Devotionals

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FACE TO FAITH

(Judges 6:11-23)


I get a little nervous sometimes when people start asking for signs from God. But in reading about Gideon’s first face-to-faith encounter, a thought came to me. Gideon was being asked to stretch....to step outside his comfort zone and do something that didn’t look anything like the Gideon he knew. Not just a little stretch, but an enormous out-of-character leap.

I can understand wanting to make certain it was, indeed, God’s voice speaking. How many times have I failed to act on something I’m sensing, a phantom directive? Why? Because I take it out and analyze it, look at it from every conceivable angle, then ....... leave it lying there, because I decide it’s just some fabrication of my mind. It simply doesn’t make sense in the context of my reality.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve said to someone, I’d just like to wake up in the morning and discover a note under my pillow written just to me. A note in God’s handwriting clearly delineating what He wants me to do this day. And if I’m completely honest, I would also want a heads-up on every little unexpected twist or turn that path is going to take, cause after all, I don’t want to get it wrong. And more truthful still, I don’t like surprises. I want to be assured of the happy ending prior to taking that first shaky step.

Well, Gideon got better than a note. He got a direct interface with His maker. And it wasn’t because of a heart looking for something for himself. Gideon’s heart looked for confirmation by immediately serving God an offering prepared by his own hands. I can’t help but wonder if the ephah of flour came from the grain Gideon was threshing, from the brokenness being endured, when the Lord first appeared. Can you picture it? God, quietly waiting under the tree, a smile spreading across His face and pure joyful pleasure radiating from His eyes as he beheld Gideon, preparing, then serving, an offering not from his bounty, but from the meagerness of his storehouse. And it was not an offering poured out publicly before others, but an intimate private offering between Gideon and God. No audience. Just the two of them!

And as God reached out to accept it, I just know it was the power of His love that flowed down the length of His staff and licked up every morsel with the fire of His blessing.

Understandably it left Gideon awestruck. Not the confirmation, but the dawning awareness that God had sought him out, had promised His presence, and had accepted Gideon’s ultimate offering of himself.

And at the moment that perception nearly undid Gideon, the voice floated once more to his heart, renewing its message of love. Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die.

Indeed, the Lord had come, had visited a heart, not with a message of death, but a message of life.

The-LORD-Is-Peace still speaks, still meets the Gideon within me. And the message? The message remains one of peace, of hope, of promise. A message from God’s heart of His enduring presence. And the sacrifice of all I have to offer Him, of my very self? Well, He still sits beneath the tree, that promise of what awaited him, watching me, patiently waiting, eyes alight with the burning warmth of His pleasure. And as the LORD reaches out to accept it, I just know it is the power of His love flowing down the length of His staff consuming every morsel with the fire of His blessing.



©31 March 2005
DeAnna L. Brooks

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