Gideon must be the only person who has an angel suddenly appear to him who isn't afraid. Listen to the conversation: "The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor." And Gideon said to him, "Please, sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian."
I love that exchange, it sounds like my prayer life sometimes, knowing the truth, the Lord is with you, but knowing the truth of circumstance as well and not being able to reconcile the two truths. The one the angel calls a mighty man of valor is beating out wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites, hardly a scene of valor or the acts of a mighty man, but what he has been reduced to in order to survive.
Gideon's theology isn't wrong, he just believes if the Lord is with you there should be some tangible evidence of that presence and what he sees doesn't match up to what he believes. Have you ever had that experience? Everyone does, can you imagine how the disciples felt as they watched the one they believed to be Messiah as he died on the cross?
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