{"id":6158,"date":"2015-08-14T13:22:22","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T13:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=6158"},"modified":"2015-08-14T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T13:22:22","slug":"judges-612-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/6158\/judges-612-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Judges 6:12\u201314"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey Brother John,<\/span><\/p>\n

I was reading the story of Gideon in Judges.\u00a0 I have a question.<\/span><\/p>\n

Judges 6:12-14\u00a0\u00a0And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.\u00a0 And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?\u00a0 and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.\u00a0 And the Lord looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites,\u00a0 Have not I sent thee?\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My question:\u00a0 When the Lord said “Go in this thy might,” what exactly was the word “this” referring to?\u00a0 Was it his faith that the Lord was in control of every aspect of his life?<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Billy H.<\/span><\/p>\n

===========<\/span><\/p>\n

Hi Billy,<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This portion of scripture from Judges provides us with an interesting scene, and it is one that we can take much from if God opens our eyes.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Did you notice where Gideon was when this angel came to him?\u00a0 He was hiding from the Midianites behind a winepress as he threshed out a little wheat to make himself some bread.\u00a0 There he was, so afraid of what the Midianites would do to him that he didn\u2019t even want to be seen threshing wheat and an angel suddenly appears and calls him a \u201cmighty man of valor\u201d.\u00a0 We know from that, that God was speaking to the Gideon that He saw, not to the Gideon that anyone else knew \u2013 including Gideon himself\u00a0!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

God was about to bring out the Gideon that He alone could see, and then use\u00a0that<\/strong>\u00a0Gideon to deliver Israel.\u00a0 The \u201cmight\u201d that was in Gideon\u2019s heart was his faith in the God that he had heard about, the God that had been testified about by his ancestors.\u00a0 Gideon believed in\u00a0that<\/strong> God, and he loved\u00a0that<\/strong>\u00a0God, but where was He?\u00a0 Gideon wanted to know Him, but where was He?\u00a0 That was Gideon\u2019s question.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Gideon believed in that God, and that genuine faith was the \u201cmight\u201d that made Gideon a \u201cmighty man of valor\u201d, and man whom God would use to save His people.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

How does God see us?\u00a0 We may be in hiding, like Gideon, and oppressed, as Gideon and Israel were, but what does God see?\u00a0 If God sees faith in His Son, and love for the truth, he will use us to bless His people.\u00a0 And like Gideon, it doesn\u2019t matter to God whether we can see ourselves doing that; it only matters what he sees.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for the question, Billy.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Pastor John<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey Brother John, I was reading the story of Gideon in Judges.\u00a0 I have a question. Judges 6:12-14\u00a0\u00a0And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.\u00a0 And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}