When Failure Is Victory
Kayla Reay (Victoria, Australia)
[The Israelites] asked, “Shall we go up again to fight against the Benjamites, our fellow Israelites, or not?” The Lord responded, “Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands.” - Judges 20:28 (NIV)
The story in Judges 20:18-48 used to confuse me. The Israelites asked God for counsel on whether to go to battle. God told them to fight. The Israelites listened, and they lost, suffering 22,000 casualties. The Israelites went back to God to ask for counsel, and the reply was the...
TODAY'S PRAYER Heavenly Father, may our strength in you never falter. And may you continue to finish your perfect work in us. Amen.
Judges 20:18-28
18 Then the Israelites marched up to Bethel to ask for direction from God. They inquired, “Who should go up first to fight against the Benjaminites for us?” And the LORD said, “Let the tribe of Judah be first.” 19 So the next morning, the Israelites got up and camped near Gibeah. 20 They marched out to fight against the Benjaminites, lining up in battle formation against them at Gibeah. 21 But the Benjaminites marched out from Gibeah and cut down twenty-two thousand Israelite men that day. 23 So the Israelites went back up and wept before the LORD until evening. They asked the LORD, “Should we move in again to fight our relatives the Benjaminites?” And the LORD replied, “March out against them.” 22 The Israelite troops regrouped and lined up in battle formation again in the same place they had lined up the first day. 24 The Israelites moved in against the Benjaminites the second day. 25 But the Benjaminites marched out of Gibeah to meet them on that second day and cut down another eighteen thousand Israelite men, all of whom were armed with swords. 26 Then all the Israelite troops went back up to Bethel and wept, just sitting there in the LORD’s presence. They fasted that whole day until evening. Then they offered entirely burned offerings and well-being sacrifices to the LORD. 27 Now in those days the chest containing God’s covenant was there, 28 and Phinehas, Eleazar’s son and Aaron’s grandson, was in charge of ministering before it. The Israelites asked the LORD, “Should we march out once again to fight our relatives the Benjaminites or should we give up?” And the LORD replied, “March up, for I’ll hand them to you tomorrow.”
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY God will use my moments of discouragement to complete a good work in me.
PRAYER FOCUS Someone who feels defeated
Gottawanna find love and peace thank you God, thank you Al-Anon, thank you Alcoholics Anonymous
The Upper Room was the original devotional that early AA Members used and read.
they also used The Upper Room, a Methodist publication that provided a daily inspirational message, interdenominational in its approach.
Usually, the person who led the Wednesday meeting took something from The Upper Room [the Methodist periodical mentioned earlier] or some other literature as a subject. S
“Then there was that little nickel book The Upper Room,” she recalled. “They figured we could afford a nickel for spiritual reading. They impressed on us that we had to read that absolutely every morning. There wasn’t any well-equipped bathroom in A.A. that didn’t have a copy. And if you didn’t see it opened to the right day, you immediately began to suspect them.”
Bill Wilson remembered a time when four drunks, still shaking and not knowing what it was about, were staying with Wally and Annabelle. “They would start out in the morning reading from The Upper Room and say the prayers,” he recalled. “
Thank you for your love and prayers - thank you for reading this - thank you God bless you for the healing by being here you are blessing us.
The Books And Materials Early AAs Read
By Dick B.
Early AAs were readers. The Bible was the written word of God. The daily devotionals were written guides. Oxford Group people wrote. Sam Shoemaker wrote. Anne Smith wrote. And there were a great many books available for reading. Dr. Bob was an avid reader, and so was his colleague Henrietta Seiberling. Every pioneer A.A. meeting had tables set out in T. Henry’s house where literature was available. Dr. Bob recommended and circulated many books. He kept a journal which recorded the books loaned, and he quizzed the alcoholics on the Bible and on the written materials they had borrowed from him. Whatever their proclivity for reading, early AAs all attested to the presence of the Bible and The Upper Room. They mentioned The Runner’s Bible. They mentioned E. Stanley Jones books. They mentioned Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World. They mentioned My Utmost for His Highest. They mentioned James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh. They mentioned the popular Glenn Clark books, Emmet Fox books, and Harry Emerson Fosdick books. There were religious books, and almost every one elaborated on some aspect of ideas AAs were borrowing from the Bible and the Oxford Group for their basic principles.
There was plenty of material on the Bible, prayer, healing, divine guidance, the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and the Book of James. There were Oxford Group/Shoemaker materials on finding God, changing lives, conversion, the guidance of God, fellowship, witness, and the teachings of Jesus. There has, perhaps, never been a fellowship with such diversity of subject matter at the immediate beck and call of its participants. Nor with such encouragement of its study by the “leadership.”
KDTAHGSDRSG
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