The Lord God said to Gideon, "I will test them to determine who will go with you and who will not." (Judges 7:4)
The 135,000 man Midianite army outnumbered Gideon so he chose 32,000 men to fight, but then God stepped in and said He would test them to determine who would go with him and who would not. God kept 300 and made the rest go back home because the others didn't have the right attitude. God said to Gideon that whoever was afraid and timid could go home. Gideon was victorious because he had God on his side. It doesn't matter how large of an army your enemy has, because God plus one is the majority. We learn that from Gideon.
Numbers do not matter. When I was in the KKK, I was constantly asked by the media "How many people are in the Klan? Give us numbers! We want numbers!" I never gave them numbers. The KKK has a policy to never give out numbers. The reason is because they do not have large numbers of people in their gang and whatever number that they give to the media would be attacked and seen as weak; regardless if they had 300 or 1 million members because even if they had a million, it would be considered weak compared to the hundreds of millions of people who are not Klan. What I have learned from my experience in that gang, is numbers do not matter when something treacherous needs to be carried out. That is where people who discount them as 'small and insignificant' make their mistake. It only takes a couple of people to carry out a dastardly act. Timothy McVeigh, who was a Ku Klux Klan member, only had perhaps one other accomplice when he bombed the Oklahoma City Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring many more.
The KKK has struck fear into the hearts of people in many areas even though they are outnumbered. For instance, I can give plenty of examples where the Klan controlled counties in many states across America, even though there were only about 40 Klan members in a county of maybe 40,000. Now you may ask yourself how in the world can that happen? The answer is simple. The gang of 40 were together and the rest of the 40,000 people in the area were not. It is pretty easy for a gang to control an area when the people there won't unify and take a stand against them. That is how gangs have been able to control neighborhoods in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and other places. They put together a small army of thugs, that will strike fear into the hearts and minds of the residents and they can virtually get away with whatever they want to do.
It is not until the residents come together and unify, or even a few unify and take a stand to fight them off are they able to gain their freedom. The old 70's movie "Defiance" starring Jan-Michael Vincent is a perfect example. A street gang terrorized the neighborhood and the people were afraid to file charges because those who did were beaten to pulp by the gang. The residents chose to live in fear and to be at the mercy of the scumbags, until a merchant marine played by Jan-Michael Vincent got a handful of people to stand up and fight these mongrels after they murdered a local neighborhood man and beat a little boy to a pulp. When the rest of the neighborhood saw the few standing up and fighting the gang, they grabbed whatever they could get their hands on and joined them, beating the gang to smithereens and making sure the gang would never gain an upper hand in that neighborhood again! They even filed charges on the gang after giving them the beating of their lives.
Also, a few years back, there was a gang of neo-Nazis in a small town in Montana that terrorized the citizens. They even smashed out the windows of a Jewish family that hung a menorah in their window at Christmas. The town newspaper printed an entire page of a menorah and gave them to area residents for free and asked everyone in town to hang that in their window whether they were Jewish or not. They did. They sent a message to the neo-Nazis, "No Nazi terror in our town!" The whole town stood up to them and even surrounded the houses of the neo-Nazis and sent them a message, which was received because the neo-Nazis packed up and left town.
Strength doesn't always come in numbers, however, if you will take a stand, and have God on your side, God plus one equals the majority! Look at Israel. They are outnumbered and are tiny compared to the millions upon millions of Muslim countries that surround them, threatening to annihilate them almost every day. They have been bombed, attacked, and bullied for many years, but in spite of the Muslim terror they have had to endure, the Muslims have never been able to defeat them. Israel still stands strong today. The reason is God is on Israel's side and Satan is on the side of the Muslims. (Genesis 12:3) Satan never has and never will be able to defeat God. So why does Satan keep trying? Well the way I see it, he has nothing to lose, because he knows his future is the everlasting lake of fire and nothing can change that, so he will cause as much devastation and destruction that he can until his time comes when he has to bow and confess Jesus is Lord and then be cast into the lake of fire while the entire world watches. (Revelation 20:10)
Don't forget also that it was just 52 lone men who picked up their guns and fired upon the mightiest army on earth at the time, the British Empire, and out of that America was born! Those 52 lone men, had God on their side!
Stop worrying about numbers and start praising God for being on your side. If God be for you who can be against you? (Romans 8:31) I can't count how many times I heard from family, friends, and of course enemies, that I would never amount to anything, that I would always be a bum, that I was only dreaming if I thought I could travel the world as a minster, and that I was too stupid for people to want to listen to anything I had to say. Yes, those things hurt when I heard them and I am not going to pretend that they didn't. However, I somehow managed to not let what they said affect my drive and my calling from God. I was determined to prove them wrong, but more importantly, I was determined more than ever to please God and serve Him. After all, it was Christ who died for me and gave me eternal life and blessings while here on earth and not those people. That would be a good thing for you to remember. Philippians 4:13 says you can do ALL things through Christ who gives you strength. The reason some people do not succeed is because they choose to believe the word of the negative ninnies and not the Word of the Living God. Romans 1:17 says the just shall live by faith. It does not say they shall live by words of the negative ninnies.
By the way, if you are surrounded by negative ninnies, get away from them! Dump them and get you some positive friends. Surround yourself with people who believe in you. It is a lot easier to succeed when you have people around you that say 'you can' instead of 'you can't.' Trust me I know. God told Moses He would place His spirit on 70 others so they could help him carry the load that he was given to carry. (Numbers 11:16-17) You need people around you that have positive attitudes! Just because somebody is 'gifted,' 'talented,' or 'popular,' that does not mean they belong in your life.
Your life will always move in the direction of your most dominant thoughts. Our thoughts are controlled by what we surround ourselves with. If you let losers dominate your thoughts and negative ninnies speak into your life then that is what will dominate your thoughts. Be truthful and ask yourself if you have chosen friends based on what they can do for you, what their standing and popularity is in society, or how they can make you appear. I remember I used to hang with a so-called 'in crowd' and even dated a woman that was pretty on the outside but another name for a female dog on the inside by the way she treated others that wasn't in her social standing. I didn't realize I was demeaning myself by choosing to be with this crowd. They were all phonies who used people and then stabbed them in the back in order to climb the social ladder and as human beings, we deserve much better than that. Just because you are a Christian doesn't mean you won't fall victim to being around these types of people either, because the example I just gave were so-called church people and ministers!
I have met some of the fakest phoniest jerks you could ever imagine in all my years in the ministry. I am talking about some pastors too! Some of them have been the most vicious, sinful satanic people one could ever run across. What makes them even more evil than most people on earth, is because they are supposed to know the Lord and be teachers of His Word, but they gossip and slander others and use the Lord to do it. If you think about it though, these are the people Jesus had a problem with who He even called snakes and hypocrites! They are the ones who sought to murder Him too because that is what was in their hearts. Jesus exposed them for what they were and they didn't like it. These were the Pharisees, the church leaders of that day. Today, in these modern times these types of people are still around bent on causing devastation and destruction to anyone who doesn't fit their standards.
The choice is yours to make. You can either run with the pigs and live in their slop, or you can let God pick your pals. Ask Him to bring people into your life who will encourage you,; not discourage you.
As my spiritual father, Pastor A. Marvin Cain of Waynesville, North Carolina once said, "A true friend is one who knows everything there is to know about you, and still stands by you anyway."
©Johnny Lee Clary International
