God; Lost in The Crowd

Judges 7:2"And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands,lest Israel vaunt themselves against me,saying,mine own hand hath saved me".

Generally when we think of success we think that its based on the numbers. When we see a church that has a large membership then we label it as a successful church,this attitude or acceptance has nothing to do with the spirituality or the growth of the people,it has nothing to do with the impact of the ministries. It is simple based on the fact that if a lot of people go their and they have  a lot of money then they are blessed and indeed successful.But what does God say?If we are to understand this scripture, we see that the glory of God can get lost in the crowds of our lives.There are times in our life when God will trim and remove some stuff in our life to assure that He will not be lost among the crowd.Yes we are a prideful people and if not aware will take credit for the accomplishments in life we enjoy.We tend to take credit for the jobs we have,the homes we live in,for the educations we have been blessed to receive,our church lives,and even our personal health.(Deacon Frank Williams)

In our text today we see that God told Gideon that he had too many soilders for him to let the children of Israel over take the enemy.See their are times in our life when we have too much to see God at work in our lives, and we begin to think it is about us.I once heard a very popular preacher say, he don't have to call on God as much as some of us, because he has a lot  more money then we do and he can just write a check.Well he is writing checks to get out of the mess he put himself into.We must realize that it is God and God alone who is responsible for all that we have.We might say we worked hard to get what we got,but remember who kept you healty enough to work hard.I speak from experience, see I had lost God amist that which he had blessed me with.I begin to look to the blessing and lost sight of the blessor.It wasn't until I lost everything that God had blessed me with,that I realized it was God and God alone who had been keeping me.He was there all the time providing for me.When I was looking to my mother, my father, family, my job, It was God, they were just tools he used to provide my every need.

God wanted Gideon to scale down the soilders so that there would be no doubt as to by whose hand they were delievered,and given the victory.There are times in our lives,times along our journey that God may ask they we give up somethings we feel we need so we can truly realize all we need is him.Be careful not to lose God in the crowd.