Daily Sacrifice, February 11 (6:15-16)
“He said unto Him, 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...And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianite: as one man”— Judges 6:15, 16.
GIDEON’S words did not reveal what psychologists today call “an inferiority complex.” It was rather a true humility—a realization that in himself there was no power to deliver Israel. He came of a poor and insignificant family. He himself recognized his own helplessness. He did not feel there was anything of which he could boast. But he was to learn that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. Obedience was all that was needed. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31) Gideon had the promise of the divine presence to rely upon. His future history tells us how remarkably God fulfilled His word in using this country lad to destroy the power of haughty Midian and to deliver and guide Israel.
—I. Watts.