Fighting Weight!!
Judges 7:4 But the Lord told Gideon, “There are still too many! Bring them down to the spring, and I will test them to determine who will go with you and who will not.” 5 When Gideon took his warriors down to the water, the Lord told him, “Divide the men into two groups. In one group put all those who cup water in their hands and lap it up with their tongues like dogs. In the other group put all those who kneel down and drink with their mouths in the stream.” 6 Only 300 of the men drank from their hands. All the others got down on their knees and drank with their mouths in the stream. 7 The Lord told Gideon, “With these 300 men I will rescue you and give you victory over the Midianites. Send all the others home.” 8 So Gideon collected the provisions and rams’ horns of the other warriors and sent them home. But he kept the 300 men with him.
God delivered the Midianites into Gideons hands and the victory was the Lord's. God thinned out the army of Gideon from 22,000 to 10,000 and then to 300 so everyone would know that the God of the Israelites defeated the Midianites. All praise to God and God alone!!! There are some very important things to point out. First of all, God called Gideon in Judges 6. Then God instructed Gideon in the above verses. Then God went before Gideon and implemented his way of victory. Then Gideon's army of 300 basically scared and confused the Midianites into killing themselves.
What if we trusted God in that same way? Would we experience that type of victory over the evils of this world? I believe so, but we must have faith in God and not ourselves. Hebrews 11:6 And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him. So if we want to please God faith must be the main ingredient in everything we say and do. Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” Here we see two times the word impossible is used when talking about faith. In the Hebrews scripture we see it is impossible to please God without faith and that impossible is tied totally to faith. In the Matthew scripture we see that nothing is impossible if we have faith the size of a mustard seed. The purity of that faith is powerful and effective and James writes in James 5:16 The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
We many times think bigger is better, but in the area of praying in faith, a pure prayer of faith is better than many big prayers for something. Perhaps God is wanting all of us to get back to basics. Basics where we totallly trust God to handle all our situations in life and that leads us more towards His will for our lives. Many times we see where someone "cries out to God" and God answers. That cry is usually the result of a person realizing they cannot handle the situation on their own and they are bankrupt of ideas for fixing it. We get to that position by not following God's Word and not consulting Him first. I think maybe we might be scared God will ask us to do something we don't want to do, like thinning our army from 20,000 to 300 to fight a battle in our life. Getting back to our "Fighting Weight" is tough, but perhaps necessary because the diet of not following the ways of this world will get us back into fighting shape, but that diet can be rough at times. We like the sweet offerings of this world, but we are not of this world and we should not let it hook us like a hungry small mouth bass on a summer's day. James wrote 4:7 So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. That humble heart is saying "God I can't do this. I need you to fight my battle for me and I surrender to Your will and way!" Everything changes when we pray that prayer and we see God move in ways only He can do.
Let Him get you back to your "Fighting Weight" and let Him fight your battles for you and you will find out God is very creative in how He fights those battles. Just like Gideon defeating thousands of Midianites with 300 men.
The Pilgrimage continues.....
David Warren