Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Confused (05/21/26)
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TITLE: When Less Becomes Enough | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marilyn Meiners
05/25/26 -
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Gideon stopped what he was doing—which was threshing wheat in a winepress.
“Yes?” Gideon answered cautiously.
“I’m going to deliver Israel from the Midianites,” God said, “and you will do the delivering.”
“Me?” he said, pointing at himself in case God had dialed the wrong Gideon. “You’re asking the impossible. The Midianites are huge. I mean… really huge. Have you seen them? You sure you want me?”
“Yes, Gideon.”
Gideon scratched his head. “Okay… just to be clear, this isn’t one of those ‘step out in faith and immediately regret it’ situations, right?”
Silence.
“Right… okay then,” Gideon muttered. “Tell you what, God. Let’s do a quick test. I’ll put a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there’s dew only on the fleece and the ground is dry, then I’ll know this is really you.”
“Not a problem,” God replied.
The next morning, Gideon walked out, half expecting nothing to happen. Instead, he picked up the fleece and wrung out an entire bowl of water.
The ground? Bone dry.
“Well,” Gideon said slowly. “I was kind of hoping that wouldn’t work.”
He paused. Then cleared his throat.
“God… please don’t be angry,” he began, already sounding like someone about to ask for something ridiculous, “but let’s try that one more time. This time, make the fleece dry and the ground wet.”
A pause.
“Gideon,” God said, “why can’t you just trust me?”
“…I’m working on it?”
“Fine. Have it your way.”
The next morning: dry fleece, soaking wet ground.
Gideon stared at it. “Well. That settles it. I officially have no more excuses.”
God, however, was not done making things interesting.
Gideon gathered his troops—thousands of them. Finally, something that made sense. A big army to fight a big enemy.
God walked through the camp, looked around, and shook His head.
“Gideon, you have way too many troops.”
Gideon froze. “What?”
“I want the glory, not these troops. Tell everyone who is afraid to go home.”
Gideon turned to the crowd. “Okay! Anyone who’s afraid can leave!”
Twenty-two thousand men left.
Gideon watched them go. “Wait… I didn’t mean all of you…”
Ten thousand remained.
Gideon turned slowly back to God. “So… we’re good, right?”
“Still too many men.”
Gideon stared into the distance.
“What are you saying?” he whispered.
“Take them down to the water,” God said. “I’ll sort them.”
“Sort them?” Gideon asked nervously.
“Yes. Think of it as… divine selection.”
“Of course it is,” Gideon muttered.
At the water, the men drank—some kneeling, others scooping water with their hands and lapping like dogs.
God pointed. “Keep the ones who lapped.”
Gideon counted.
Three hundred.
Gideon Looked at the army. Looked at God.
“This is a joke, right?” he asked. “A test of my sense of humor?”
“Nope.”
Gideon sighed. “Fantastic. I always wanted to fight a massive army with a group small enough to fit in a medium-sized banquet hall.”
God continued, unfazed. “Send the rest home.”
So Gideon did.
Now it was just him… and three hundred men… against an army described basically as “too many to count.”
“Great,” Gideon said. “Couldn’t be better.”
That night, God spoke again. “Get up. Attack the camp. I’ve handed it over to you.”
Gideon peeked over at the Midianite camp. It stretched as far as he could see.
“Of course you have,” he whispered.
He crept closer and overheard a man talking.
“I had a dream,” the man said. “A loaf of bread came tumbling into the camp, knocked over a tent, and everything collapsed!”
Another man replied, “That can only mean one thing—God is handing us over to Gideon.”
Gideon gasped, then hurried back to his men.
“Alright everyone,” Gideon said, suddenly energized. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to divide into three groups. Each of you gets a ram’s horn, an empty pitcher, with a torch inside.”
One soldier raised his hand. “Um… Gideon? Where are the swords?”
“Funny story about that…”
Soon, they surrounded the camp.
At Gideon’s signal—CRASH! The pitchers broke. Torches blazed. Horns blasted.
“FOR THE LORD AND FOR GIDEON!” they shouted.
Inside the camp, chaos exploded.
The Midianites woke up, saw lights everywhere, heard deafening noise, and panicked.
“They’ve surrounded us!” someone screamed.
In the confusion, they started swinging swords… at each other.
Gideon stood there, watching the entire enemy army defeat itself.
He blinked.
Then chuckled.
Then laughed.
“I cannot believe that worked,” he said.
And just like that—
God won again.
Story from Judges 6:33-7:23
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