We will be starting at Judges 6. If you have been with us for a while, you know we are going through the series called Extraordinary People. Basically, the series is about the lesser known people of the Bible who, because of their faith and obedience, God used in extraordinary and unexpected ways. Last week, we looked at the character of Samson. You may recall that Samson was a guy who started out pretty strong, but toward the end of the story he became kind of weak. Today, we are going to look at the character of Gideon who really started out very weak and by the end of the story was very strong. Just as the story of Samson takes places in the book of Judges, the story of Gideon takes place in the book of Judges. As a reminder, when we talk about the book of Judges, we are not talking about the people that sit in a court of law and oversee court proceedings. During that time, the judges were more like military leaders. They were more like Majors or Generals that would protect the people and the property and that sort of thing so just keep that in mind. As we talked about last week, we see in the book of Judges that there is a pattern in Israel and not a very good pattern. We see a pattern where the people have done evil in the eyes of the Lord and consequently what happens is the Lord allows some sort of oppressor, a foreign enemy, to come in and put a heavy hand on the people and after a certain period of time, the people are frustrated so they cry out to the Lord for deliverance. What we saw happen last week and we see happen this week is that God sends in a deliverer. He sends in somebody to deal with what is going on in that particular situation.
In today’s passage, starting out in chapter 6, verse 1, we see a similar situation. We see again that the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Last week with Samson, the enemy was the Philistines. This week, the enemy is the Midianites. The Midianites are a group of people we don’t know a whole lot about other than they generally occupied what we would know as Arabia. They were considered nomads. They would travel throughout the desert with their camels and tents and caravans. In this particular time, they were the enemies of Israel. They were fierce in their tactics when they would go on the attack of Israel. As Israel began to plant their crops and grow their crops, they would come in with their camels and their men and cross the River Jordan and basically consume all the crops. They would destroy the animals. Basically, they would wreak a path of destruction in their wake. The Bible talks about how they were like a swarm of locusts coming in. It is in that situation that we see the Midianites so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help. It is in this particular setting that we are introduced to the character of Gideon. You may recall last week Samson was introduced by an angel that came and visited Samson’s mom before he was even born. Today, we see an angel visiting Gideon directly in a very strange setting. The word goes on to say “An angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak of Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.” Let me stop right there and explain a few things.
The reader of ancient times would read this and say something is not quite right here. Modern day readers, if they are really reading with observing eyes, would say something doesn’t sound right. He is threshing wheat in a winepress. There is a disconnect there. I didn’t really understand quite the difference so I thought I would look it up and saw the difference between a winepress and a threshing place. I came up with a couple of images that might clarify some things. What you have here is a graphic of an ancient winepress. People pull the grapes off the vine and let them fall to the ground. They stomp on the grapes and the juice would flow out and somebody would gather it into some sort of a jar. But the key thing to remember here is that the pressing of the wine happened in an enclosed environment. On the other hand, threshing of wheat took place outside. Here is a picture of what happens in threshing wheat. On the right side you have some oxen that would be trembling over the wheat stalks trying to separate the grain from the husks. On the other side you have them using winnowing forks that would throw the stuff up in the air and the grains would fall and separate from the husks. Someone would come along and pick it up. The main point here is that threshing best occurred on the outside because there was open air and you had the animals around to stomp on it and you could throw it up in the air and the wind would catch it and easily separate the grain. When you see this situation when the angel appears, he is appearing to Gideon who is afraid. He is hiding out in an enclosed place called a winepress instead of outside because he is fearful of the Midianites. So the word goes on and says “When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.’” He doesn’t go up to Gideon and say the Lord is with you coward because you are hiding in a winepress. He says the Lord is with you mighty warrior.
