so is his strength

I'm currently reading in Judges in my quest to read through the Bible chronologically this year. I really am pondering chapter 8 right now. I feel a message looming. Until then, here's some scattered thoughts on verses 1-21.

First what grabbed my attention is verse 4, 'exhausted yet keeping up the pursuit'. Gideon's men were run ragged, they were drained, yet they kept up the pursuit. Sometimes the fight isn't over when we're exhausted, ya know? We have to keep up the pursuit and fight through the exhaustion until the battle's over, whatever the 'battle' may be. Ouch, tough stuff.

Bobbie Houston talks about asking God to increase our capacity. Very challenging message. Usually we don't want our capacity increased. We want God to take away the tasks we DO have and make life easy.

The other part of this chapter that really struck me is in verses 20-21. Gideon's young son wouldn't obey his father's command to kill the princes because he was afraid. This is the phrase that he was taunted with "As is the man, so is his strength." Gideon then kills the men himself.

This young boy obviously had some kind of strength because he was in battle with his dad. But when it came time to actually draw his sword on these men - he froze. Wow, much to glean from that.

The question that came to me was, "What kind of [wo]man are you?", thus what kind of strength do you have? I hope, nay, I pray I'm the kind of woman that has strength to endure to the end. To go down fighting. To not lose heart and not accomplish all, and I mean everything that is laid out in God's plans for me to do.

And so I build my strength, by His Word and by spending time laying in the arms of My First Beloved. Yes, both of those things - not just Word, not just encountering His Spirit. But that is an entirely different post.