Judges 6:12

When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”

From Background Notes [BN] for February 9^th & 10^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

Sneaking around the winepress, threshing his wheat, Gideon probably looked and felt like anything but a “mighty warrior,” yet God’s messenger speaks the Word to him as if it were already true.

For Yahweh, the God of Israel, is as Paul would later describe him: “He who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17). Moreover, this God waits to call into existence the things that do not exist only after He “reduces to nothing the things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:28). Israel’s fade to black preceded God’s decision to summon Gideon and call him by a name that he could not claim for himself. God had reduced His intended servant to threshing wheat in a winepress so that He might then call him, “Mighty Warrior.” The message of the biblical text is commonly this, that God “uproots, tears down, destroys, and overthrows” before he “builds and plants” (Jeremiah 1:10). That is, we fade to black before God brings us back to life.  [BN, 5]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am