Have you ever encountered a bully? When I was growing up, I sure did, and it was not a fun encounter. They’re strong and big and when you see them coming at you, it looms ominously in your soul. Their goal is to create fear in you so that they can oppress you to take advantage of you.
One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is the account of a man named Gideon. Here, the Midianites were bullies who were abusing the nation of Israel. In their fear, the Israelites left their homes to hide in caves while the Midianites took over their homes. This is much like the bully in our modern-day who takes lunch money away from a little kid.
It’s in this context where we find Gideon. He’s threshing the little bit of his wheat harvest that he’s been able to hide from the Midianites. The interesting thing is that he’s threshing his wheat down in the valley where the wine press is. When you thresh wheat, you grab it with a pitchfork and throw it in the air. The wind blows away the chaff allowing the pure grain to fall to the ground so you can collect it to make your bread. You need to be on top of a hill when you thresh your wheat as there will be more wind.
They would put wine presses down in the valley so they could carry grapes downhill rather than up. Since there wouldn’t have been very much wind in the valley, Gideon’s act of throwing the chaff and grain in the air and letting them fall to the ground was futile. Gideon was exercising a lesson in futility as a result of his fear of a bully.
God intervened with an angelic messenger who said, “Hail, valiant warrior.” I’ve met a lot of people who think that it was sarcasm on the part of that angel but those people don’t understand the heart of God. God is not sarcastic with His kids. It was a message from the Father for Gideon to set his mind on who he really was because he knew God.
The angel was reminding Gideon of his true identity, “Hail, valiant warrior."
I can almost see Gideon looking around asking, “Who are you talking to?” And then the angel worked with him, bringing him from a level of his own strength while whittling away his resources, to begin to rely on God’s strength.
When he relied on God’s strength instead of his own, he won a mighty victory as the valiant warrior of God.
We will function as mighty warriors, not when we rely on our own resources, but only when we rely on His.
Take your eyes off of yourself and place them on Him, who wants to be all that He is, to whatever you need in the moment of faith.
