When You Have No Might

Judges 6

You stand, breathing in quick, heaving bursts of air as sweat trickles down your neck form the oppressive heat. Wheat harvest used to be such a festive time—hard work, yes, but joyous. And now—you look at the pile of grain and feel the feebleness of your efforts.

Anger wells up as you remember how the Midianites swept through the land each harvest, snatching up all the grain, like locusts swarming through, leaving nothing left to live on. The only way your family would have food to eat was to divide up the harvest, to thresh in secret what little wheat they had hidden or salvaged—to hide by a winepress, where no one would expect threshing to take place.

You stretch your sore muscles and look up at the sky. The anger shifts to a sad sense of betrayal as you remember the stories of God’s mighty miracles in Egypt, His deliverance from so many oppressors over Israel’s history…but where was He now?

Just then, you notice a man sitting under an oak tree nearby. He stands and approaches. You wait, embarrassed to be found threshing such a tiny pile of grain, and even more embarrassed to be found hiding. The man walks right up to you and says,

“The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.”

* * * *

The account of the Lord’s appearing to Gideon at the winepress has always stood out to me. There he was, being secretive for fear of the marauding Midianites, and God greets him as a “mighty man of valour.” If you and I were there, we would probably have responded, with an incredulous, “What?”

But Gideon doesn’t just react to what probably seemed to him like either a joke or a case of unprecedented overstatement. He focuses on the first part of the greeting, and asks,

“if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” (v.13)

He voices his doubts, his frustration, his feeling that God had forsaken His people. He reminds the Lord (Although he likely had no idea who he was talking to) that his people had been delivered into the hand of their enemy.

Instead of answering Gideon’s questions in a point-by-point defense of His perfect justice and mercy, the Lord makes this surprising statement:

“Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent thee?” (v.14)

What might did Gideon have? Here’s his assessment from the next verse:

Oh, my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.

Gideon had no family status, no wealth, no influence or power. At that moment, he was likely exhausted from the work of threshing, which was usually not a one-man job. And he is told to go in his might?

God’s answer gives us a glimpse at what will happen:

“Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.” (v.16)

If you have read the rest of the account in Judges, you know that Gideon is not easily convinced, but that God does indeed use him lead Israel to victory over the Midianites—but it is God whose might wins the day.

When Gideon was told to “Go in this thy might,” he was not being told to go defeat the Midianites with his own strength. He was being told to go as he was, and God would go with him and use His limitless might to win the victory.

What does this all mean for you and me? Well, it is highly unlikely that we will ever be called to take an army of 300 men armed with torches and trumpets to go defeat our enemies. Yet, just like Gideon, you and I have been called to “Go in this thy might.”

But you might be thinking right along with Gideon, What might? If you’re anything like me, you have probably looked at something God calls you to do and been filled with a sense of your own inadequacy for the task. –But that’s often just the point. Think of Paul’s thorn in the flesh:

“For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9)

God’s grace is made perfect, or complete, in us when we have no might of our own. Isaiah 40 tells us,

“Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.” (vv.28-29)

When we have no might, God strengthens us with His inexhaustible power. As Isaiah 26:4 puts it,

“Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength”

Are you feeling inadequate or too feeble for what God has called you to today? Look to Him,

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13)

“Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” 

Isaiah 40:30-31