Courage Is Often Just Obedience with Weak Knees

After Gideon tears down his father's idols and finally stops testing God with a fleece, he faces the hardest test of all: staying devoted to God when things get tight.

And the LORD said to Gideon, "The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'" (Judges 7:2)

Anyone who's afraid can go home, and 22,000 leave. Ten thousand remain. Then God gets out the pruning shears again. "The people are still too many." At the water, the ones who lap with their hand to their mouth are separated out: three hundred men.

Then the LORD said to Gideon, "By the three hundred men who lapped I will save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand." (Judges 7:7)

That's not faith, that's economics

Some of us won't obey God until the numbers look profitable, until it looks like we'll get away with it, until there's enough money in the bank to do the job. That's not faith. That's economics.

God is trimming this army, and we're saying, "God, You're going the wrong direction! It looks like You're hurting us." God says, "I'm increasing your faith, because I'm going to make a bigger miracle out of this. I'm going to do with 300 men what 30,000 can't do."

When I was a kid, we had shoes called KangaROOS with a little zipper on the side. You could put a dime in there. We didn't have cell phones or GPS trackers. My mama didn't know where I was half the time, but I had a dime in my shoe, and if I got in trouble I could go to a thing called a pay phone, boys and girls, and call home like E.T.

What little dime are we carrying around? God prunes away the strong men and all the advantages, and we find ourselves broke, with no dime in the shoe and no pay phones left. What am I going to do if the money runs out? If the doctor calls and says the test came back? What am I going to do with a God who says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you"?

I love that Gideon didn't quit. I might have been in the two-thirds who went home. If there's a redemptive part to Gideon's story, it's that he stayed when everybody else left.

Fear is crushed

Gideon had built a whole system of life around fear. And God came into the winepress and crushed it. "You mighty man of valor." "You've got the wrong guy. My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my father's house." God said, "Go in this might of yours." God didn't give him swagger, and God didn't give him a plan. God gave him a command, and he stepped out in simple obedience.

Feelings are conquered

Gideon is still afraid when he goes to the camp, so afraid that God lets him overhear the Midianites in their tents. He goes to battle afraid. Faith is not the absence of fear. It's the presence of obedience. I think of Don Knotts looking for his bullet. Gideon still shakes and still has questions, but he no longer acts according to his fear.

The people around you don't need to see you put on a brave face. They don't need fancy Christian phrases. They need to see you move after God speaks. Courage in this book is often just obedience with weak knees.

The Father gets the credit

The battle cry was "The sword of the LORD and of Gideon!" God gets the credit, because He pruned 32,000 down to 300. Stay after the movie for the ending credits and you'll see Gideon's name, but it wasn't a big part. It's almost like God dragged him into the story.

I don't know what your Midianites are today, but you probably do. Let's go conquer that this week.