You Don't Have to Have It All Together to Be Mightily Used by God

Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed and inadequate to shoulder any or all of these responsibilities:

• Standing firm in the midst of increasing cultural pressure and hostility toward Christ and His followers,
• Training up our children in the ways of the Lord in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and
• Knowing how to help others who are struggling and suffering with fatal diseases, failing marriages, and horrific persecution?

Do you, too, feel like you’re confronting a tornado with a twig?Do you distract yourself with activities that give you an illusion of security or dissolve in despair, crying, “Lord, what’s happening? Where are you?”Meet Gideon. That’s exactly what he’s doing in Judges chapter six as the Midianites prepare to storm the Valley of Jezreel like a plague of locusts to devour the Israelites’ crops and livestock for the eighth year in a row.The least from the weakest clan in Manasseh, Gideon is threshing “wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites” (verse 11). Do you find yourself doing the same thing in an attempt to protect yourself, your family, or your possessions from looming destruction, feeling fearful, helpless, and totally incapable of defeating your enemy?When an angel of the Lord appears to Gideon, he pleads:

O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, “Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?” But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.

Are you wondering the same thing? Why all the tragedy, and where are all God’s miracles? Has He forsaken us?Hear the angel’s assurance: “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!” (verse 12).Don’t miss the two messages God has for us today:

1. The LORD is with you! The LORD is with me!
2. No matter how we see ourselves, the LORD sees us as we are in Christ: mighty men and women of force, strength, and His inexhaustible wealth. Competent and effective. An army.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).What we deem as true determines what we do. Tweet this! God isn’t looking for people who have it all together. Victims become victors in Christ through faith expressed as obedience. Tweet this! Gideon believed God and did what He said to do. We can too! Will you join me Thursday for the rest of his tale told through “20 Truths for Surviving Life's Storms”?Better yet, receive new blog posts directly to your inbox. Simply click Subscribe below and enter your email below.Lord, give us great faith to believe You are with us, no matter what, and to see ourselves as You do, as men and women of valor able to be mightily used by You as we become more wholly Yours today.