Your Liabilities Can Prove to be Your Greatest Assets

Judges 11:1–4 (ESV) Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead was the father of Jephthah. 2 And Gilead’s wife also bore him sons. And when his wife’s sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, “You shall not have an inheritance in our father’s house, for you are the son of another woman.” 3 Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob, and worthless fellows collected around Jephthah and went out with him. 4 After a time the Ammonites made war against Israel.

Jephthah is a flawed man. He is also infamous for a terrible decision in life that he really should not be defined by. But it happened and we'll get to it, but not today. For right now I want you to look at who Jephthah was from birth to adulthood. The definition of his reality during that phrase could be described as one thing: A raw deal in life. 

Consider that he is the son of a prostitute. His father's one night stand before settling down and raising sons. Being the biological outsider, his half-brothers made sure he knew his place was not among them. His only reprieve was escaping to a land of "worthless fellows" whom he attracted to himself. On the surface of his life, everything terrible was handed to him and he had a serious deficiency in status among his own people and family. 

What do you do when life hands you a bad deal? You cannot change what your parents did to make you who you are. You cannot change how people will perceive you based on your environment, ethnicity or upbringing. You cannot expect equal opportunity or benefits. The idea that life is supposed to be fair ENDED with the garden of Eden. You can either wallow in self-pity or you can move forward and do something with what God has allowed you to experience.

On the outside, Jephthah looks like the exact opposite of what a man who would save Israel should look like. But notice that as soon as war breaks out and the nation needs a man who can fight, they look to the one they cast out for supposedly being "worthless."


Judges 11:5–6 (ESV) And when the Ammonites made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob. 6 And they said to Jephthah, “Come and be our leader, that we may fight against the Ammonites.”

Perhaps they knew Jephthah was a fighter from growing up. Perhaps they figured Jephtha's bad associations only steeled for warfare and brazen to lead the charge against a heinous enemy. What I want you to see is that the very UNFAIR life Jephthah was handed actually served to shape him into the soldier God wanted and the nation who rejected him desperately needed. He's a lot like Jesus in that sense.

Jephthah will fight and win in dramatic fashion. His win gets overshadowed by his foolish vow but the evidence is clear that this man was made to lead armies and win battles. He was made this way in spite of the seemingly "unfair" actions against him which started long before he was even born. 

So back to you. Are you going to blame your lot in life on what others did to you? What family or city or subsection of town you were raised in? Are you going to carry around a mentality that because harm was done to you or your ancestry you can never get out, move up or accomplish anything? What a foolish way to live! God is for you, follower of Christ! Believe and receive that! Then start expecting that the Lord who turned the Cross of execution into a sign of hope can turn your life's greatest trouble and injustice into the recipe of His purpose! 

You cannot redefine yourself by expecting life to "make up" for your perceived unfairness. You CAN expect Got to leverage all things for your future good (Romans 8:28). Those same people who rejected Jephthah came back to follow him when the going got tough because they knew he had been made tough through life's unfair experiences. 

So you can believe God will turn your liabilities into your greatest assets or you can keep clutching to that worthless excuse for why you can't get anywhere in life. Lots of people have done that for as long as humans have been around. Don't you be one of them, you can be so much better than that.