Good morning:
All of us need a confidence boost from time to time. It might be a friend encouraging you to take the new job. It’s a nurse assuring you that the doctor caring for you is the one they would choose for themselves. It could be your parents telling you that you’ll do fine in raising your children; or maybe someone offering to go with you, so you won’t feel alone in a group of strangers.
Do you remember Gideon? You can read about him in Judges 6-7. God appeared to him while he was threshing wheat, called him a “mighty warrior,” and commissioned him to save Israel from the enemy who had oppressed them for years. Gideon asked, “But how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judges 6:15). Gideon hardly looked the part of a mighty warrior. He was an unremarkable ordinary farmer faced with a massive enemy force made up of troops “thick as locusts” and camels like “sand on the seashore.” Israel’s army? A mere 32,000 soldiers.
Gideon desperately needed a confidence boost, so what did the Lord do? He didn’t add 100,000 new recruits to the army. Instead, he told Gideon to send home all those who were afraid. 22,000 left, leaving only 10,000 men. God wasn’t finished. He told Gideon there were still too many men, and through a process of elimination brought the number down to just 300. Not only was the army completely insignificant in numbers, they were to go to battle without weapons, equipped with only trumpets and jars with torches inside. A confidence booster? Seemingly, God had turned a completely hopeless situation into an inevitable suicide mission.
Yet it truly was a confidence booster. God wanted to teach Gideon and all Israel that the confidence they needed, which would never let them down, was not in sheer numbers of soldiers and carefully devised plans, but in the Lord and his Word. The end result was that the Lord fought for them and won a decisive victory without the Israelites having to do a thing.
No matter how overwhelming the problem or trial, look to the Lord for the confidence you need. Take his promises to heart. He keeps every one: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12). “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7).“If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:31-32).
Welcome the new day and all it brings with confidence!
In Christ,
Pastor
Our service tomorrow begins at 9 a.m. The Lord’s Supper will be celebrated.
