The God Who is With Us II

From The Great God of Gideon series. 

It might be helpful to read Judges 6:1-16 before you go on.

Gideon has just protested God’s call to “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand….”( Judges 6:14 NIV)

Gideon has brought up 2 things he sees as disqualifiers.  (Which we discussed last week.)

• Weakness.  
  
• Least-ness.
  

How does God answer Him?  
                                         The Lord says:  “I will be with you…”

This is the second time God being “with us” has come up in this fairly short passage (Judges 6:11-16).  When God repeats himself, I take notice!

What does it matter that God is “with us?”

If my mom “sends” me to the store, it is because she is not going and needs me to go without her.  The nature of human “sending” is that someone goes and someone stays.

Not so with God.  God does not send us into a tough situation while He sits back in some safe, quiet, peaceful place – leaving us to work it out on our own. 

I think I so often act like the student who, after receiving the assignment, goes off to work it out on her own and later comes back to the teacher presenting the finished assignment and hoping to get the “A.”  That is not how our spiritual lives work.  God doesn’t send us off on our own to do our work.  He is with us, working out the details: equipping, empowering, guiding, and comforting.

When God sends us, He goes with us.

“The Lord answered [Gideon], ‘I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.’”  (Judges 6:16 NIV)

So, friends, what difference can it make today as we step out to obey God, if we know that what He calls us to do He empowers us to do (see last week) and He comes along as we do it?

 How can we become more aware of God’s presence, God with us, as we go through our days?

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