You Were Created to do Wonders! - The Sanctuary Ministries

DEVOTIONAL PASSAGE

“Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time” (Judges 4:4)

DEVOTIONAL

On Sunday the Father lead me to Judges 4 for our Sunday Worship and I am so glad he did. I had heard the story of Deborah most of my life. But Sunday, my eyes were opened to a deeper more meaningful understanding as I taught this passage of scripture. The story of Deborah is popular and excellent example of our Father using what some consider the least to do something wonderful. Here we have a female leader in Israel, which in itself was quite rare.

This is what we know about this wonder woman, we know her name means honeybee (she stings the enemy, and brings sweet refreshment to her people), she was a prophetess, a judge, a wife to a man named Lapidoth. In my research I discovered her husbands name means fiery torch, or enlightened one. According to the Bible dictionary “Some have rendered the expression “a woman of a fiery spirit,” “a woman of a torch-like” spirit, ” and that she was.

Deborah lived during the period of the Judges, when Israel was not united as a nation under one leader but rather existed as a loose confederation of tribes. Deborah judged Israel in the days when Jabin king of Canaan oppressed the Israelites for twenty years. God used Deborah to rally the Israelites against Jabin. Humanly speaking, the deck was stacked against Israel, and everyone knew it. General Barak was unwilling to go into battle against their Canaanite foes without Deborah, as he knew that her presence in battle was bringing the Spirit of God into battle with him, as she was fiery and passionate about the things of God. And despite the fact that his army was technologically inferior to Jabin’s, Barak’s force of 10,000 Israelites was able to defeat the Canaanite army. Only Sisera, Jabin’s general was left alive (vv. 11–16). Sisera fled until he came to the home of Jael, the wife of a Kenite with whom Sisera’s kingdom was at peace. But Jael’s ultimate loyalty was not to the Kenites but to the God of Israel, and His people. Jael gave shelter to Sisera, but only so that she could lull him into the place where she could kill him with a tent peg to his head (vv. 17–24). The mightiest general in the region at the time was defeated not by a general but by an “ordinary” housewife. This passage hit home for me and those that were in our worship service. Many times in life we are pushed aside, discounted, and underestimated, what I reiterated to those women under the sound of my voice, the Lord delights in using the unexpected to fulfill His will. That is exactly what He did with Deborah and Jael. Deborah proved her ability by leading her people out of 20 years of oppression at the hands of the Canaanites, and wisely lead the people to a rest that lasted for 40 years.

Most of us would likely be considered ordinary people who will never make the history books. From a human perspective, we may not seem all that “great.” Yet from God’s perspective, ordinary is what we wants us to be. He brings about His will through the instrumentality of ordinary people not based on sex, gender or color. The Lord uses the ordinary to do the extraordinary.

Contributed by: Pastor Yolanda Douthit

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