The Truth Will Set Us Free!

 

“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. He said, ‘If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the Lord whatever comes out of my house to meet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.’” (Judges 11:30-31)

In this story, Jephthah was a great warrior (Judges 11:1) but rejected by his brothers because his mother was a prostitute. These brothers chased him off for not being a ‘true son’ and then later asked him to come back when the Ammonites came against them. They told him to come be their commander and they would make him their ruler and so he agreed.

As Jephthah engaged with the King of Ammon, Judges 11:29 says the “Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah” and he led an army against the Ammonites. It was here, going into battle, that he made this vow to the Lord asking for the victory in exchange for a sacrifice of whatever came out of his house to meet him when he had the victory.

He wanted something to secure his victory. It is really hard to trust, especially when you feel inadequate. He didn’t feel worthy so he wanted to control it by manipulation. And the result was detrimental. His beloved daughter came running out the door to meet him after the victory and so he planned to put her to death to appease God and fulfill his vow.

What God was giving him as a victory, ended up being a huge loss for him because of his inability to receive it and embrace it. He couldn’t embrace the goodness of God for himself as he didn’t feel worthwhile of it. He had been judged and rejected his whole life for not being good enough as his mother was a prostitute.

Ever feel like you are not enough? Like God would not use you to complete something great?

Gideon also struggled with this. When God called him to lead an army, he was blown away and kept fleecing the Lord. He really struggled to believe that he could be used by God to do something great. Moses had this mindset as well. He looked at God’s huge plan and said, you got to be kidding, send someone else. Moses couldn’t get over his stutter.

“Who could stop the Lord Almighty” sings in the background.

We often call our disbelief humility. But it isn’t. We hold ourselves back and focus on our faults. God was not looking for Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter. In fact, this had to appall Him that Jephthah would go there. God didn’t judge Jephthah by his family situation. He saw him and called him out into his bigger plan. God made Jephthah for such a time as this and gave him the gifts he needed. As Jephthah stepped out, despite his thoughts of feeling small and unworthy, the Lord met him with power. Things came together for him.

I get this as I have struggled with not thinking I was enough and that God wouldn’t use me. For years I have struggled with this type of battle. God would bless me in my job as I worked. I just seemed to have success and things worked out for me. I would feel unworthy and work hard trying to keep my job. Then I would get noticed and promoted. So I felt all the more insecure and unworthy and would work all the harder. It became exhausting and eventually led me to burn out where I came to know the Lord.

However, coming to know the Lord, didn’t fully change the way that I thought. While I have received an amazing amount of freedom over the years, I still find that how I see myself is one of my greatest challenges. God has been opening my eyes to how this belief continues to limit me. I hold myself back sometimes seeing myself as not enough. I limit myself because of lack of belief in trusting how God made me.

It is not humility to lack trust. Humility is about getting our eyes off ourselves and onto God. The Lord wants to use us in powerful ways but we need to believe Him to do this. In Judges 4, Deborah tells Barak that he is called to go against Sisera. He agrees but refused to go without Deborah as he does not have the faith for the conquest. She agrees but tells him that because of the course he is taking (not fully believing) that God would deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman (Judges 4:9).

For some reason, I always thought she was talking about herself as she went with him, but we see later it was Jael, wife of Herber, that kills the king with a tent peg as he escapes. God honored her for being a woman of faith. In the song of Deborah they proclaim, “Most blessed of women be Jael.” (Judges 5:24)

This was not a punishment against Barak, but he just didn’t have the faith to believe for the full victory and so Deborah was confronting him on this and encouraging him to go higher. God will meet you at your point of faith. In Matthew 8:13 Jesus tells the centurion, who is not even under the Covenant like the Israelites, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And he healed this servant of his in an instant.

So often we have our eyes on ourselves when God is asking us, not to believe in ourselves as being self-sufficient, but believe in Him and His goodness to us. Belief comes from looking to Him and getting our eyes off ourselves. Belief comes from knowing what He can do and knowing He is willing as He is our greatest champion and advocate.

Not getting stuck in self-sufficiency is why it is so much easier sometimes for those who are least and littlest to believe. It is not that they are least that makes them great but they can quickly get their eyes off themselves. They don’t trust or believe in their own self-sufficiency. It is often when we are reduced to nothing that He picks us up and makes us radiant. It is our brokenness that allows the light to shine through brightly. It is not about being significant but making Him significant.

Paul recognizes this and says in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.”

God uses the weak and broken things to shine His light through all our cracks. He says to come to Him like a child in wonder and awe. As we have an open heart and believe in the incredible goodness of our amazing Father, it opens the way spiritually for miracles in our life. And once we see miracles, we are more and more open to them and grow in more faith for them. We see God working all around us.

