The Call of Gideon: How God Calls Ordinary People to Extraordinary Faith - Judges 6:11–24
We live in days that feel eerily like the days of Gideon. Moral confusion, cultural pressure, family struggles, and open hostility toward biblical truth surround us. Many conservative Christians look at the headlines and quietly ask the same question Gideon voiced: “If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” (Judges 6:13). Yet the story in Judges 6:11–24 does not leave us in despair. It shows how the God of the Bible calls and equips His people—not because we are strong, but precisely because we are weak. The scene opens in crisis. Israel is starving under Midianite oppression. Gideon is threshing wheat—not on an open floor, but hidden inside a winepress, terrified the enemy will spot him and steal what little he has. Then the Angel of the Lord appears and speaks the most shocking words in the chapter: “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” (v. 12) Gideon is cowering in fear, the youngest son of a weak family in the weakest clan of Manasseh. Yet G...