There seems to be an established pattern in scripture and in the lived experience, that God prefers to do more with less. It is quite the opposite with the natural world: more produces more. Battles are won through strength. I think this seals the issue entirely: you cannot operate God’s agenda with only a part of yourself, a half invested here, the rest still involved there. The consequence being that, your perspective on things will become extremely challenged.
The troop God is taking to the battle in most cases always looks like a lost cause. By sheer appearance alone, what God is building will always seem hopeless. Gideon’s army could barely be called by that name because they were without weapons, without prior martial experience, and were already grossly outnumbered several times over. The need to prune the numbers down was still a necessity as far as God was concerned. Gideon almost lost his mind.
I assure that you are likely to lose yours too as you sail with God past your safe and familiar moorings. You will travel down scary slopes and be led into impossible missions from the natural person’s viewpoint. This is where those who know their God remain strong and calm – or at least, maintain calmness through holding more tightly to God, to do exploits.
Did you know that the great numbers we often rely on are often blotted with no substance? Gideon’s 27,000 men on a closer look constituted a significant hindrance rather than an asset, which was why God had to separate the wheat from the chaff, and there remained only those who genuinely believed in the cause. 300 men. The rest comprised the grumblers, the double-minded, the self-centered, whose minds never left home in the first place even though they seemed dressed for the battle and were wearing its uniform.
The message here is, don’t lose heart if God gives you a lot less. Usually, it is because he is raising the standard and is certainly going to do more. Feeding thousands with just a little boy’s lunch pack, and David going up to fight a giant are only examples of His way of doing His things.
In our study today, 2 Chronicles 13: 1- 20, King Abijah of Judah was a young man who only just succeeded his father and presently faces an adversary who is almost three times the size and military strength of his own.
The Ethiopians immediately surround him, and he cries to the God he already knows. The footnote there being it is advisable to know God, not mentally, but personally, before you are forced to go up against a mountain much greater than you. Less cannot go against or compete with more unless they are relying on Someone greater than themselves.
Of course, He is also greater than what has decided to come against you.
