BIAY - Guarding faithfulness
Judges 7-9, Psalm 70
Welcome to the Bible in a Year for 2025. Intro to this series and resource links available here, plus here’s how I’m approaching this year.
Scriptures for Today:
Reflection:
Avoiding self-deception (7:1-8) - Paring down the ranks of Gideon’s army is a great story to remember. It is counter-intuitive from a human perspective. The more in the army, the better for overwhelming the enemy. However, the temptation in any victory is think we deserve more of the credit than is really true. Here is a seemingly strange example of God taking peculiar steps to prevent such a mistake.
Hard to finish well (8:22-27) - Gideon’s victories resulted in increased influence, seen in the Israelites asking for him to rule over them on account of his military success. Yet Gideon did not finish well: “Gideon made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town. All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.” (8:27) Just because we start well and do many good things does not mean we are immune to snares later on. Faithfulness is a lifelong project of relying on the Lord. This snare reminds me of James 1:27 - “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Questions:
When are you tempted to forget to give credit to God?
What snares do you have to watch out for?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, keep my eyes and heart centered on you today. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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