the Third Week after Easter
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 2 of 5
Judges 3:1-11
In the book of Judges, we shall see the same cycle of events occurring over and over again. The people begin by abandoning the LORD. He then uses their enemies to awaken their conscience. Finally, Israel cries to God, who is full of compassion and delivers them by giving them a judge (see also Psalms 107:6; Psalms 107:13; Psalms 107:19; Psalms 107:28). Unfortunately this cycle of events is repeated only too often in our own lives. When we forget the Lord and come under the influence of the world, He sometimes uses the world’s hostility to awaken us. V. 2 reminds us of the way in which God keeps us in a state of readiness and trains us to fight. He allows enemies to exist expressly for this purpose. Military training is necessarily composed of exercises and manoeuvres without which a soldier would be incapable of fighting a battle should the occasion arise. "Fight the good fight of faith" is a standing order for the Christian (1 Timothy 6:12). For faith gives us assurance in two ways: the first is that the world is an enemy; the second is that the world is a conquered enemy. "I have overcome the world" is the last word of the Lord Jesus to His own before the cross. We must lay hold of this by faith in order to triumph over the world ourselves (John 16:33; 1 John 5:4-5).
