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Qualification comes from God

Judges 6:15-16 

“My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family. The LORD answered, I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive” 

We live in a world of qualifications. There is a conditioning that has been installed to everyone of us from when we were young without even realising it. To get into secondary school, we have to pass certain exams. To get into sixth form or college we have to pass our GCSE’s, and the list goes on and on. We are given exams to measure our capabilities, in the hope that we can be qualified for a job in the future. Even when we finish education, there are interviews, assessments and skills that qualify us.  

From this, it has given us the mindset that in everything, if we don’t have the skills or qualifications, that thing isn’t within our reach. We assume that without the appropriate skillset, we can’t achieve certain things, and with most measures that is true, but with God, things are fundamentally different.  He doesn’t work under the parameters of worldly qualifications, because He is the very source of it.  

Focussing on the context behind the verse, Gideon is in a sense bargaining with God. He too has been adopted into this worldly conditioning of qualifications, and believes he is not capable of defeating the Midianites. God is reassuring Gideon throughout this chapter that he will be with him.  

For us, we may think that we are incapable, or don’t possess the right things to fulfil God’s will but it’s not through your qualifications that fulfils God’s will, it’s through his. We are not working by our own understanding or strength, because if we were, none of us would be qualified, it is only and will only ever be through God, who His spirit lives through us. Gideon looked at his own strength, saying, “I am the least in my family”. How many times have we done that? Have we looked at our incapabilities and limited God? 

I don’t know your background, I don’t know how old you are, or where you are in life, but none of those things matter, because God isn’t dictated by your incapabilities, His strength is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9) 

And if there’s one thing you leave with today is something I heard recently from a video, “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies those he calls”. 

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