Day 7 - Gideon: chosen when ‘thinking small’ seemed a good place to start

Read: Judges 6:11

THEMEWe know that God is able to select whomever He wants to do whatever He chooses. He can also raise, mould and empower the least of us to do more than we can ask or imagine. Occasionally we get a glimpse of what catches His attention.


We do not know exactly when Gideon caught God’s attention, but we know when God caught Gideon’s. It was when Israel’s harvests were being devastated year-on-year and Gideon was secretly threshing wheat in a winepress. The Angel of the Lord recruited him by greeting him as a ‘mighty man of valour’.

To appreciate what God saw in this cautious man we have to ask, ‘Who other than Gideon was doing anything in the face of Israel’s annual harvest fiasco?’ A few handfuls of wheat may not have been much but at least his threshing was saying ‘Why should the enemy have all our grain?’

It was a small act of resistance that God was able to take and multiply, and God had other ways of keeping Gideon from becoming overly self-confident too as he set out his fleeces, rallied his army and then had to dismiss large numbers of his volunteers.

We need to remember that God never despises the day of small beginnings.

God can use us most when we show a strong commitment without growing too big in our own eyes.