WHEN WE NEED JESUS HE IS ALWAYS THERE
Psalms 44:3 It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.
Some of our greatest victories in life come when we are at our weakest. The reason the victory seems so much greater is that we realize that if it hadn’t been for the Lord helping us we wouldn’t have had a chance in being victorious.
Gideon was a man that said he came from the least of all the tribes in Israel, and his clan was the least of that tribe. And if this wasn’t enough he was the least in his clan. You really can’t get much worse than that in regards to having much self-esteem. In reality Gideon may or may not have been as bad as he thought, but what mattered was that this is how he saw himself. It is surprising but many Christians have low self-esteem. I suppose the reason is that most people that have a high self-esteem of themselves don’t feel they need God. They see themselves as being able to take care of themselves, and can handle whatever life throws at them. Sometimes they can and sometimes they can’t. One thing I do know is that they can not overcome their sinfulness, and their need for forgiveness on their own. They like everyone owe a debt that they can not pay. When we are doing good we only are doing what we should have been doing all along. That’s why it took Jesus to pay our debt he didn’t owe for us.
We all have challenges in life, especially men it seems. Part of the curse men have is from what Adam did in his sin eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God told Adam that he would curse the ground and through painful toil he would eat from it. He would have frustration of thorns and thistles, and work by the sweat of his brow. And it seems like women with childbirth, the curse of God on men is still going on too.
When Gideon called on the Lord he was able to do what a large army couldn’t have done. With just a few hundred men, the Lord gave Gideon victory over the Midianites, Amalekites and all the other eastern people that had settled in the valley. When it was all said and done no one couldn’t deny that surely the hand of the Lord had brought about the victory. Now because of Jesus, Christians all over the world, and down through time have been calling on Jesus for help and he has been bringing us victory. If there ever was a time when I needed Jesus’ help was when I was in seminary. In some ways I was like Gideon. I was never a good student and had a problem with dyslexia. I tended to see things backwards. To read and write was a real struggle for me. In graduate school there is a lot of both. After the first semester it looked like I would never make it to the second semester. I had gotten C’s and a D. This may get a person by in high school but not in graduate school. It wasn’t until Beckie and I began to cry out to the Lord for help that everything changed. God even had the seminary start a new Greek course that I could take that enabled me to pass the requirements to graduate.
So many times in my life and I am sure yours too, the Lord has come through when we couldn’t do something on our own. And the thing was that because we couldn’t do it on our own, the victory was even more obviously from Jesus. The Lord was there for King David and he has been and always will be there for us too. Trust in Jesus he will never leave us or forsake us, and that is certainly Good News!
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for always being there for us when we needed you, and Jesus as you know we need you every hour. We love you Jesus!
