If you ever been in a position of least power, then you know what I’m talking about today. When you have no power, no authority, and no ability to change and do something to retaliate or defend yourself from the people oppressing you (aka your boss, your parents, your older siblings, your spouse) then you have one choice — make yourself a den in the mountains and caves somewhere in your apartment and hide out until the oppressors pass. All joking aside, when we are in the position least strength, politically, economically or physically, we tend not to have the self confidence to stand and fight. We would rather choose flight and save ourselves the trouble for another day. It is the path of least resistance and ensured survival. Now, what if I told you that to do so is sinful and an ignorant farce to what we claim to believe? How would that change your actions? Would it change your actions at all? And [Gideon] said to him, Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house. And the Lord said to him, But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man. – Judges 6:15-16 Let’s track back to what’s going on here in this story. Gideon, a future warrior-leader of Israel was only able to see the weakest traits he possessed. To say it simply, Gideon only understood himself through his weakest characteristics. I mean, I guess it happens when you’re living in caves and in holes in the ground. But what is really going on here? Is it simply just ill-gotten fear and cowardice? Absolutely not. The thing that is going on is that Gideon’s enemies strengths were being highlighted through their continual victories and they were rubbing, in the faces of the Israelites, the weaknesses that make them the conquered. Gideon started believing that the apparent weakest could not strike and any type of strike would lead to destruction and failure. You know as well as I do, that we frequently compare our weakest traits with our opponent’s strongest. If we are not facing a real opponent but an immovable obstacle, then we take our weakest traits and scrutinize the obstacle’s most difficult points and analyze the skills needed to overcome. At the end of the day, we come to the same conclusion as Gideon– we lose no matter what we do, so why bother to do anything at all? However, the angel of God has a different view of the situation. He flips the comparison. He sees our greatest strength, which is nothing short of the miraculous power of God unfolding in our lives, and contrasts that to the opposition’s reality– it’s only a finite man. Where does that leave Gideon? It led him to take a band of 300 hundred to face a mighty hoard of Midianites and win. It was the weakest strike that flipped the impossible situation into a very possible situation. It was the weaknesses of Gideon which made trusting in God an imperative. Here’s what we have to walk away with today: our weakest strike is exactly what God uses to be with us in our circumstances, situations and problems. Don’t hide and run away from obstacles and people because of what you perceive as weakness. Rather face it knowing that our weakest strike is the faith God wants from us.
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