If we had time to put the passage up on the screen, we would see that what Gideon does is he kind of ignores the mighty warrior comment and goes on and starts complaining. He says if the Lord is really with me, if the Lord is really with us, if the Lord is really with our people, then why are these bad things happening to us. Where are the miracles that our fathers told us about like when God delivered the Hebrew people from the Egyptians and had them cross the Red Sea and that sort of thing? Where are those miracles at this particular time? The question that Gideon was asking is not a bad question. It is the question we ask today. When we are in the midst of some sort of oppression or depression, some sort of economic problem, moral problem, or violence in the culture, which we really are, the question is where is God? Has God somehow abandoned us? As I thought about it, the question is not has God abandoned us but really have we as a country abandoned God? I think that is really closer to the truth. The reality is God is right there. God has not left us. We have left God. God is there. God is there in the good times and God is there in the bad times. I think he is even there more in the bad times because there is where he is able to demonstrate his glory and power. It is in the bad times that usually he comes in and sends deliverers in to free the people up from their oppressed state. I think he could be getting ready to do that in America or maybe we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Thinking about that, contrary to what some would say, when he does come in and deliver us, I don’t think it is going to be that he is going to dump a carload full of money on us that is all of a sudden going to deal with all our health situations. He can do that. He can fix our material things. He can give us health. But really what we know about God through scripture is that he is really more serious about healing our heart situation than our bank account or healing our heart instead of our health. He wants us to heal the inner man and the inner woman. He wants to deal with the stuff that is going on inside that needs to be fixed in order for us to truly take on the image of God. Not only that, he really is trying to develop our faith. We know that he is trying to develop our faith. He is trying to develop a faith that will sustain us through any time. Through the best of times and the worst times. In the worst times, when we have that faith and we are out there demonstrating to the world no matter how bad it gets we are not turning away from God, the people begin to take notice. The world around us says how can you continue to have the faith in spite of this and they begin to be drawn in to Jesus Christ.
That is what is going on here. Gideon is beginning to question some things but rather than the angel entertaining him and having an answer for him, he simply goes on to say just go. I am sending you. What does Gideon do? He immediately backs up again and begins to make excuses. I am part of the least of Israel’s tribes and not only that I am the least of the tribe. In other words, I have very low standing in society so how can you say I am going to be used in some sort of mighty way? Again, it is the comment that we often state to ourselves or to others. How can God use me for anything? I don’t have the education. I don’t have the appearance. I don’t have the smarts. I don’t have the wealth. I come from a dysfunctional family. Whatever it is, we make thousands of excuses where we continually say God can never use me. There is a passage that says “God sees the things that are not as though they are.” Just as God saw Gideon as a mighty warrior, he sees all of us as mighty warriors. In fact, in 1 Corinthians it says that “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” That is how he operates. He does it so his glory is manifested in a mighty way through the weak, not through the strong. We get a sense here that Gideon is starting to figure out this angel guy is someone special. He doesn’t quite understand he is really an angel of the Lord, but he kind of senses that maybe this guy is really the real deal. He basically says “so if God is really showing his favor upon me, if God really has this great plan for me, then I need you to prove it for me. I need you to give me some sort of a sign.” So Gideon goes to go his home and gets some stuff and tells the angel that he will be right back. He goes back home. He gets a goat, some bread, and some broth. He puts it in a carrying container and shows up back at the angel and gives it to the angel as kind of an offering and the angel says thank you but why don’t you put it on this rock and stack the meat and bread and pour the broth all over it and stand back. He did it. Gideon laid his stuff on the rock and the angel touches that rock with his staff and the whole thing goes up in flames right in front of his eyes. About that time, Gideon gets into a panic because he knows this guy is special. He goes on to say “‘O, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!’ But the Lord said to him ‘Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.’” Back then, people thought, I think there is a scripture that speaks of it, if anyone is ever to see God face to face, they are just going to die. First thing, he didn’t see him face to face and he got the assurance from the angel that he would not die but having said that, I think that Gideon had the proper perspective. He knew a sinful person standing in the presence of a holy God could not last so long. As I thought about it, I thought he has the right perspective. A lot of us come into worship and we really don’t think about the idea that maybe we want to come into the presence of God. We sing songs about the presence of God, but I don’t know if we believe that God is somehow waiting in the wings ready to make his manifest presence known to us. If he did, what type of response would we have? Would we fall on our knees and pray? Would we say O, Sovereign Lord! I am going to die. We don’t know but I think Gideon had the right perspective.
