Judges 6:11-13 - 11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty one of valor.” 13 And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
Gideon’s original claim to fame was that he was the weakest person from the weakest family from the weakest tribe. However, God saw him and said, “that he is the perfect person to put my plan into action.” This weakest of the weak would go on to liberate Israel from their oppressors the Midianites. And by recognizing Gideon’s weakness we can recognize God’s strength.
When we first meet Gideon he’s literally hiding in a hole. An angel of the Lord comes to him and says, “the Lord is with you.” Rather than being comforted or inspired Gideon replies, “Oh yeah then why’s all this bad stuff happening?”
How often is this our attitude? A few things start going wrong and our response is that God has clearly abandoned us. We can list hundreds of times that God has blessed us or come through for us in the past, but trouble comes and we suddenly feel the need to say, “yeah, well what have you done for me lately?”
It is times like this that we need to reprioritize what is most important to us. We need to remind ourselves that the love God has for us will never leave us or forsake us. The hard times will come, unfortunately, that’s almost guaranteed. And when they do, I hope that you can use them to lean into God. I had a professor who used to say, “the way God has provided for you in the past is a pattern and a promise of how he will provide for you in the future.” We just need the patience to see it fulfilled.