Category: Devotionals

God lists Samson and Jephthah in His Hall of Faith. That should give all of us hope.
Jephthah made a rash vow that cost him dearly, a moment of poorly considered words spoken in a high-pressure moment that cannot be undone. Samson’s story is even more publicly catastrophic: a man of supernatural strength who repeatedly surrendered that strength to his weaknesses, who was deceived by a woman he loved, stripped of his gift, blinded, and chained to a grinding stone in his enemy’s prison. These are not tidied-up stories with minor flaws. These are lives marked by significant, consequential failure.

When God called Gideon a mighty man of valour, Gideon was hiding in a winepress.
That is not a minor detail. A winepress was a sunken pit used to crush grapes, not a military staging ground, not a watchtower, not a place anyone of valour would normally be found. Gideon was there because he was afraid of the Midianites, threshing wheat in secret so they would not see it and take it. And into that pit, into that fear, into that hiding place, the angel of the Lord appeared and said: the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valour.

Rahab had every reason not to be in this chapter. She is here anyway.
She was a Gentile, an outsider to the covenant community of Israel. She was a woman in a culture where women’s stories were rarely elevated. She was a prostitute, a profession that placed her at the margins of any society’s moral framework. And she had spent her whole life in Jericho, the very city that was about to be destroyed. By every measure of the day, Rahab was not a candidate for the Hall of Faith.

God’s battle plan will rarely make sense to the military mind.
March around the city once a day for six days. On the seventh day, march around seven times. Then blow the trumpets and shout. That was the entire strategy. No siege equipment. No attack formation. No undermining of the foundations or scaling of the walls. Just marching and silence and then, on the appointed day, a shout. By every known principle of ancient warfare, the plan was absurd.

Parting the red sea is one thing; having the courage to pass through it is another. For context, the height of the Red Sea when it was parted would have been slightly shorter than today’s world’s tallest building in Dubai. So I ask again, if you were there seeing the miracle, would you have had the courage to step onto the dry ground?

Endurance is always the fruit of vision.
Moses faced one of the most intimidating forces of his world: the fury of Pharaoh, a man who commanded armies, controlled economies, and held the power of life and death over an entire nation. By every visible measure, that should have been enough to make anyone flinch, compromise, or quietly disappear. But Moses did not flinch. And the reason Hebrews gives is striking. He endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

What you are willing to give up reveals what you actually believe.
Moses walked away from the treasures of Egypt, and Hebrews tells us precisely how he did it: he recalculated. He ran the numbers again, but this time with a different set of values, an eternal set. And when he compared the reproach of Christ, the shame, the rejection, the cost of identifying with God’s purposes in a hostile world, to the treasures of the most powerful empire of his era, he concluded that the reproach was the better deal.

Moses had a choice that most people would not have refused. He had been raised in the most powerful household in the most powerful nation on earth. He had access to the finest education, the deepest comfort, and a title that guaranteed him a life of privilege and influence. “Son of Pharaoh’s daughter” was not just a family designation. It was a complete life package: security, status, and a future that any ambitious person would have envied. And Moses walked away from it.

Faith doesn’t always look like parting the red sea or calling down fire from heaven.Sometimes faith looks like a mother hiding her baby in the dark.