Today’s passage is Judges 5:1-18.
Deborah and Barak sing a song that says when the leaders lead, the people follow and sacrifice themselves willingly. They say to the kings to listen because they will sing to the Lord. They praise the Lord. Deborah tells of the people calling her and calling for Barak. They sing of five tribes following them and fighting, and they sing of seven tribes who don’t.
Why do seven tribes follow but five don’t?
Why do the people tell Deborah to wake up four times and sing?
Today the school inspection team finished their work at my school.
They gave us many positive comments and pointed out where we need to do a lot of work.
It was an honest report that I appreciated because it will help guide me as I lead the school over the next few years. It was a report that told me to Wake up, wake up, Edward! (12).
I needed to wake up to all the directives given by the accreditation commission from three years ago, but I chose to focus on just a couple.
Now I need to focus on them all. I was able to wake up because God has been waking me up these last years at Wooridle.
I shared my testimony with the inspectors and said that God had given me a foundation of suffering to stand on.
I confessed my failure to address a big issue that inspectors look for because I didn’t understand how to do it.
Because I didn’t understand, I convinced myself it wasn’t really important. I didn’t wake up.
I have been like that with my redemption history.
It’s important to wake up, wake up and interpret my life through the Word and through Pastor Kim’s sermons. But I keep falling asleep.
I am like the seven tribes who follow Deborah and Barak and the five tribes who don’t follow. I don’t search my heart enough (15, 16). I like to “stay among the campfires” and “linger by the ships.”
It’s important to share my testimony because it’s the story of God’s love in my life.
To linger by the ships is to be ready to run away like Jonah.
That is no commitment to my life or to God.
That’s what I used to do a lot of.
I still do some of it, like not wanting to do my 1:1 THINK homework. Or not want to go on mission trips. I’m still 7:5.
My wake-up application: to apply for the Myanmar mission because I was told I’m too old to go to Nepal and do the trekking that is required to visit villages.
Lord, keep waking me up, keep me singing your praises and your story of deliverance.