So that was the sign that was given to Gideon that he asked for. So what did Gideon do? He builds an altar for God. He names the place The Lord is Peace because it is at that place where he received the peace of God and that God is not going to destroy him. Often back then you would see that people would name a place based on the particular event that occurred in that situation. So he calls it The Lord is Peace. But since God had given Gideon a sign now what he is about to do is give him an assignment. He is about to say it is time that you get out of the winepress. Leave this isolated place. Get out of the house. Get out of this sphere that you are in and begin to walk towards the battlefield. Before you do that, I have an in-between step that I want you to take. I want you to stop by your house and I want you to do something. I want you to go in there and tear down the altars to Baal that your father has built up. He goes on to say “Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height.” Back then, again, these were Jewish people. These were the people that basically claimed allegiance to the Jewish God but they had fallen into idol worship. That is what we talk about when it says the people were doing evil in the eyes of the Lord. Before Gideon could go out and win battles for God, he had to first go home and deal with the situation in his own house. His own dad had built an altar to Baal the fertility god and Asherah was basically a fertility goddess. He had to first go in and shut that situation down and tear it up. He was nervous about that. He was afraid of that because this was his dad’s altar and it was probably a well-known place in the community where people were gathered to give their offering up to the god Baal and Asherah. He did operate in faith. He did tear it down, but he did it under the cover of night. He went under the cover of night. You see that the man had a little bit of faith by going but he still went under the cover of night because he was terrified that somebody would find out about it. Sure enough, they found out about it. The next day the men in the community woke up and they see the Asherah pole all chopped in pieces. They see the altar destroyed. They see a bull that was supposed to be offered up to Baal now being offered up to Yahweh. They see this and they are totally enraged about it. They start investigating and asking questions of people in the community and eventually somebody snitches on Gideon and says it is Gideon who did that. So they go knocking on Gideon’s dad’s door, Joash, and they say your son did this. We need to bring him out because he deserves to die. Joash is someone we find that is pretty quick on his feet. He ends up saying slow down. If Baal is really a god, let him contend for himself. Let him fight his own battles. That really kind of shut him up. It is true that if Baal was really a god, he doesn’t need these men fighting for him. Let him fight for himself.
As another side note, sometimes I think we do go out there and we want to begin to share Christ and preach and sometimes we get too preachy and sometimes people get defensive and we feel like we have to go on a major defense for God. The reality is sometimes we just make the situation worse. The reality is God can defend himself. God says leave the revenge up to me. Revenge is mine says the Lord.
So Joash makes this statement and the men leave him alone, but they don’t let Gideon off without really giving him some negative comments, including giving him a nickname that they call him, Jerub-Baal. It goes on to say “That day they called Gideon Jerub-Baal saying, ‘Let Baal contend with him because he broke down Baal’s altar.’” They were giving him a name that was meant to be a derogatory statement. Kind of a subtle slam. I think what happened though was Gideon ended up wearing it as a badge of honor because he was someone who was willing to contend with Baal. He defeated him. In fact, Baal never showed up to do anything about it. I think the most important thing is that Gideon is beginning to understand something. He is beginning to understand that this is not just any battle. This is a spiritual battle going on. When there is a spiritual battle going on, you need spiritual resources. You need the spirit of God walking next to you. Just like Samson needed the spirit of God to be able to have the strength to conquer the Philistines, we see that Gideon also got the spirit of the Lord upon him when he was getting ready to go into battle. The passage goes on to say that “Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him.” It goes on to say that he gathered all sorts of other tribes around him. By the time he was done doing all the gathering and mustering all the troops together, he had 32,000 men. As good as that sounds, he was still operating at a major disadvantage because in chapter 8 we would see that actually there were like 135,000 of the Midianites and the allied armies. At the time, they were basically operating still at a deficit of about 4:1.
I suspect, based on what is about to happen in the passage, Gideon is beginning to experience some cold feet. He is getting a little bit nervous about the situation. Being Gideon, what does he do? He goes and says I am going to ask for another sign. I am going to use a wool fleece. Scripture goes on to say “Look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” He is basically testing God. I am going to throw this fleece out there. The next day I am going to get up and if the fleece is wet and the ground is dry, which doesn’t always happen, then I will know I am really sent to be the deliverer. That is what he does. Sure enough he gets up the next day and he finds the fleece really wet. So wet that when he squeezed it out he was able to get a bucket of water out of it and the ground was dry. But he was still a little bit nervous. He still experienced a little bit of cold feet. So he decided I need a second sign. I am going to reverse the order of this. I am going to put out the fleece again but this time when I get up in the morning what I want to see is a dry fleece and a wet ground. Sure enough, he gets up the next morning and that is what he finds. He finds a perfectly dry fleece and the wet ground. This is something that God is, for some reason, giving to him. He is letting him have the sign that he requests.
