{"id":4448,"date":"2022-12-22T14:37:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T20:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4448"},"modified":"2022-12-22T14:37:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T20:37:05","slug":"devotional-on-judges-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-judges-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Judges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-Si8DuTpv_7Q\/XaM5ZF5iU_I\/AAAAAAABB_s\/0Ln011ltibEDPoBMO0DcgTLyc0fVXTa0QCKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/100_3328.JPG\" width=\"1600\" height=\"901\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Monterrey Peninsula, CA<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nAsking God hard questions<br \/>\nJudges: 6: If God is with us, why has all this happened to us?<br \/>\nThe startling honesty of Gideon arrests my attention today.  Even as he has an extraordinary encounter with the Lord he\u2019s brutally honest about how things are going.  Of course, the answer to his question has already been given.  God didn&#8217;t leave the people.  Rather, they left him: they &#8220;went back to doing evil.&#8221;  God isn&#8217;t going to stay where he\u2019s unwelcome.  The Lord departs and they\u2019re quickly dominated by Midian.  Still, God doesn&#8217;t forget them.  When the time is right, the Lord appears to Gideon and calls this unlikely person a &#8220;mighty warrior.&#8221;  More on Gideon&#8217;s leadership later on, but, again, my attention is drawn to his honesty before God.  If God is so good, if he&#8217;s on our side, if he\u2019s our deliverer then why are things so bad?   There\u2019s power in asking hard questions to God.  In this case Gideon need only look to the pagan practices he and his fellow Israelites have incorporated into their lives for his answer.  God&#8217;s grace is clearly evidenced by, first, the fact that they haven&#8217;t been wiped off the face of the earth, and second, the fact that God is right there carrying on a conversation with him.  The truth is, though, that God isn&#8217;t offended by our asking hard questions.  We aren&#8217;t to take up permanent residence in that house of questions but we almost have to pass through that neighborhood to ever arrive at a meaningful faith.<br \/>\nTake Away: It is okay to ask the Lord hard, honest questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Asking God hard questions Judges: 6: If God is with us, why has all this happened to us? The startling honesty of Gideon arrests my attention today. Even as he has an extraordinary encounter with the Lord he\u2019s brutally honest about how things are going. Of course, the answer to his question has already been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1511,7],"tags":[137,396,413,464,518],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4448"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14139,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448\/revisions\/14139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}