Chapter and Verse

In my second year of college, I lived up to the meaning of sophomore by dating a guy I REALLY shouldn’t have. Something didn’t feel right about the relationship, and I kept asking God what I should do.

That was also the year I started writing in a journal because I enjoyed it, and doing so helped me remember what I read during devotions, er, in my Bible that day. The accompanying journal entries that semester are filled with comments like “My sister and her roommate HATE this guy, and they keep asking me why I even talk to him. They think he’s a jerk.”

Day after day, I’d read entries in my college devotional (the now-defunct? Campus Journal) that seemed written just for me: “When we violate God’s law, we may not always have to pay a severe penalty. Sometimes He gives us a warning. It may come through pangs of conscience. It could be through the gentle advice of a friend or a direct rebuke from a family member…. Can I remember a distinct ‘warning ticket’ from God that I neglected?”

I’ve had just a few experiences like that where later, I saw how OBVIOUS it was that God was trying to speak to me, and I just kept saying, “What do you want me to do, God?” Poor God probably felt like banging His head against a wall.

Undoubtedly He felt similar frustration with Gideon in Judges 6. Though I clearly remember learning in Sunday school about the strong Gideon and how he defeated the Midianites while armed with just 300 men and the power of fear, I do not recall being told how, before all that, Gideon was actually kind of a wimp. He didn’t believe what God told him, so he kept asking God for certain signs as confirmation. It’s understandable; we're no different today. “God, SHOULD I marry this person? If you could just point to the verse in the Bible where it says that I should, or just have a skywriting plane post it in the sky, that would be GREAT."