“The Lord is with you, O mighty person of valor.”

As we journey through The Story this year, I continue to be amazed at the people we read about in the Bible who served the Lord. Many of them did extraordinary things. We have seen some of these people in the past week as we have studied the book of Judges together.

One of the people in Judges who stands out is Gideon. The secret to the amazing things he did in rescuing Israel from the Midianites can be seen in how God called him: “The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ’The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor’” — Judges 6:12. Gideon was able to rescue Israel because the Lord was with him.

Charles Marsh, in his book Welcoming Justice, tells of Martin Luther King, Jr. having that kind of encounter with Christ:

“[In January 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.] returned home around midnight after a long day of organizational meetings. His wife and young daughter were already in bed, and King was eager to join them. But a threatening call—the kind of call he was getting as many as 30 to 40 times a day—interrupted his attempt to get some much-needed rest. When he tried to go back to bed, he could not shake the menacing voice that kept repeating the hateful words in his head.

“King got up, made a pot of coffee, and sat down at his kitchen table. With his head buried in his hands, he cried out to God. There in his kitchen in the middle of the night, when he had come to the end of strength, King met the living Christ in an experience that would carry him through the remainder of his life. ‘I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on,’ King later recalled. ‘He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone … He promised never to leave me, no never alone.’

“In the stillness of the Alabama night, the voice of Jesus proved more convincing than the threatening voice of the anonymous caller. The voice of Jesus gave him the courage to press through the tumultuous year of 1956 to the victorious end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. More than that, it gave him a vision for ministry that would drive him for the rest of his life.”

One of the themes of the New Testament is what both Gideon and Martin Luther King, Jr. experienced — that God will be with us as he was with them and many others through the Bible and through history. Yes, God will be with you.

Later this month, we will come to this theme at the end of Jesus’ ministry. On March 24 and 31 we will take a break from The Story on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. On Palm Sunday, we will see in Matthew 21 how God honored Jesus in the Triumphal Entry, and on Easter Sunday, we will go to Matthew 28 and rejoice again in Jesus’ resurrection.

At the end of Matthew 28, Jesus makes the last promise of his ministry on earth when he says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

You may think the people of the Bible did extraordinary things, but he is still with his people and is still doing extraordinary things through those who follow him. He can do extraordinary things in your life, too. He can influence people through you. He says to us as he did to Gideon, “The Lord is with you, O mighty person of valor.”