STORIES OF THE FAITHFUL AND FOOLISH:  Hope Hidden in Your Backpack

You will not get any of our father's inheritance, for you are the son of a prostitute. Judges 11:2

            Jephthah was behind the eight ball from day one, a product of his father's immorality with a prostitute.  He did not have a biological mother in his life.  His father was not the ideal parental model.  Through no fault of his own he was labeled-an accident, a black sheep, a misfit.  He was mistreated by his half-brothers and ultimately driven from home.  He was left totally alone and destitute with no family inheritance and no vocational skill.  If ever the odds were stacked against an individual, it was the case with Jephthah.

            So, he made his way to the outpost city of Tob with a backpack full of rejection, pain, and bitterness.   There he settled into a community of rebels, renegades, and rejects on the fringe of the cultural world.  There he sought to nurse his wounds and forget his hurt.  How could anything positive occur in this place and under these conditions?

Do you identify with Jephthah?  Are you weighed down with a backpack of hurts and hindrances thrust upon you through no choice of your own?  Jepthah's story is for you.

The young refugee had developed toughness in his harsh family circumstances.  He had learned to fight and fend for himself as the daily target of abuse.  It might not seem like much, but it was enough.  It was enough to draw other societal outcasts into his circle of influence.  He became a leader who parlayed his pain into a passion to make a difference.

In the midst of the story we find that God had not forgotten Jepthah.  He had been at work in his wounded heart through the ongoing struggles.  Chased from home and hope, God had followed him and Jephthah responded.  Refusing to blame God for the hard path he traveled, Jephthah depended on the Lord for his success (Judges 11:9) and decided his course of action in the presence of the Lord (11:11).  God had not abandoned Jephthah and Jephthah had continued to hold on to God.

Now the leader of a skilled band of warriors, Jephthah and his men became hired protectors for small communities fearful of threats from local raiders.  There reputation grew, until an unexpected turn of events occurred and Jephthah is asked by his family back in Gilead to come and provide protection for them.  In an act of immense grace, he agrees to return and fight on their behalf.  He defeats the enemies of Gilead and is installed as leader of his people.  Who could have imagined?  Not Jephthah.  Not his family.  Only God.

What's hidden in your backpack?  Jephthah found that God had been at work all along through his painful past.  There among the heavy burden of his circumstances God had placed and honed abilities and character and purpose that would transform his future.  As he maintained faith in God in the midst of hard and dark days, he allowed the Lord to work out his ultimate amazing plan for Jephthah's life, a life that would make a difference.

            Is this you?  Then don't give up.  Don't give up on yourself.  Don't give up on God.  There in the very burden of your backpack is the hidden means to your divinely intended blessing and success.  And God will bring it to fulfillment as you trust him, just as he did for a no-count boy named Jephthah.