As a side note, when we think about signs, there are Christians that go out there, and we have all done it, I have done it, and we go out there and have this major decision to make in life and so often what we do is go out there and we try to what we would call throw a fleece out there for God to help us make this tough decision. It is not always bad. I don’t think that is totally wrong. But you have to remember, in this situation, this is not meant to be a pattern for all of us to follow. That every time we have a decision to make we throw a fleece or two or three out there. We have to remember in this particular setting, in this particular time in history, in this particular context, in this particular place where God is bringing in specific deliverers to do a specific act, he is willing to let the person put a fleece out there to confirm that calling. It is a very specific thing that he is doing. He is not just throwing a fleece out there so he can decide should I take this parking spot or this parking spot. He is dealing with a major call on his life. But having said that, there are times in our walk where we are just stumped. We have a decision to make that may have a couple different options and really critical options and that depending on which way we go it may make a major difference in our life. I think that if we spend serious time in prayer, serious time in devotion with God, serious time in consultation with others, if we still don’t seem to get an answer, I don’t think it is totally wrong to throw out a fleece. Having said that, I would also say be careful about the fleece. When you put the fleece out there, one thing to keep in mind is that the sign will never, ever contradict what is in the word of God. Never. Unfortunately, people use the fleece scenario to justify their sinful behavior. They may want to get involved in an affair in their marriage or something like that. I am going to throw out a fleece there Lord. Please confirm that. Give me the answer. They might even look for the answer. They might not even go for a second fleece. They take the first one that comes at them. The devil can throw a fleece out there too. The devil can put a sign out there too. We want to make a decision so badly we begin to create our own particular signs. So we have to be careful when we throw that fleece out there. Having said that, when you throw the fleece, you also have to remember that you may not get an answer. Or the answer simply might be I have given the answer. It is in the Word. Open the Word. An example would be we are work or something and we are feeling should I really share Jesus with this person? Should I really tell them about the gospel? God I need a sign of some sort. He is saying I gave you a sign. It is in Matthew and it talks about the Great Commission. Go forth and share the gospel. There is your sign. What more do you need? I am not going to give you any more. Then there are some situations that I think people go out and they put out a request for a sign of some sort and still God doesn’t give them an answer. I think sometimes in those situations God is saying it really doesn’t matter. Take this path or this path. I will be fine. I will be with you. I will be right there. In that situation, my approach has always been just simply pray, trust, and keep walking, until he shuts something and tells you to stop. Those are just my ideas on this idea of a fleece.
We know that Gideon needed that fleece because he is going into a situation where he is about to go into battle where the odds are currently 4:1. We see that God gave him that sign. Also, we see that if we go through it from the very beginning, if we saw this pattern of signs that he would give to Gideon, we would see that he expected something out of Gideon. He expected to step out further in faith. I need you to move farther. We see right after this fleece situation that God kind of looks like he is messing with him a little bit more. He looks at this army out there that is about to go up against the Midians and Gideon is ready to go. He says you have too many troops. It is time to thin the troops out a little bit. He tells Gideon go out there with your horn and ask the men if anybody is fearful or trembling about this particular situation, if anybody is afraid to go into battle, you are free to go home. Right at that time, the passage says that 22,000 men said I am out of here. I am leaving. They were gone. Now Gideon’s army is down to 10,000 men. The odds are even getting worse. God is still not happy with that. He says I think we need to thin out the ranks even a little bit more. I think you still have too many men. Here is what I want you to do. I want you to take your men down to the river and I want you to observe them. Tell them to get a drink of water and observe how they do it. If some men go down and scoop some into their hand and lap it up like a dog and others will just get down on their knees and drink it up with their face in the water. He says observe that and then split them into two. What he found when he did that he says 300 men ended up lapping like a dog while the rest of them basically got down on their knees and their face in the water. So he says okay I am going to take the 300 men that lapped like a dog. It goes on to say “The Lord said to Gideon, ‘With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the others go each to his own place.’” Now he is down to 300 men. 300 men against 135,000 men. Do the math and it is about 450:1. I guarantee that if he wasn’t shaking in his boots, Gideon is shaking in his boots right now. 450:1. Could you imagine that?
