When God Showed Up For Gideon

When God Showed Up For Gideon

Scripture: Judges 6:11–24

Gideon was hiding.

Not fighting. Not leading. Not standing tall. He was threshing wheat in a winepress—doing farm work in a place meant for grapes—trying not to be seen. The Midianites had stripped the land bare, and fear had become a way of life. Survival meant staying small and staying quiet.

And that is when God showed up.

The Angel of the LORD sat down under an oak tree, as if He had all the time in the world, and spoke words that must have sounded almost offensive to Gideon’s ears:

“The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.”

A valiant warrior? Gideon was hiding in a hole.

God’s words didn’t match Gideon’s circumstances, his actions, or his self-image. And that’s the point. God was declaring who Gideon would become. His response is honest—almost raw.

“If the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us?”

In other words: If You’re really here, God, why does everything feel so broken?

God doesn’t rebuke him for the question or walk away. He stays, listens and speaks again.

“Go in this your strength and deliver Israel … Have I not sent you?”

God sees courage where we see fear. God speaks identity before ability.

Gideon keeps pushing back. He lists his weaknesses, his family’s insignificance, his own inadequacy. And God responds with a promise, not a pep talk:

“Surely I will be with you.”

That is the turning point. God does not remove the fear first. He adds His presence. Gideon will still tremble, still ask for signs, still struggle forward—but he will not do it alone.

When God shows up, He doesn’t always change our situation immediately. Sometimes He changes how we see ourselves inside it. He calls us out of hiding—not by shaming us, but by naming us.

Gideon built an altar there and called it The LORD is Peace. Not because the battle was over—but because God had come near.

God revealed Himself as the One who meets us in our fear, speaks hope and calls us by what His grace will make us—not by what fear has reduced us to.

When God shows up, hiding places become holy ground, identity begins to change and fear no longer gets the final word.