It seems like it is our very nature, our human need, to find heroes. We look for them in many different places and often the ones we find wind up not being so heroic after all. And then there are those who don’t look much like heroes that turn out to do the most heroic deeds. There were many in the Bible who fit that definition, but none better than the man whose name meant… Desolate Dragged Away One!
How would you like to go through life with everyone thinking that of you every time they said your name. Well, perhaps the apple does not fall too far from the tree. His father’s name was Anath and that meant Afflicted. What a pedigree he had to call his own. But that’s not how God saw it.
Here was a man that God made into a hero and yet he is mentioned only one time in the whole Bible, and even then, not very much is written, but it speaks volumes.
Judg 3:31 And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel.
Here was a simple man who worked with oxen and single-handed he killed 600 mighty Philistines with the only thing he had… a stick for herding oxen. And there is a lesson for each of us in these few words.
We need to be prepared to use whatever God has given us to accomplish the challenges He sets before us. Why? Because that is what we are familiar with and what we are expected to use. Consider Moses. God had him take up the rod that he had used to herd sheep for years. What about David? God had him use the sling that he had killed lions with. If he had tried to use Saul’s armor he would have been weighed down with unfamiliar weapons and no doubt Goliath would have won the day.
What has God put in your hands? What gift has He given you that you know how to use? Are you prepared, like Shamgar, to stand up to those 600 Philistines in your life and do battle for the Lord and bring Him glory? What about those times that God asks you to use your “oxgoad” to help someone, to pray for them, to encourage them, or rise up and stand in the gap for them?
Far too often we hear God’s voice calling us to action and we say… but I don’t have any gift. We slip into the background and look to a Shamgar to step up when we should be saying, God show me what to do. And when He does, we need to take up our gift and serve Him by using it. Remember, the Lord delights in helping us use whatever is in our hands to bring about His purposes in our life. He is the One who puts the desires and interests in our hearts that go along with the gift, all we must do is listen for His command and be prepared to take up the gift… Lord, use it for your glory!
And here is the kicker. Not only in serving Him do we become God’s hero, we will find ourselves being totally fulfilled during our journey here on earth. It is all about being “givers” and not “takers,” being focused on giving out more to others than we are taking in from them. If we focus on the giving out, God will take care of the receiving:
Matt 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
What kind of measure do you want God to use when He does the measuring for you? Perhaps in judging we might be better off if we focused on using what we have been given in serving.
Shamgar who? Oh, the one who killed 600 Philistines with the stick he used every day of his life!