God wants faith, because faith gives God the credit. Pride says, I am strong, I can get by with my abilities
; faith says, God is strong, God is sufficient, God accomplishes.
It is only by faith that we can taste joy and victory in God. Fear, doubt, mistrust of God are obstacles to us living by faith. In order for those obstacles to be removed, God first has to expose those obstacles for us. He has to break down the walls that we build to hide our fears, doubts, mistrust of him. We can hide our fear, try to bury it, by finding our security and confidence in visible things. Gideon tried to ignore his fear by finding security in numbers. God had to remove these to expose Gideon’s fear, and bring him to the point where he must trust God alone, and thereby find his strength. Can you relate to this? God has his unique, peculiar, and gracious way of exposing the idols of your heart, for the purpose of you seeing them, acknowledging them, repenting from serving them, removing your trust from them, and putting that trust in God instead.
It is a lesson we need to learn over and over again. Pride, idolatry cloud our vision. We rob God of his honour, and we boast in ourselves. But it turns out we have nothing to boast of in ourselves, because we really are so weak. Praise God that he teaches us this lesson again and again, in order to push us to admit our weakness, and cast ourselves by faith at his feet. It is never my hand
that saves but really your hand
that delivers.
33 Now all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East came together, and they crossed the Jordan and encamped in the Valley of Jezreel.