Judges 6:11-14 Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” Then the LORD turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?”
Biblical Hebrew uses a grammatical form called “s’michut”. This form joins two words together to form a single word form. We have this in English: for example, a door and a knob are two nouns, which are used to form the word “doorknob”, a compound noun. This form of joining nouns is found in Judges 6:12. The expression, “Angel of the Lord” is rendered, “angel-YHVH”; (Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay); in modern English — “angel-Yehovah”. Then, suddenly, the narrative changes from “angel-Yehovah” to simply, “Yehovah”. Here we see another appearance of YHVH in human form in the Old Testament. The God-Man, Yeshua in a “pre-incarnate” appearance.
When Gideon was called to fight the Midianites, he felt inadequate, unequipped and the weakest among his brethren — but the Lord called him “you mighty man of valor”! Isn’t it always interesting how God calls the weak things of this world to confound the natural wisdom of the world [1 Cor 1:18-21]? And sometimes He sees right through their perception of themselves, and calls them “mighty” !
Gideon, in the midst of overwhelming circumstances, felt as many feel today: weak, abandoned by God, wondering, “Where are you LORD?” But when the Lord suddenly shows up to call us to be part of His solution, what will we say? What will we do? Because He knows who we are deep inside, and He knows how to empower the weak to perform His works for His glory.
If you find yourself asking, “Where are you LORD?”, you might want to prepare yourself to be the answer to the problem. Because He might just “show up” and give you an “impossible” commission, then equip you with the strategy for victory. Even you, alone, with the LORD, are an army that no enemy wants to face!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]There is an old Persian fable of a hen, a mouse, and a rabbit who lived together in a little house in the woods. They shared all the work and lived in harmony. The chicken found the firewood, the mouse brought the water from a nearby brook, and the rabbit cooked the meals. Each did his work faithfully and contentedly.
In the most extreme moment of his life, when his entire household was threatened with annihilation, the Patriarch Jacob wrestled with a Man through an entire sleepless night. Somehow, after this astounding encounter, Jacob came to the realization that he had been wrestling with God, and face to face! Once again, the Lord God of heaven showed Himself as a human being to a man He loved; this time, for the purpose of rescuing, blessing, and preserving the man’s destiny.
The second great awakening took place around 1790 until the 1840s. This movement saw ‘circuit riders’, traveling preachers who spread the Gospel to the edges of the frontier, affecting the growing American populace. Camp meetings in rural areas outside the traditional church with the primary focus of soul winning, were like “brushfires” of the Holy Spirit, attracting people for miles.
Tonight begins the Biblical feast of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) throughout the world! Roughly 2500 years ago, there was a special Sukkot celebration in Jerusalem. The people of Israel were exiled and dispersed all across the Babylonian empire. Later, they were given the right to return and start construction on the 2nd temple of Israel. Nehemiah 8 speaks of the special celebration that happened at that time. We read how Ezra taught the people out of the book of the law and how they responded in weeping and repentance before the God of Israel.
As I’ve been writing about the "great awakenings" that took place over the past few days. I believe we could be witnessing such a move of God.
In laymen’s terms, the difference between a ‘revival’ and an ‘awakening’ is simply that moves of God transcend denominations and sects. While various ‘denominations’ have revivals at times, an ‘awakening’ shakes the body of Christ across denominational boundaries in spite of their differences.
In the early 1700s, the western world including the United States, was being swept under the influence of a philosophical and cultural movement known as the Age of Enlightenment, also called the Age of Reason. At this critical time in history, the First Great Awakening was birthed by the Lord in the American colonies of the “New World”. Led by preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield, a spiritual renewal took place which became a unifiying cultural foundation for the American Revolutionary War, which began in the late 1770s.
For those who have been following us, we have been ‘re-deployed’ to the United States at this pivotal moment in history. For those who know me personally, my heart is for revival and for preparing the Bride of Messiah to meet her Creator.