I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 7-8.

    When Gideon called together an army of men from among his clan and tribe (Manasseh), and from the tribes of Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali. The army which mustered was 32,000 men strong. God told him that he had too many men. So, Gideon reduced the army to 300 men. I could spend time discussing Gideon’s strategy, but the key point of this story is that God often times calls us to go into “battle” with forces which are badly under-powered for the task at hand. God wants it to be clear to us that it was His power which won the day. In Zechariah 4:6 this is spelled out even more clearly:

It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

    It is by God’s Spirit that we will have the victory. That is true when it comes to accomplishing tasks which God has given to us, when it comes to overcoming the trials and challenges we face in our lives, and it is true when it comes to overcoming temptation to sin in our lives. I know that I often think that I will overcome the challenges I face by buckling down and working harder. While sometimes I need to work harder, it is still only by God’s providential power and love that I have overcome the challenges I have faced. I need to remember this as I struggle to find a new place to live. In the same way, I often seek to overcome temptation by exerting my willpower. I do not know why I do so, since it has never worked for me in the past. I have only ever succeeded in resisting temptation by the grace of God. To be perfectly honest, those temptations which I can defeat by application of my willpower are not really temptations at all.