#Nofilter - Gideon

EXTRAORDINARY
• Employee     • Son
• Boss              • Daughter
• Husband       • Friend
• Wife               • Person

What would an extraordinary person do?
God created Israel to be extraordinary, and they started looking around and acting ordinary.

Disobedience à Disaster à Deliverance

Gideon

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.
Judges 6:1–4, 6

The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. [He’s in a hole or a shelter.] When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family.”

The Lord answered, “Oh, then never mind. I must be at the wrong house.

The Lord answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
Judges 6:11–16

“Will you be with me?”

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…
Romans 8:31–32

The value of a thing is the price it will bring.

It’s dangerous to think more highly of yourself than you ought.
It’s equally as dangerous to think less of yourself than God does.
~ Steven Furtick ~

What would we do if we were confident God was with us? In us? For us?