Counseling Corner

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

(Read Judges 7:8-25)

For those of us who have lived in bondage to addictive/compulsive behaviors, loss of self-respect is a familiar feeling. It is easy to begin to see ourselves as chronically weak, small, even hopeless. We may begin to believe that we are destined to bondage, poverty, and failure. When we persist in this view of our life, we give up the possibility of change. We settle for just trying to survive. We live in fear and shame, filling up with resentment as our life remains in the pit. We need to overcome these kinds of negative assumptions about ourselves.

Our first impression of Gideon is of a discouraged young man with little self-respect. His family was the poorest in a small tribe, and he was the least in his family. We first see him as he was threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding the little grain he had from his Midianite oppressors. An angel appeared and called to him, “Mighty hero, the LORD is with you!” (Judges 6:12) Gideon didn’t look or feel like a mighty hero, but God could see his potential. By the end of the story, Gideon had become the deliverer of his people (Judges 6-8). His first step toward success was to see himself as God saw him-a mighty warrior. Then he was able to hope in the possibility of freedom.

We, too, must begin by finding the courage to ourselves in a new light and to summon up hope for a better life. Then as God gives us the strength, we can set about pursuing freedom from the bondage that surrounds us and our family.

~Pastor Tina Cotto

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