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While I have no way to prove this, my guess is that one of the most frequent supplications made to God is for “more.” More money, more opportunities, more confidence, more peace. Praying for increase is a frequent cry of the open heart.

Perhaps this is why the account in Judges 7 seems so surprising. Gideon is preparing for battle. As he does so, we might expect for him to ask God for more power, greater assurance of victory, or more strategic insight. Instead, we witness God telling him he has too much of his most vital warfare resource; God says that Gideon has too many men. Then God starts His reduction in force.  Through a two-step process, Gideon’s manpower as he heads into battle is a fraction of what he started with.

The reason for the depletion in troop numbers seems apparent – instead of victory being attributed to the military skills and abilities of Gideon and his men, God wanted to make it obvious that it was through His provision that the battle would be won. God could accomplish more with less. By so doing, He demonstrated that Gideon and all of Israel should trust in His good plans.

Precious saint – sometimes when God gives us less when we think we need more, He is working in much the same way. He is revealing that our trust is in what we have rather than the One Who has given it to us. At times He is showing that there are many other things that we are relying on, and we need to depend on Him alone.

When it seems like God is taking away what we think we need, may we cling ever more closely to Him, remembering that having Him is greater and better than anything else. Our Heavenly Father has not withheld His Son from us; He will not withhold any other good thing (Rom 8:31). When we are tempted to focus on our desire for more of earthly comforts and worldly treasures, may we instead ask Him to transform our heart to long for more of Him.

When I was a kid, my parents would often drive my sister and I to dance recitals. Many times on the drive, we would see a dam that commemorated the United States’ bicentennial. It stood out to our family because my mom and dad were married the year of the bicentennial celebration and my dad collected bicentennial quarters as a result. At the time, that landmark seemed so far away. When I saw it, I knew that the drive would be a long one, just like every drive that I had previously seen it on. It was a marker in my mind of a significant journey. 

Like a lot of other things, our perspective on distance and time changes as we get older. Ironically, I now drive past that same dam every time I go to work. I still live in the same area that I grew up in so the distance to it is approximately the same as it was when I was going to our performances, but the journey to it now doesn’t seem significant. In fact, the time passes pretty quickly and looking back I can see that my impatience was completely unwarranted. What seemed like a long time then, really wasn’t. 

A similar phenomenon can occur when we are waiting on God. As we pray for what we hope for and desire it can seem like time is dragging on and the wait is monumental. We may be eagerly anticipating when God is going to answer and counting down the days until He does so, just like I counted down each mile to our destination. However, God doesn’t ordain things according to our time schedule; He sovereignly orchestrates things according to His. Often when we look back we can see that we weren’t really waiting for a long time, we were waiting for the right time. And waiting on God’s good timetable is always worth it. 

Beloved saints – may we recognize that just like my perspective on how long the journey took was shaped by my limited understanding, so the same is true of our perspective on how God is at work in our lives. May we wait patiently to see His plan unfold; may we trust in Him each step of the way. And may we have confidence that if we look back on our lives from the vantage point of eternity, any amount of time that we spent waiting will be time that God used for His good purposes.