Take a spiritual Selfie… What do you see?
Again the Israelites did what the Lord said was wrong. So for seven years the Lord handed them over to Midian.
Judges 6:1
The story of Gideon begins with God telling us that the Israelites turned away from him and decided to do things that distanced them from him. So God disciplined them by letting experience the consequences of their action – people taking advantage of them leaving them in misery. They forgot what they looked like without God.
There is a cycle we all go through when we turn from God and then back to him:
- Compromise
- We take short cuts or start accept a lower standard/ expectations
- We sneak around doing “small” sins that lead to “bigger” sins
- What areas do you see compromise or feel comfortable hiding from others?
- Collapsing
-
- We start losing trust, friends, privileges as a result of our decisions
- How are you seeing the collapse in your life?
- What damage is your decisions doing to your relationships and the expectations you have for yourself?
- Consequences
-
- We start to feel lonely, rejected, angry and blame other or circumstances for our situation
- What lose or you’re experiencing?
- Have you made the connection of the consequences to decisions you have made or are still blaming others?
- Comeback
-
- When we humble ourselves, we start a comeback to our senses and right relationships
- What lessons is God teaching you about your choices?
- Have you identified the sin in your choices?
As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel were again unfaithful to God and followed the Baals. They made Baal-Berith their god. The Israelites did not remember the Lord their God, who had saved them from all their enemies living all around them.
Judges 8:33-34
After Gideon died, the people started making choices again to disobey God. They forgot how bad they felt and the damage that was done in their relationships. The cycle starts all over again. Feeling bad or responding with a good attitude when things are bad is not what God wants. He wants us to break the Cycle. We have to learn to how to identify sin in our hearts and turn to God on a daily bases.
Challenge:
- Be honest with God about the compromising you are making
- Draw or create a poem of your cycle of turning from and back to God
- Pick one thing to share about with someone today
