Theme of the Week: The Book of Judges
Bible Verse: “So may all your enemies perish, LORD! But may all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength.” Judges 5:31
Scripture Reading: Judges 5:1-31
There are times in our lives when we need to stand back and look at the way we are responding to the commission of our Lord. It is only too easy for our service to fall into the pattern of a kind of grudging duty. All too often a gulf widens between our convictions and our actual life commitments, but somehow they are rarely translated into actions. Then rationalizations and excuses set in until finally, paralyzed by inactivity, we become completely lethargic.
Deborah sang this song of praise on the same day God gave His people victory. The passage of Scripture this most resembles is Exodus 14-15, the account of Israel’s miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, followed by the celebratory Song of Moses and Miriam. These songs provide an important principle: God’s blessing needs to be received and celebrated with gratitude. When God does something for us, the natural response of our hearts should be to praise Him and to acknowledge publicly what He has done.
I must not read a chapter like Judges 5 without measuring myself against the kind of commitment that I read of here – wholehearted, spontaneous, enthusiastic, risk-taking commitment – which obeys the command of God and marches into the teeth of the enemy to do battle for God.
Jesus is not in the business of compulsion. He is not manipulating people into ministry. As a college student I was deeply impressed by the life of a young man named William Borden. Although he was the heir of a considerable fortune, benefited from a good education at Yale, and possessed the kind of social contacts that would virtually assure him of a very affluent lifestyle, he turned his back on those things to obey the call of God to go as a missionary to the Muslim world. In preparation, he went to Egypt to learn Arabic. Sadly, he contracted an illness that quickly took his life. But in his writings was a phrase that guided his own life and captures the volunteer spirit celebrated in Judges 5. It has fanned a flame in my own heart as well: “No retreat, no reserve, no regrets.”
Taken from Hearts of Iron, Feet of Clay by Gary Inrig. ©1979, 2005 by Gary Inrig, and used by permission of Discovery House, Grand Rapids MI 49501. All rights reserved.
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