You don’t need that

Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:

What did I like about today’s passage?

We have been looking at how anyone can mix up what people and God do, and I love that God has an elegant solution for this in the battle with the Midianites. “You have too many men!” He peacefully thins out Gideon’s army until they need a miracle to win, and then it’s time for people to see God unquestionably at work.

I also love how God reassures Gideon that this will all go well, directing him to overhear gossip about a prophetic dream – people knew what God was going to do before he did it! So in response, Gideon’s fear gave way to worship and enthusiasm to give every soldier symbolic jars and trumpets instead of weapons. All they really needed, it turns out, was to trust and obey God, and he sorted out the victory he promised.

So you might think this would bring everyone else to recognise God at work and support when they were asked to chip in a few loaves of bread. But these tribes are so mixed up, even when God does something in front of their faces, they can’t see it or don’t value it as much as what they are doing themselves. Even Gideon, who has heard from God, led his missions and pointed people to accept God as ruler instead of himself… even he is so mixed up by his culture’s confusion of God’s values that he thinks making an idol will be fine.

And as for how Gideon raised his seventy sons… I guess big families can be fractious sometimes but Abimelek is a bit extreme! It’s an incredible story, packed with murderous violence, greed and an outstanding bit of pride and misogyny at the end. But what stands out to me is how this family and the people who supported Abimelek, so close to God through his work with Gideon, could be so far from God’s heart’s desires and values.

What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?

God wants to be known among people. Sometimes he will act in extraordinary ways so that we recognise him. He will do this even though he knows that our attention might be on something else very soon afterwards, and even a great story of God at work can get overridden by our own concerns, greed, fear and desires to do things our own way.

What am I going to do differently as a result?

I’m very grateful that we have historical perspective and the guidance of Jesus and the Spirit to be able to tell which way is up in messy stories like this. Nevertheless, I relate to the difficulty in picking out what God wants from what I want, and what he can do with me from what I merely want to do for myself. So I’m going to try to be as much as possible like Gideon in his best moments, asking and listening to God and ready to drop some of the things I think I need when I’m confident that God can be credited and praised for his work.

Who am I going to share this with?

My family, where last week we lost something important and it seemed good (but unusual) to stop searching and start praying about it. When we found it, God got the credit! We will make it more of a habit to seek his guidance rather than work in our own strength.