I sometimes wonder why I have seen so many miracles in my life compared to some people who are Christians. It is because I have been desperate and then seen them. Then as I seen them, I became more expectant. By the time I got my two youngest boys, every difficulty they had, I thought to myself, God is going to work a miracle in that. It just became expectant. Why wouldn’t He? The more I grow in faith and see Him work, the more hopeful I become for everyone and everything around me.

When I first came to the Lord, He told me, “You do not know how poor you are.” It was not that He was insulting me or saying that I didn’t have value to Him, but He was telling me the truth. I didn’t know how poor I was because I had not experienced His Kingdom. I look back amazed at His power and goodness to me and say to myself, “Wow, I really didn’t know just how poor I was!”

At the time, He showed me a picture of me as a worthless rock that was tossed aside and nobody wanted. He then picked it up, polished it, and it became this beautiful light blue gem in His hand and then He pinned it on the front of His white lapel and wore it with such pride. As I had felt so worthless when I came to the Lord, I sobbed as this picture spoke deeply to my heart of my value to Him.

At the end of the day, what most glorifies God is our faith and obedience. We don’t need to be important or significant by the world’s standards. But what God is asking from us is to be willing to step out in trust and lay down the world’s picture of life in our own significance, importance and value for Him, our friend who walks with us.

The Lord tells His people in the Old Testament over and over, “Do not be afraid or discouraged.” It is sinful thoughts that we let override the truth that lead us to be afraid and discouraged. When we feel this way, the way we are thinking needs to change not our circumstances. Wendy Backlund notes, “If our thoughts don’t lead to peace, energy, life, hope and joy, they are not from God.”

Jesus addresses this thinking as well. Those who thought they were right with God, were incredibly off course. They needed salvation as their hearts were evil and they couldn’t see it.

Think about it, many of the people of God who were born and raised under the Covenant, did not get a miracle like a Roman Centurion or even see one. They lacked faith for it and went through their lives in doubt, seeking to fill their own needs and control their own worlds.

They didn’t have any faith for miracles. In fact, even seeing these kind of miracles made them upset and offended. Even worse, they wanted to control their environment. But God is a God of miracles. It is just who He is!

Isaiah 35:4-6 speaks of God bursting in upon the dry wilderness with “divine retribution” to come and save His people. It says as He comes upon the scene, “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy, water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert….”

These religious people of the time not only didn’t have faith but were opposed to the purposes of God and probably demonically being possessed. Their offense reflected their thoughts. They were upset because their hearts were evil and they needed to turn to God.

Jesus says in Matthew 12:34 to a group of those who had religion and thought they were right with God, “You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of his good store of treasure, and the evil man brings evil things out of his evil store of treasure.…”

I often wondered why both John the Baptist and Jesus called them “a brood of vipers” when this does not seem that loving. But what if they were seeing them spiritually and that demonic spirit was so tightly wrapped up around their souls that Jesus was identifying it so they could be set free. What is a viper like? It attacks with poisonous venom when people get in their way and takes them down.

Perhaps Jesus wanted them to know they were demonically possessed so that they could identify it and get set free. Jesus also says that the truth will set us free. Maybe they needed to just stop making excuses for this, trying to hide and cover it up, turn, repent, and ask God for His help for once. I once saw a woman fall to the ground, turn into a snake and then get delivered. She walked away with freedom and gratitude.

This woman was already a Christian. It is possible for someone who is a Christian to also have demonic spirits residing and influencing their behavior at times if there is an open door through unrepented repeated sin or unforgiveness. It is amazing how many Christians came out to get deliverance at a movie theater not too long ago. Several of them reporting things moving inside them during the movie or even choking them. I watched a few people get set free as their throats had physically doubled in size as they were feeling choked around the neck right before getting freedom.

It is not a surprise the Satan displayed himself in the garden like a snake. He slithered into Adam and Eve’s thoughts and created doubt and want. It was out of this thinking that they grabbed for what would cause them a great deal of pain and suffering, even death.

In the same way, we need to see when poisonous venom gets in our thinking about ourselves. Like Paul with the snake that bit him, we need to shake it off into the fire of His love. God is always good and His thoughts towards us are always good. He wants to give us the victory and not hold us back. We don’t need to earn it or deserve it. And that thing in the past we try to drag along with us, He is more than willing to wash away with all our regret.

Regret and self-abasement are never from God. As we can at times become deceived in our thinking, it is important that we continually look to the fruit to see what is being grown. Are our beliefs limiting us, holding us back, keeping us from God, trying to control our environment or are they setting us free and helping us to step into more? Are they expectant and hopeful?

Lord Jesus, we want all that You have for us. Help us to turn our eyes off ourselves and on to You with loving expectation that Your goodness and mercy will follow us all our days. Let us dwell in Your presence and thoughts of Your goodness rather than lies that leave us in doubt and want. Deliver us from the evil that tries to slither into our thinking.