Don’t let Fear Keep You in the Winepress

Daily Scripture Threshing for Monday, July 10, 2023

Today’s Text: Judges 6:1-16

Key Verses: Judges 6:11 (NLT): “Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites.”

We all face fear of different sorts everyday. Sometimes, they are necessary protection, creating alerts that are part of our natural survival strategies. However, when fear gains control of your control system, it holds you down, and is not beneficial to you. Fear of rejection, failure, or simply fear of “the unknown” makes you lose your guard and hold you down on the spot.

Gideon’s is a clear example for us here. His fear took a hold of his healthy self-esteem and convinced him he could not get a good outcome. No one threshes in the wine press. You need a plain land to thresh so that the wind can blow off your chaffs give you a easy separation of your wheats or barleys. But his fear of the enemy, turned Gideon literally to a robber in his own vineyard. He had to sneak food into the pit dug to press wine for the fear of being caught by the enemies.

We are all terrified of letting our families down; of making mistakes or not doing enough, of becoming irrelevant and facing rejection. However, we must not let those fears gain control of us, or we would become ostriches in human bodies. The story of Gideon illustrates what fear can do to us—how the enemies use it to box us in and limit us—our freedom, our ability to trust God, to receive blessings from Him. The issue here is not about never being afraid, but about what you let fear bring out of you.

Never let fear limit your view of God’s ability to bless, help, defend, liberate and give you peace regardless of the situation. The Lord is with you, says the angel! Don’t stay down in that pit. Today’s winepress may be burying yourself unnecessarily in pursuit of money when you’re supposed to get out and worship; when you shut your mouth for the fear of persecution; when you hold unto a wrong things or wrong jobs for the fear of failure, what you shall eat, cloth, where to hide your head and/or how to shape a future.

Quote for the Day: “To step out in your strength, you must defeat your fear, stop threshing in the wine press, and step out by faith.” (Simon Olatunji)

Prayer: Dear Lord, please speak Your strength in to my fearful lungs so that by faith I may step out of every lowland and defeat every foe. Give me strength greater than my burden and tasks—in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

With all my love and prayers,

Rev Simon Wale Olatunji, Ph.D.

Your Darling Bishop (DaBishop)

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[Daily Scripture Threshing is a devotional guide of The House of Prayer Evangel Church USA distributed for free use by individuals, small groups, families, and Christian churches]

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