What stuck out to me in these verses were - God said to Gideon and Gideon listened. (vs 2, 4, 5 & 7)
Earlier in the story, the Israelites were crushed by nomadic raiders called the Midianites. So God calls on Gideon to set up an army. Which he did, but it was too large and God said he just couldn't turn Midian over to them, the army would say they did it themselves and and forget about him. God told Gideon to cut the army down and Gideon did - twice - because God wanted to be sure that Israel would know that the victory was his (God's) power, not theirs. (NIV)
When I read in verse two (Msg) where it says 'I did it all myself', I immediately thought about Jacob and Natalee. They are notorious for saying that. Right now, they both are working on a very big project called potty training. Despite accidents every so often, they are doing really well. In fact so well, they want to go into the bathroom and do their business by themselves and usually when one has to go, the other does too and that's ok except Jacob and Natalee have anatomy differences.
Bec has to intervene because as much as they say 'I do it myself', there are some things they don't understand. Going potty doesn't always go well when they copy each other by sitting or standing and it's imperative they listen to Bec's wisdom for a less messy success.
It's also absolutely necessary for us to listen to God and as much as we want to say 'I do it myself', the bottom line is, we can't. We certainly don't know or understand everything and things don't always go well when we try to accomplish things on our own. We need God's wisdom and his guiding hand for less messy success'.
In the end, when something does go well, when we have a victory in life, when we have success, remember it was God's hand and thank him for intervening. Don't ever forget him even when he asks to much of us.
Nancy
