Picture the scene: your name is Jephtha. You are a product of your father’s sexual encounter with a prostitute. You’re a social outcast. Your father marries and produces sons with his wife. These boys grow up and in the process, kick you out of the home. You have no inheritance.
Or, maybe you are today’s person, a child of an alcoholic. An orphan. You are the product of some childhood disaster. Is this the end of your world? Is this total loss or is there a possible gain. Jephtha, in Judges chapter 11, can be a model for us.
Jephtha took this family trauma, his rejection, and used it to become a hardened warrior – one whose reputation was such that his own countrymen, the people who had rejected him, came to him and asked him to lead their army. What would have been your response to the request? I think I would have enjoyed some juicy form of revenge first – then accepted the military call.
Not so with Jephtha. He gave them a little tough confrontation, accepted the position, assumed the position of military commander and was empowered by God to great victory.
Was your childhood brutal or harsh? Is it making you bitter or better? Have you allowed God to turn your loss into gain? Your childhood could be as spring practice is to a football player – tough work for a few weeks - no glory. No newspaper clippings. All in preparation for the autumn’s real season.
The next few blog posts will center on 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, which has really intrigued me lately. Thorn in the flesh. Glorying in weakness. Walk with me through that passage beginning in tomorrow’s blog.
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