Gideon was one of the Judges of Israel most famously known for his unusual battle strategy – if it even was a strategy. He ordered his men to prepare for war by bringing a horn and a jar with a torch (Judges 7:15), not traditional weapons by any means. They sound more like equipment a marching band uses in a band competition. Yet these are Gideon’s munitions of choice against an opposing army carrying weapons like swords, spears, arrows and/or knives. It makes no sense…then again, was Gideon doing something out of character for him?
Gideon was a non-conventional thinker when the Angel of God found him in the wine press, threshing wheat (Judges 6:11). Not the most ideal place to thresh wheat considering it’s the wind that separates the chaff from the wheat kernel. Yet it was an ingenious way to keep his wheat safe and undetectable by the Midianites who were marauding Israel at the time. When Gideon faced a challenge, he came up with an out of the box solution. It’s the same king of strategy he employed to fight the Midianite army when he used horns and jars as weapons. And an out of the box thinker was exactly who God needed to fight and win this particular war.
Interestingly, Gideon wasn’t the only freethinker, his army was full of them. When choosing the army, God asked Gideon to have his men drink water from a stream. While most of the army got down on their knees and drank directly from the stream (Judges 7:5-6), 300 cupped the water in their hands and lapped them like a dog. These were the men God chose.
What I’m Learning
We don’t need to become somebody else to overcome challenges we face. Remember that God has equipped you with exactly what you need to win all your battles. Just like Gideon who didn’t emulate anyone else to win the war, instead he remained true to who he was. He was an unorthodox thinker, leading a group of atypical soldiers to fight a war using unconventional weapons.