Daring Faith: Jael’s Resourcefulness

Let’s face it: sometimes, life can feel a bit ordinary. We may dream of adventure and far off places, but most of us wake up each morning to an alarm clock, and if you are like me, a couple rounds with the snooze button. We live in the same neighborhood, take the same route to work or school, run the same errands, and pay the same bills. In the midst of our everyday living, we can all too easily forget to look for the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Jael in Judges 4 could relate. Her life was incredibly ordinary. She lived in a tent in the desert. She seemed far removed from anything exciting, until one day when an extraordinary thing happened. The enemy of God’s people, the terrifying war general Sisera knocked on her front door. She welcomed him into her tent. Exhausted from battle, he fell asleep, and she quickly began to plot. She had no weapons. She had no combat training. All she knew was that an enemy was in her tent, and she had to do something.
So she improvised. She picked up a tent peg and a hammer, seemingly ordinary items in her ordinary life. But when put to use, they quickly became weapons that ended Sisera and his tyranny.
Jael had daring faith that made her boldly resourceful. Sometimes, that’s what faith is. It’s using what you’ve got.
God specializes in using what seems ordinary to bring about the extraordinary. In fact, God sees what you have right now as all the necessary ingredients for a miracle. And yet if you’re not careful, you can easily become blinded to the extraordinary opportunities to exercise faith right in front of you.
Beware of underestimating the power of what you do and overestimating the power of what you don’t have. Instead, imagine what would happen if you stopped worrying about what you didn’t have and began putting to use what you do have?