Washington Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is found in Judges 3 starting in verse 12. The Israelites had started a pattern of serving God and then falling away. Then another country would oppress them, and they would cry out to God and He would send deliverance.

In this particular story we see the same pattern. In Judges 3:15 it says that they “cried out to the Lord and he gave them a deliverer - Ehud, a left-handed man.” That is why I like the story. I am left handed and from an early age I’ve had to learn to do things differently than the majority of the world. Since most people are right handed there were very few that could teach me how to do certain things. As a child there were also comments from others who would watch me do things to ask me how I did things like that.

Well, the story of Ehud teaches a couple of things. First is that when God’s people pray and cry out to God, He listens and sends some type of deliverance. They had fallen away from God. Yet when they called on God He listened. In our world today, there are all sorts of things that have been thrown at us as a church. In our communities and the media there are things that constantly attack the values of the Bible. It also wears us down and tries to weaken us. This is something that we can constantly take to God in prayer.

Second is that sometimes God calls us to do things differently in order to overthrow what is oppressing us. Ehud was left-handed and made a knife and strapped it on his right side. This was not the normal place a knife would be found. So, when he went to pay tribute to the oppressive king they didn’t think to look on his right side for a weapon. When he was alone with the evil king he was able to kill the king because the weapon was in a different location and was unexpected. God at times tells us to consider other ways of reaching our world. He wants us to be faithful to Him and think outside of the box in order to deal with the oppressive forces that try to rule over us.

As you think about your world and the temptations that surround you, please make it a total matter of prayer and then move forward with God on your side. And if He shares with you a different way of doing something, still move forward with God on your side.