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Continue reading →: IRON SHARPENS IRON: RALLYING YOUR BAND OF BROTHERSThe list in 2 Samuel 23 is easy to skip. Tucked near the end of the book, it reads like a catalogue — names, lineages, brief descriptions of particular acts of valor. Josheb-Basshebeth the Tahkemonite, who killed eight hundred men in a single encounter. Eleazar son of Dodai, who stood…
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Continue reading →: KNEELING IN THE KILL ZONE: HUMILITY AS THE ULTIMATE WEAPONCHAPTER SIX Solomon asks for the wrong thing. Or rather — Solomon is in a position where he could ask for anything, and what makes the moment extraordinary is what he chooses not to ask for. God appears to Solomon in a dream at Gibeon and says: “Ask for whatever…
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Continue reading →: DEFEND THE STRONGHOLD: PROVISION AND PROTECTION IN PERILHis brother Hanani arrives from Judah with a report: the returned exiles are in trouble. The walls of Jerusalem are broken down, the gates burned, the city defenseless. Nehemiah asks about the condition of the people and he gets the same answer — distress, reproach, vulnerability. The city that was…
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Continue reading →: CHARGE WITH COURAGE: FACING FEARS LIKE JOSHUA AT AIJericho had fallen perfectly — seven days of marching, seven trumpet blasts, one corporate shout, and the walls collapsed. No siege equipment. No casualties. Pure divine intervention in response to pure obedience. It was the kind of victory that could ruin a man if he wasn’t careful, because it suggested…
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Continue reading →: TESTED IN THE TRENCHES: ENDURANCE UNDER ENEMY FIREThis is not how military strategy usually works. You don’t win battles by reducing your forces. You don’t defeat a coalition of 135,000 Midianite and Amalekite raiders—”thick as locusts”, the text says, their camels beyond counting—by sending men home. But that is precisely what God tells Gideon to do, and…

