We will review some of the things that we learned from the book of Judges.  First, it wasn't long after the death of Joshua before the people of Israel strayed away from God, as they had always tended to do.  This is a tendency that still exists today.  People follow God as long as they can see what He is doing in their lives, maybe connected to a particular church leader, but then when they no longer see a physical evidence of God's presence, they turn away from Him.  The people of Israel were God's people in name only when this happened, just as some people are God's people in name only in the world today.  Next, we see that when the people of Israel turned away from God, He no longer offered them His protection, and they were defeated by other nations.  As followers of Christ today, if we turn away from God, we should not be surprised if we lose His protection.  Of course, we will never cease to be one of God's children if we have put our faith in Him, but we may lose our victory over the power of the world.  If we are acting by our own understanding instead of by the power and leadership of the Holy Spirit, then we may question why God is allowing certain things to happen in our lives and may go hunting for answers somewhere other than from God.  Then, we learned that the people would call out to God again, and He would raise up a judge to deliver them from bondage.  Today, we have a Savior to deliver us from the bondage of sin if we will only call out to him in repentance and faith.  Once we have accepted Christ as Savior and Lord of our life, we no longer have to call out to Him for salvation, but if we stray away from doing His will, we may still find ourselves in need of deliverance from a situation that we have gotten ourselves in.  Our faith can waver between total trust in God and complete questioning of Him if we aren't careful.  Often, this occurs in times of prosperity more than in times of need.  In these cycles of faith on the part of the people of Israel, it was only when they were in great need that they called out to God again.