When I was a boy, one of my favorite Bible stories was the story of Gideon. You can read it for yourself in Judges 6-8. Here’s the summary, though: The Israelites had not been faithful to God, so he sent the Midianites to oppress them. The Midianites destroyed the Israelites’ crops and livestock, and sent them hiding in the hills. The Midianites camped in Israel’s territory and made life generally miserable for the Israelites for seven years. Eventually, though, the Angel of the Lord came to Gideon, the youngest son of the weakest clan in the tribe of Manasseh, to tell him that he’d been chosen to lead Israel against the Midianites and end Israel’s oppression. Gideon was skeptical, but after some back and forth with the Angel, he agreed. If you’re not familiar with this part of the story, it’s worth a read. For our purposes, I’m going to skip ahead a bit.
Gideon managed to raise an army of thirty-two thousand men, and they went and camped near the Midianite encampment. Here’s where the story gets interesting. God said to Gideon, “You have too many men. Tell them that if anyone who is afraid and doesn’t want to fight, they should go home, no hard feelings.” Gideon did this and twenty-two thousand left! OK, so he still has ten thousand soldiers. God said, “Nope, still too many. Take them down to the water to drink. Separate the troops into those who scoop up water in their hands and then lap it up like a dog, and those who kneel down and slurp it straight up from the stream. Keep the lappers, and send the slurpers home.” Gideon was left with three hundred men! Three hundred to go against the entire Midianite army! Why did God do this? He told Gideon that he did not want the Israelites to think that they purged the land of oppressors by their own strength. God wanted it to be clear that it was his might and his power that saved the nation of Israel. Oh, and spoiler alert, Gideon’s three hundred men, by God’s power, did defeat the Midianites.
Why am I telling you this story? When Paul asked God to remove his thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:8, God told him not only that His grace was sufficient to keep Paul going. He also said “…for my power is perfected in weakness.” Any time I face a problem or obstacle my first instinct is to try to solve it myself, using my own resources. And God will let us do this – he doesn’t interfere when we struggle to do things our own way. And let’s be clear, our own struggle includes worrying about things. I am a black belt in worrying about things that may or may not happen. I concoct scenarios in my mind and will spend way too much time analyzing these fictitious possibilities. It steals joy and wastes time. What I really need to do is embrace my weaknesses and allow God’s power to be perfected through them. After all, if I solve my own problems, who gets the glory? I guess I get a little bit, but what good is it? But if I’m facing something that I clearly have no ability overcome, and God comes through, then what? He is glorified first and foremost, the solution is better than what I would have achieved on my own, and it didn’t cost me hours or days of peace – quite the opposite. I am able to rest in his peace which passes understanding.
I was fretting over my own situation with cancer recently, again worrying about all kinds of negative possibilities. I was talking to the lovely Catherine, my wife of noble character, about it. She wisely asked me, “What is true, though?” I started to make a list of the things I know to be true: Jesus is always with me. My Father loves me more than I can know. God is good even when I can’t see it. The Holy Spirit is as near as my next breath. I’ve turned this into an ongoing mental exercise. Whenever I hear the enemy telling me lies I stop and ask myself, “What is true, though?” This allows me to come back to trust, to stop worrying about how I am going to fix things or what might happen. Then God’s strength is perfected in my weakness.
Thanks Scott for the challenge of asking, ‘What is true?’.