Presented to River Street Cafe, 09 September 2016
Read Judges 7:2-3
The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too
many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against
me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’
This has been a tiring week for me. Many
of us around here are very busy. Kids are back in school. Lessons are starting.
Meetings are starting with the agencies and community groups to which we belong;
regular fall programming is beginning and there is all of the busy-ness that
everyone in ministry is surrounded with in September.
This week we have had added to this, like
Gideon, the fact that we are short staffed. And some of you know too that we
have been given the responsibility for running another corps (church), The
Warehouse Mission. I have been involved in hiring someone to work at the Warehouse
and, in the absence of someone else, I have been personally supervising their programs.
This takes a little bit of time.
And then there is the building here. I
have been talking not only with headquarters but also architects and
contractors this week. There is more too – there is a lot of paper work. I
could go on all day with the things that have been keeping me busy but I won’t.
This isn’t meant to be a ‘woe is me pity party’. Many people are busy.
The point I am making today is, I know
that I do not actually have the time to physically do everything on my to-do
list right now. I have crunched the numbers and it is just not going to work.
I think that is one reason why God has
let me meditate on Judges 7:2 these past few weeks: Judges 7:2: The Lord said
to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or
Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’
Like Gideon, God has reminded me that my
own strength can’t save me. I thank the LORD for that because I think sometimes
we can become overwhelmed quite simply because we think we can or we think we
should be able to conquer life in our own strength. I think a lot of the stress
that I (and maybe some others of us here) feel is quite simply because we try
to do things in our own strength, forgetting that it is not our own strength
that saves us but rather the strength of the Lord.
This week I have resolved not to become
overwhelmed by the tasks that I cannot complete because I know that I can’t accomplish
them but I know someone who can accomplish all that needs to be done...
and that someone is God.
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