no fear!
What was Gideon thinking when he saw two-thirds of his army get up and leave? Gideon’s army was already so much smaller than their enemy’s army.
“God, isn’t it better to have twenty-two thousand soldiers who are afraid than to be left with just ten-thousand soldiers?”
Gideon was facing scarcity once again!
What do you do when the people you are trusting in suddenly get up and leave? What do you do when your recourses suddenly come to an end? What do you do when you are trusting for full, but you only see empty?
This is when you need to hold onto the Words of Truth, the Promises of God.
“The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!”
“Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?”
“Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”
This is when you need to remember the night when you pushed through your fear and tore down your father’s false gods.
You need to remember building the altar to God on top of the rock, the aroma of the burnt offering, and bowing down in worship.
You need to remember the water running through your fingers as you wrung out the wet fleece over dry ground.
Gideon was being changed. God was stripping him of himself…his fear, his trust in himself, his own understanding…
Though the remaining soldiers had no fear, there were still too many, God wanted less.
“But the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water, and I will test them for you there. Then it will be, that of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ the same shall go with you; and of whomever I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ the same shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “Everyone who laps from the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set apart by himself; likewise everyone who gets down on his knees to drink.” And the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people got down on their knees to drink water. Then the Lord said to Gideon, “By the three hundred men who lapped I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to his place.” Judges 7:4-7
God is relentless to fulfill His Greater Purpose…
He was creating such an impossible situation it would clearly not come from human might, human power, but from God alone!
God had another requirement of the mighty warriors who would fight this battle. He tested them by how they drank water.
Those who got down on their hands and knees and turned their backs to their surroundings and their eyes to the water, those God told Gideon to send home.
But those who reached down and brought the water up to their mouths with their eyes still alert to what was going on around them, those God chose.
Mighty warriors stay attentive to their surroundings, always alert and ready.
Three hundred courageous soldiers,
alert soldiers,
mighty warriors,
Impossible!
Why is it that we often think when we are obedient to God, when we are following in His ways, everything will go smoothly? That it will make sense? Gideon heard God’s voice, it wasn’t going smoothly. He was obedient to what God told him to do. It certainly didn’t make sense.
Yet, there he was sitting with his army of three hundred, the army God gave him, fully in the will of God!
While across from him…
“Now the Midianites and Amalekites, all the people of the East, were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the seashore in multitude.” Judges 7:12
Impossible!
Yet, the man who was sitting there on the hill surrounded by his three hundred mighty warriors was becoming more and more the mighty warrior God saw him as. He was becoming a different man than the one who was in the winepress just days before.
Truth was replacing true
Faith was replacing fear
Hope was replacing discouragement
Humility was replacing insecurity
Gideon’s thinking was lining up with God’s will, his beliefs were giving him new direction, greater purpose!
Sometimes all you have left to hold unto, all you have to trust in, and all you have to believe in…
are the Promises of God.
Just ask Abraham, Job, Lazarus, Paul…
Impossible situations come to everyone in one form or another. But rather than be offended and turn your back on God, or begin to strive in your own ability, choose to believe that there is a Greater Purpose than you could ever imagine.
Choose to see your impossible situation as an opportunity for God to show His glory!
Choose to seek Him and to listen to all He has to show you. There may be something you need to “die to,” something you need to sacrifice to God. Perhaps there are some “false gods” that need to be cut down. Maybe your “army” will be whittled down beyond all possibility. You may find yourself surrounded by your enemies. But, remember, these stories in the Bible aren’t just nice bedtime stories. They are true accounts of people just like you and me who have found themselves in similar situations. They bring hope where there is no hope and they reveal the love and power of God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever!
So, mighty warrior, it’s time to trust God with your impossible situation so that God can display His glory so all will see how Great is our God!