Gideon was hiding in the winepress threshing wheat out of sight of the enemies of Israel, the Midianites. While he was there an angel of the Lord appeared to him and addressed him as “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
Gideon’s response was to remind the angel that it sure didn’t look like God was with him. It looked as if God had abandoned them. What followed is an exchange between Gideon and the angel of the Lord where Gideon seeks to prove that what the angel is saying really is true, that God is going to use Gideon to defeat the Midianites. When the exchange is over, Gideon builds an altar to the Lord [Judges 6:13-24]
However, before God sends Gideon out into battle with the Midianites, Gideon must battle something in his own backyard. “That same night the LORD said to him, ‘Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.’” [Judges 6:25, NIV]
Remember all those problems that seem to beset us at times? Well before God will use us, He often requires us to take care of problems of our own creation, problems that have grown up in our own “backyards.”
Sometimes we put things between Him and us, and for the strength of God to flow into us to be used of Him, we must remove the things that hamper the flow of His strength. Gideon had to tear down an altar his family had made to a pagan idol, Baal. In its place the angel tells him to “build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God.”
God gives us the strength and the wisdom to recognize those things in our own “backyard,” those things of our own making that hinder His life in us. He helps us to find and to tear them down so that He can use us.
