The second question he asked is: "Where are all His wonders?" "I've heard all these stories," says Gideon, "about the good old days." "I've heard the stories about how God brought them out of Egypt, and how He brought them through the wilderness, of how He fed them with manna, and how He brought water out of the rock, and how He dried up the Red Sea, and how they came across the Jordan with their feet dry. I've heard all these stories, but why isn't He doing anything like that now?" I think the answer to that quite frankly is this: that we don't really understand the sheer wonders of God's working in the ordinary course of life.

Some people in the Christian life get very excited when God works a miraculous healing, and I'm one of those people. I'm very excited when somebody is healed, and there is no medical explanation for it. It's just as if God has chosen to intervene in that situation and raise up people that glorify God. It excites His people, and the person that got healed feels pretty good about it as well.

I want to tell you something. It isn't just when God chooses to intervene and heal that I get excited. Do you know what I get excited about? I get excited about health, because health is perpetual healing. Health is just your body functioning because God is intervening with all the things that could go wrong every single second of your life. Sometimes the question: "Well, if the Lord is with us, why isn't He doing any miracles today," is not proof that God is with you, it's just proof that you're not really giving God credit for what He is doing in the ordinary course of life. But this is the language of despondency.

Poor old Gideon is allowing the situation to alter his view of God instead of holding firmly to what he knows of God, and looking at his circumstances through that. Now, he even goes so far as to deny a fundamental tenet of the faith, and he says, "The Lord has abandoned us!" Well, that's despondency for you! I wonder if I'm talking to somebody here, and you've brought a whole lot of discouragement, a whole lot of disappointment, a whole lot of despondency here with you. Well, I hope what we've got to say in the rest of this talk right now will be a source of encouragement to you, because I want you to carry on this story with me.

For Gideon, after he has been despondent, now has some things happen to him that make him dependent. He starts out despondent, now we see him moving into dependency. This is what the Lord then says to him: "Go in the strength that you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?" "But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family." The Lord answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites as if they were but one man" (Judges 6:14-16).

So now the table is turned. The Lord has heard enough of Gideon's questions and doesn't bother to answer them. He simply says, "Gideon, this is what I want you to do!" Actually, He didn't say this is what I want you to do, He said this is what I'm telling you to do! "I am telling you, Gideon, that you are going to be a mighty warrior!" "You are going to be the one who'll take up the battle against the forces of the Midianites. You are going to do it." And He tells him how he's going to do it. He says, "Gideon, you're going to go in the strength that you have, and that isn't much," as is very obvious from the circumstances in which he is operating. "You will go in the strength that you have, but the second thing is that I will be with you!"