September 17 – God’s Unexpected Wisdom (Judges 7)

“You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands.”(Judges 7:2)

IN WORD:
Gideon was only doing what God had called him to do: He was leading a revolt against the oppressive Midianites. And in the moment of decision, God pulled the rug out from under the deliverer. He told Gideon that he had too many soldiers. Victory itself wasn’t the goal; God’s victory was.
We can be entirely on God’s side and still be in conflict with Him. Have you noticed the irony of our efforts? All throughout the Bible, faithful human beings who have given themselves to God are striving to be strong for Him. Meanwhile, God offers us weakness, desiring to be strong in us. We both want strength. We want ours to glorify Him; He wants His to glorify Himself. We who live for His glory better get used to a strange dynamic: It’s our insufficiency that brings Him praise.
Our efforts on His behalf seem so godly. They have pure motives, an element of faith, His agenda in mind, and an abundance of human wisdom behind them. There’s nothing wrong with the pure motives, the faith, or the agenda. It’s the human wisdom that trips us up. God wants us to be used for His purposes even more than we do, but His means are radically different. For His glory to be demonstrated, human glory has to be minimized. We can’t earn honor and then give it to God. We can only submit to Him and let Him display His honor. In this vision-impaired world, we have to be visibly low for God to be visibly high.

IN DEED:
The counter-intuitive wisdom of God is only learned through many years and painful experiences. We don’t like our weakness and we want God to make us strong. But, as Paul reminds us centuries after Gideon, we are to be strong “in His mighty power” (Ephesians 6:10).
If God does not take the lead in our lives and win our victories on His own terms, there’s a muddled picture of glory. Is it His or ours? Understand His purposes. Let your vulnerability be the occasion for His power.

“It will do us good to be very empty, very weak, very distrustful of self, and so to go about our Master’s work.”
-Charles Spurgeon-