Next Level Thinking DevotionalSample

The Odds are for You

Recently, I was talking to a man who was telling me about his struggle with addiction. “Joel, my dad had this same addiction, as did my grandfather. The odds don’t look good for me.” 

Maybe you are thinking something similar today—

“I’ve always been alone; the odds don’t look good for me at this point.” 

“I’ve been in this position for years; the odds just aren’t for me.” 

“The relationships in my family have always been broken; the odds are just against us.”

As long as you keep telling yourself that the odds are against you, you will remain stuck. You are directing your faith against what God says. We have promises from God. The moment you received Christ as Savior, your life was no longer dictated by the “odds.” You have come into a new kingdom. You have the Creator of heaven and earth breathing in your direction. 

God is a God of the impossible. He turns impossible situations into stories of His faithfulness. He parts Red Seas, opens the eyes of the blind, and brings the dead to life. 

Impossible situations are setups for God to do the miraculous if we will release the burden of them to Him. 

In Scripture, a man named Gideon found himself facing a situation with impossible odds. 

Gideon was anointed by God for battle. One day, he found out that his nation was under attack by three armies. Gideon summoned whoever would come for battle, and 35,000 warriors showed up. Although this seems like an adequate army, the enemy’s army had 135,000 men. Gideon’s army was outnumbered five to one. 

But God told Gideon, “You have too many men. If you defeat the enemy, you will think it was in your own strength.” The Lord told Gideon to let all who were afraid return home. Gideon was left with 13,000 men. 

Still, the Lord said there were too many. In the end, Gideon had an army of 300 men. The odds looked impossible. 

God went before Gideon’s army in battle, giving them a supernatural victory. 

No matter what the odds look like, be confident that God and you are a majority—He is a God of the impossible!