Maybe Gideon is getting a little bit nervous about asking for signs and God picks up on that. Instead of waiting for Gideon to ask for a sign, he says I am going to give you a sign. I can tell you are afraid so what I want you to do is sneak into the camp of the Midianites while it is dark and just hang out and see if you can pick up on any conversations. So that is what he does. He brings a friend and they go into the camp. They listen to a conversation between these two men and one man is sharing a dream that he had. In the dream he says that a round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianites’ camp. It struck the tent with such a force that the tent overturned and collapsed. The other guy basically says this can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon. God is about to give the Midianites into the hands of Gideon. You would say how did he get that out of his dream? If you unpack it a little bit, you could see how he could get that because we have this idea of a round loaf of barley bread. The idea of barley bread back in that time was actually considered the poor man’s bread. The poor man in this situation was the Israel people. They were hiding and starving because of the Midianites. The barley bread is symbolic of the Israel people. The idea of the camp and it struck the tent with such a force, the tent represents the people who live in tents, which are the nomads, which are the people that go around on camels, which are basically the Midianites. So he sees this dream and the other guy says this just means that the Israelites are going to attack and destroy us. Gideon is sitting here listening and hearing all this stuff. He leaves and is excited. He can’t get over it. He goes back and wakes all his men up and says let’s go. The Lord is going to give the Midianites into our hands. So he takes the 300 men and he breaks them into three companies of 100. Then instead of giving them swords, he gives them a little torch or a candle of some kind, some jars to cover the torches to keep them smoldering until they are ready to be used, and then gives each man a trumpet. He goes on to say now follow my lead. I am about to go into the camp. They go into the camp in the middle of the night at a very vulnerable time when the camp is changing guard. They go into the camp and what happens is that Gideon blows on his trumpet and then he smashes the jar and exposes the light. The 300 men there begin to do the same thing. It goes on to say “The three companies blew the trumpets and smashed the jars. Grasping the torches in their left hands and holding in their right hands the trumpets they were to blow, they shouted, ‘A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!’” This just created chaos. Chaos in the camp. In ancient warfare when somebody would attack somebody, they may have a few trumpets, a few candles or torches, but there were 300 torches, trumpets, breaking jars, surrounding the whole camp. When the Midianites saw this, they panicked. They freaked out. They didn’t know what to do so they pulled their swords out and began to hack at each other. They began to kill each other. It was just pure chaos. Then they began to get on their camels and began to get their stuff and they tried to run into the desert. Here is Gideon pursuing them into the desert. As he pursues them with these 300 men, he is gathering all these other tribes because they are seeing Gideon is doing it. Let’s go after them. He has all the tribes going after these 135,000 Midianites. They corner them right at the Jordan River. At that point, I think they slaughtered 125,000 men. By the time they were done, they slaughtered 125,000 of the 135,000 men. It was an amazing victory. Again a victory where the odds were 450:1, which again would demonstrate that they couldn’t have done it without the power of God being behind them. If we get a little bit into chapter 8, we begin to see that “Thus Midian was subdued before the Israelites and did not raise its head again. During Gideon’s lifetime, the land enjoyed peace for 40 years.” That is the end of the story about Gideon.
Hopefully, as we went through it, you got a few lessons from it. In case you didn’t, as always I have a few applications that came to me this morning. The idea, first of all, is that God can use anybody. He is not after the strong ones. He really likes to use the weak ones. The people that think they are nobody. The people that don’t have the education. The people that don’t have the health. The people that don’t have the looks. The people that don’t have the mental capacity. The people that come from dysfunctional homes. Whatever it is. God uses the weak to shame the strong. If you think you are too weak to be used then that means you are ready to be used. Just be prepared. God sees the things that are not as though they are. Just as the angel saw Gideon as a mighty warrior, God sees each one of us as a mighty warrior. No matter what people have said about us, no matter how much we have been put down in life, God sees each believer as a mighty warrior that is fully equipped to go in and face the battles out in the world.
