One reason to cling to truths, promises, and blessings is that it was God who gave them to us.
Jephthah and the elders of Gilead strike a deal. If he defeats the Ammonites, then they will recognize him as “head over all the inhabitants of Gilead” (Jdg 11:8). With this settled, Jephthah wisely tries diplomacy first by sending a delegation to the king of Ammon. “What do you have against me, that you have come to fight against me in my land?” he asks (v 12). The king responds that he is only taking back land stolen from them by Israel when they came out of Egypt. Again Jephthah sends messengers, this time with a little history lesson for the king. “Thus says Jephthah: ‘Israel did not take away the land of Moab, nor the land of the people of Ammon’” (v 15). Instead they took a great detour because the kings of Edom and Moab wouldn’t let them pass through. Then when they had made this long detour, they asked Sihon, king of the Amorites, if they could come through his territory. He not only refused, but attacked the Israelites. He lost, and we won his land “from the Arnon to the Jabbok and from the wilderness to the Jordan” (v 22). That is what we occupy east of the Jordan, not your land at all. At this point, Jephthah drives the message home. “The Lord God of Israel has dispossessed the Amorites from before His people Israel; should you then possess it?” (v 23). Chemosh is your god, isn’t he? Then whatever he gives you is yours. Whatever Jehovah gives us is ours. The words fell on deaf ears. Ammon prepared to fight. Just then, “the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah” (v 29), and he began to move through the land, gathering soldiers and momentum: “through Gilead and Manasseh, and…from Mizpah of Gilead he advanced toward the people of Ammon” (v 29). The showdown couldn’t be long in coming now.