Judges 17:7 - 13

The lesson of Jonathan's life is the necessity of Godly contentment with God's arrangements for our lives. 

Judges 16:23 - 28

There is scarcely an individual without a serious blemish. But God is in the business of restoring failures. The spiritually successful Christian is not the person who never fails, but the believer who learns how to accept God's remedy for failure. No matter how far we fall, we never fall beyond the possibility of His forgiveness. But we need to learn from what we have done wrong and lay hold of the forgiveness of God. If we wallow in guilt, turn to self-pity or make excuses, we will be overwhelmed by our failure.

Sometimes, God must strip away everything that keeps us from trusting in Him. It may be a very painful process, but His purpose is not to destroy us; it is to build us up and teach us to trust in Him. God's discipline, designed to produce maturity and restore us to usefulness, is never isolated from His restoration.   

Judges 16:15 - 22

Even in the midst of the worst kind of failure, God is present, working to restore Samson.

You have fallen to temptation and you would be ashamed if anyone knew about it. There is a bumper sticker that puts it beautifully - Christians aren't perfect, they're forgiven. The hair can grow again. God can use you again - even in your failure, He will not abandon you. When you fail, come to God, claim His forgiveness, and He will work His healing grace in your life.  

Judges 11:4 - 11

Similarly, we do not need to create opportunities for service on our own; it is God's job to open doors.

Our responsibility is to be fully involved and invested in the place where we find ourselves, doing the will of God wherever He has placed us and learning the lessons He is teaching us. 

Willing to allow God to open doors in his life and to be faithful wherever he was at the time. 

Live enthusiastically for God in the present, and He will concern Himself with your future. 

Judges 7:8 - 22

When God calls us to do battle for Him, He always goes before us. In God's grace, we are destined for victory in Jesus. 

We enter into that victory when we learn the lessons of preparation for victory. God does not call us to believe in ourselves or in our own adequacy. Rather, He strips us bare, taking us down to the point where we must depend on Him. Then, in grace, He takes us by the hand and teaches us that we can trust completely in Him. We need to learn the lesson of dependence so that we may move on to learn the lesson of confidence. We learn that we can do nothing without Him. Then we delight to discover that we can rely completely upon Him. Having learned these great lessons, we are prepared for victory.

There is a great lesson here - it is not our responsibility to understand how God is going to keep His word or accomplish His work; our responsibility is to know what He calls us to do and to do it.  

Judges 7:1-8

This is a fundamental spiritual principle. God is not interested simply in giving us victory and prosperity, He is concerned with teaching us trust. In fact, if our victories make us self-reliant, they will become more dangerous. 

If we want to take credit for what God is doing, God will not use us. This is why we see God working in a powerful way in the lives of weak and inadequate people. Our greatest need is not to believe that we can do it, but that our God can. 

God promises His presence and power, but if our fear persist, He will not force us to fight. In fact, He removes us because fear is contagious. It focuses on the problem, not on God.  

God is not looking for great Christians, but for fervent, wholehearted believers who want their lives to count for Him.  

Judges 6:27-32

Faith is not obeying without fear, it is obeying despite fear. 

Trust is not demonstrated by fearlessness but by obedience. Often, God's call in our lives can stretch us to the breaking point, and we find ourselves full of fear and uncertainty. Still, God calls us to obey, and we discover that when we focus on obedience, He deals with our fears. If you sometimes feel fearful and weak as you obey God, you are in good company. 

Judges 6:11-16

Other people see our flaws and failings, but God sees our possibilities through His transforming presence. When God looks at us, He does not see us for what we are, but for what we can become through His work in our lives. He takes weak, insignificant people and transforms them by His presence. He knows our weaknesses, failures, discouragements, doubts and inadequacies and comes to us with the promises of His power that will transform our inadequacy into His strength.   

When Gideon expresses his concern - the Lord responds: Go in the strength you have. This God given strength accompanies both God's command and His promise. God is calling Gideon to go forward on the basis of the strength that He always supplies for His commission. If we look to our own strength, we will always end up in defeat, or perhaps worse, in self-deceiving arrogance. God's answer is not positive thinking, but the promise of His presence, provision and power. When the Lord commission us, He promises to be with us always. 

Gideon is also filled with a deep sense of personal inadequacy and insignificance. How can I do that? he asks. The job's too big for me. I have no qualifications and I do not have any support. This is exactly where God begins with a person. Time and time again, we see the Lord cutting away a person's self-confidence to bring him to the place where he admits that he is totally inadequate to do or to be what God desires. Then, He confronts the person with the truth of His total adequacy: I will be with you.

Inadequate in ourselves, we are overwhelmingly adequate through our God.

God has committed Himself to be with you and to pour His strength into the places of your weakness.