The second lesson is that before we can go out into the world to begin to take battle and to begin to deal with some of these problems out in the world, we have to sometimes go to our own house. This is where it hits home a little bit. We have to go to our own house and begin to look for things that maybe are idols. Maybe things that have gotten ahold of us. It could be something like we are spending too much time on the internet. Maybe we are spending too much time on pornography. Maybe we are spending too much time just watching soaps or whatever. Maybe we have some addictive behavior. Maybe we are drinking too much or smoking too much or just wasting time. Just squandering our time. Maybe it isn’t just a house issue but really is a heart issue. Maybe we are dealing with some fears. Maybe we are dealing with some prejudices. Maybe we are dealing with some attitudes towards others. Some unforgiveness. God is saying I can use you on the battlefield but first you have to go home and clean up your house. That is the second lesson.
The third lesson is really my favorite one because I read the story of Gideon and it really gives me peace and comfort because you see Gideon as a guy who just waffles back and forth in his faith. One minute he is fearful, the next minute he is faithful. One minute he is hiding in the winepress, the next minute he is on the battlefield. Back and forth. What I discovered in this is what it is saying is God is going to give you the faith you need when you need it. I think when we hit a situation, some sort of crisis in life, we can easily go down these long trails what is going to have 5, 10, 20 years from now. God is saying don’t worry about that stuff. I have given you enough faith to deal with the stuff you need to deal with right now. He had to first just get out the winepress and begin to take that initial step and go out there in faith towards the battlefield. He didn’t have to go all the way into the battlefield yet. As we are encountering any sort of dire situations in life, whether it is our health, finances, or whatever, we have to understand that God gives us the faith that we need when we need it. We just have to look on a day-by-day basis and say God I just need enough faith today to make that phone call or take that walk or go to that doctor. I just need that faith today. God says okay. I will give you that. Then you get that faith and he says now you are prepared to go to the next step. Then he keeps taking you farther down the road. Before you know it, you have phenomenal faith and you begin to deal with stuff that you thought you could never deal with because your faith has been developed. That third lesson is that God will give you the faith you need when you need it.
Finally, it is just the idea that Gideon thought he was abandoned by God. A situation so bad God can’t be anywhere. The story is a reminder that no matter how bad the situation, no matter how bad things get in the world, God is with us. God will not abandon us. The passage in Romans talks about the idea that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is found in Christ Jesus. So if you are in Christ Jesus that means nothing can separate you from the love of God, which means bottom line you have nothing fear. Do you get that? That is really a lesson that comes out of this story.
As we go into the time of prayer, I would ask any of you, if you are dealing with any of these issues, if anything struck a nerve or struck a chord, I would ask that you come up and consider having some prayer time. If you come forward and kneel down here, I can guarantee that somebody will pray for you. There are people here that I know are struggling with insecurities. Thinking God can never use me. I have this horrible past. I don’t have the education. I don’t have the looks. Come forward and allow somebody to speak words of truth into your life that counter those lies that the enemy is trying to do to you. Some of you know you that you have a situation you have to deal with at home or possibly in your heart. Maybe you have a situation where you have friends or family at home that maybe need to clean up their act and maybe you have to take a stand and be the one to challenge them on it. Or maybe you have to deal with something in your heart. Maybe you have this black hole in your heart that you haven’t dealt with, some sin, some prejudice, some outright anger, some unforgiveness. I would say come forward and ask God to take that away. Allow somebody to come in and speak truth in your life. Then there are people out there that I know are facing major decisions. What happens is they are going down these trails of death and destruction before they even need to go there. I would say for you just remember that God is going to give you the faith when you need it. He may not give you a ton of faith to walk into the big battle into the camp of the Midianites right now, but he may give you the faith again to leave the winepress because that is all you need right now. Again, I would say during this time of prayer, as Debbie begins to play the piano, consider coming forward and begin to allow somebody to come and pray and speak truth into your life. Finally, I know there are people out there that feel like they have been abandoned by God. The situation is just so bad, so dire that where is God in this situation? For those people, just a reminder, God will never leave you. God will never forsake you. Nothing can separate you from the love of God through Christ Jesus. If you are in Christ Jesus, you have that love in you. You are secure no matter what the circumstances. I pray that, again if any of those things touch a nerve, you would come and consider allowing somebody the opportunity to pray over you to show that they care. Let us pray.
