“The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’”” – Judges 7:2
Gideon was a nobody, chosen by God to rescue Israel from relentless foreign raiding parties. Gideon had no military background, but surely he knew he needed “more” to be successful: more soldiers, weapons, experience, and strategy. Instead, God intentionally sent him into battle with less – much less – so that Israel could never fool themselves into thinking they had saved themselves. God saved them, working through an anonymous man with the faith to believe that God would do more with less.
Too often we underestimate the God we serve. We often believe that to be successful we need “more” than we have: more people, more money, more knowledge, more ability, more experience, more plans, more certainty. Friends, we serve the God of more! He provides more than we can ever hope for or imagine. He is glorified in our “less” because then the world has no choice but to realize that He alone is our “more”.
As followers of Christ, rather than accumulating more, we should concentrate on actually exercising what we have: faith, obedience, and our relationship with God through Jesus. As we develop these, we gain the discernment, the confidence, and the wisdom to simply follow the Lord, even when we would prefer to have “more”. It’s then that’s the ordinary becomes an instrument of the extraordinary!