Serenity Prayer Devotional from the Life Recovery Bible
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” Amen
“The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!’ ‘Sir,’ Gideon replied, ‘if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.’ Then the Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!’ ‘But Lord,’ Gideon replied, ‘how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!’ The Lord said to him, ‘I will be with you. And you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man.’” Judges 6:12-16.
We may begin to believe that we are destined to bondage, poverty, and failure. When we persist in this view of our life, we give up the possibility of change. We settle for just trying to survive. We live in fear and shame, filling up with resentment as our life remains in the pit. We need to overcome these kinds of negative assumptions about ourselves.
Our first impression of Gideon is of a discouraged young man with little self-respect. His family was the poorest in a small tribe, and he was the least in his family. We first see him as he was threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding the little grain he had from his Midianite oppressors. An angel appeared and called to him, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!” (Judges 6:12). Gideon didn’t look or feel like a mighty hero, but God could see his potential. By the end of the story, Gideon had become the deliverer of his people (Judges 6–8). His first step toward success was to see himself as God saw him—a mighty warrior. Then he was able to hope in the possibility of freedom.
We, too, must begin by finding the courage to see ourselves in a new light and to summon up hope for a better life. Then as God gives us the strength, we can set about pursuing freedom from the bondage that surrounds us and our family.
Easier said than done
Wow, this is awesome, just last night in our Prayer, Intercession and Bible Study, the Consuming Fire of God burned up all our failures, disappointments, betrayals, lack of confidence in Christ, low self esteem, and so forth. I began for the first time in a long time seeing myself as God sees me, not as the world sees me. This reading today confirmed what God was doing with us last night. One of the things Pastor said was “we are going in the strength of the Lord, and that Holy Spirit is there to help us. No longer will we labor in our own strength, but we will labor in the strength of the Lord. Fire and glory was released to us last night. Thank you for this reading today! God Bless you all.
God works in such amazing ways!! Thank you for sharing this beautiful story!! God is good!!
This is so powerful I so need Jesus in my life or this experience but don’t know what is it am doing wrong
We all need Jesus – thank you for that reminder. Do you have a church or Christian community you can reach out to?
This is God talking to me because i have been so stressed n worried about finding a job and asking God to bless me with the first opportunity available to me but he has been telling me to wait on him and now i see and understand why.
God has spoken to me this morning in a way that is unexplainable.
I was lost now I am found,I was blind now I can see
reading everyones messages is a pure sign of god and the power he contains.
my word for the day is keep doing what you doing and you shall bear the fruits of life.Since god always keeps us,his people in his thoughts let us continue to do the same.Do unto others what you want should be done unto you.
And always remember that he is the reason you are who you are today and that it is because of him that you can love yourself and most importantly love others.
God bless you all
AMEN