Who Are You?

At this moment, in your illness or chronic pain, who do you feel you are?  Do you feel you are too weak to be of any usefulness, or even feel like you are a burden to others?  Do you feel like there is nothing productive you can accomplish?  Do you feel others look at you with pity?  Do you, yourself, look in the mirror with pity?

We don’t always see clearly who we truly are.  Today we are going to look at someone in the Bible who did not see himself as he truly was, but God saw him as someone very special.

In Judges chapter 6, we get our introduction to a man named Gideon.  As a background to this story, the Midianites, Amalekites and people from the east were destroying the crops and animals of the Israelites, and they lost everything.  This had been going on for seven years because of disobedience to God.  They needed to be rescued, and God once again did not choose the strongest He could find, but chose an ordinary man named Gideon for the task.

In verse 12, an angel appears to Gideon and states, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour!”  A mighty man of valour?  This is definitely not how Gideon views himself.  As we see in verse 15, Gideon replies, “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.”  Gideon definitely did not see himself as a mighty man of valour.  He saw himself as a weakling and a nobody.  Can you relate to this?

Is it possible that God thinks you are a mighty man or woman of valour?  Who you are, what you can do, is not how you feel about yourself!  Who you are, what you can do is not what other people feel you are.  God tells Gideon, and He is telling us, “Go in this thy might…have not I sent thee?” (verse 14).  Go in your might, in the strength that you have, because God is sending you to accomplish something for Him.  As long as God allows you to be on this earth, He has something He wants you to accomplish…in the strength that you have.  That’s all He wants from you.  He knows what can be accomplished through a weakling and a nobody.  And be assured, as Gideon was in verse 16, “Surely I will be with thee.”