How would you feel if you had just seen God and escaped alive?
The modern believer has difficulty putting himself in the sandals of an oppressed Israelite whose family worshiped Baal, and whose only impressions of the God of Israel came from oral history: of his nation’s deliverance from Egyptian slavery, its sojourn in the wilderness and its miraculous conquest of Canaan. Gideon had stories of wonderful deeds recounted by the elders of his people. Meanwhile, Christians thousands of years later are habituated to platform messages in which the word “Abba” is alleged to give us license to crawl into Daddy’s lap for a good cuddle.
Ugh. It’s a frivolous and childish view of God, and it’s not the least bit like what Gideon experienced when the angel of the Lord appeared to him.