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Gideon 6-6-09 Text:
Judges 6:1-16; 7:1-8 ● This
is a low-point in
When it came to their experience of God, they were telling someone
else’s story, and that always lacks passion (heart) and authenticity and
capacity for compelling us to personal involvement. Nobody’s buyin’ it… they
cannot even convince themselves. ●
Gideon reminds me of a guy whose “tried this whole God-thing and it just
hasn’t worked out”.
And, who do we talk to when
God lets us down? Usually ourselves, but in that condition, we are not
likely to get very good advice. Admittedly, our view of life, ourselves and
God is a bit ‘skewed’. ●
Gideon is dealing with fear and fear always distorts reality and prevents us
from being ‘present’, because we’re always somewhere else--- in another
tragic scenario we have formulated. He is feeling abandoned and victimized. He is
overwhelmed to the point of complacency and apathy (without heart). Gideon
believes that “resistance is futile”, so he decides to just lie there and
let life happen to him, accept the inevitable. He’ll be content to ‘eek out’
a life in seclusion, virtually ignoring the obvious disorder and dysfunction
happening all around him. ● If
you didn’t know God better, you would think he was mocking Gideon when he
addressed him as “mighty hero”. I
noticed something as I glanced through my high school yearbook recently. I
was glaringly absent from the
“Most likely to…” section of
the annual. But
those selections never took into consideration who I could become or what I
could accomplish if I were to make myself available to the presence and
power of God. ● One
of the apparent and really fascinating truths about God portrayed in the
Scripture is that he always sees us as we can be (or were meant to be) with
him and not who we think we are. In a
sense, that is what is most ‘true’ (real) about us. The challenge facing us
is the willingness to believe the truth about God, about ourselves.
“ Sanctify them by your word; your
word is truth…”, Jesus prayed in John 17.
(sanctify--- renew; set apart as
purposeful and unique) So,
God speaks what’s true about us and then invites us live and grow into that
reality. God is always attempting to get us to realize our “true selves”
[dearly loved child, made right with God, forgiven, nothing can separate you
from his love, etc.]
~It should never come as
a surprise to us that our life of faith requires ‘courage’.
We are seldom afraid when our situation is manageable; when the
troubling life-question has a readily available answer; when we appear
bigger than our circumstance. But when God invites us to participate
with him, it’s always into something bigger than ourselves; something we can
only successfully accomplish ‘with’ him (he has promised to be “with” us,
but we must also be “with” him).
~But, we don’t normally
pursue a life which requires courage. We
will, at times, place ourselves into situations which offer the “rush”, but
for the most part, we value predictability. The only caution is that we then
start to develop a theology to explain our life: God is predictable, life is
manageable… and ‘we all lived happily ever after’. Did
you realize that courage and fear both require believing in/trusting in what
we can’t see? Despair is simply believing “only” what we see!
Here’s what our life of
faith typically looks like:
A moment--- something
unpredictable and uncontrollable interrupts our current level of comfort and
completely shatters the “monotony”. But, it re-distributes our energies and
gets our attention.
A struggle--- to reach
some logical conclusion or practical explanation for my seemingly irrational
dilemma. Our purpose? Identify the problem, devise a strategy to eliminate
it and return to my comfortable existence. During this time, our head is
usually offering all kinds of explanations that our heart will not accept.
A collision--- when our
preconceived notions about God run head-on into our current reality, because
in crisis, our circumstance IS our reality.
Surrender--- where we
resolve to trust God, which births hope. It’s courageously offering
ourselves to the one so stubbornly committed to love (1 John 4:18)
Perspective (or, the “ahhhh
moment”)--- only happens for those who endure [2 Corinthians 1:9
“But this happened that we might not
rely on ourselves, but on God…” ]
~There’s something about
grace that’s situational. What I
mean is, that we seem to get the direction we need or the courage necessary
once it’s required, but often not before then. In the meantime, we end up
with a great deal of uncertainty and often looking foolish for having
believed (John 9: blind man; Jesus spit and made mud. Pool of Siloam---
‘sent’). The clarity we seek usually only comes as we respond (obey) in the
current context.
When you simply function on what you “do know”, things most often
become clearer; when you refuse to act on what you already know, you will
remain paralyzed by “all that you don’t know”.
“Go in the strength you
have…’ then,
expect more grace!
Responding to the grace presently at work in our lives seems to ensure the
‘sufficient grace’. Grace is dynamic, it’s responsive. It’s not just some
energy that we have in reserve for those challenging life-seasons. It’s the
present interaction of God which keeps us dependent.
“I will be with you”.
When I play b-ball with the boys from club, I can confidently choose to
partner with the youngest and least experienced boys because I know that,
with me, they are assured success. They don’t need 10 other boys… they just
need me!
~Maybe a better question
than, “Where are you, God?” is, “Where am I?”
“What does my current posture and
approach to life indicate about what I believe to be true of God or what I
expect from life? If I’m cowering in a wine-press threshing wheat, what does
that say about me?
Listen, we will often be asked to trust beyond what we feel we are
currently able to handle. And most of us, if we are honest, have this
unspoken expectation that if we can at least give God the impression that we
are trying, he will certainly eliminate the challenging life-circumstance.
And that creates tension, because we’re trying our best, and the
circumstance just seems to continue to deteriorate. The
fact is, we are always capable of much more than we are aware, but not
absent of grace; not independent of God’s interaction.
~Often, we are only
willing to trust God when it appears that we have fewer options
God has this way of leveraging all of the odds in such a way that it becomes
undeniable that it was God’s presence and power and not human ingenuity
which fulfilled the purpose.
Sometimes God seems to allow us to realize the insufficiency of our support
systems in order to reveal his power in our lives. ● God
said to Gideon at one point, “I can’t
do it with that many people. But, you’ll think you can and did if you are
successful” [32,000 to 300: 450 to 1 odds--- that sounds like God,
doesn’t it?] ● No
reasonable person would ever look at Gideon’s army and conclude that they
were responsible for the victory under such circumstances.
Gideon did what most of us would expect as he prepared for battle: he’s
recruiting warriors, right? God says,
“No. Get some guys from the marching band and a few from the pottery club.”
Blow
the horn, smash the jar, hold up the light and yell! (great strategy, huh?)
~Be
reminded that the certainty of God’s promise to us and his presence with us
is no guarantee of an uneventful journey.
“Trust happens” when your course of action does not change despite the
anticipated outcome.
If God showed you the
life ahead of you, and didn’t edit out all of the painful realities, would
you follow anyway?
“Jesus said this to
indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said,
‘Follow me’”.
(John 21:18).
~I’m convinced that many
times in my own life I don’t have “great faith” because nothing in my life
requires it! ● In
life, we will eventually arrive at the point: -
where we are still left with more questions than answers, - of
frustration over all of our failed strategies and formulas for figuring God
out, -
where we truly detest “pad answers” and a “clichéd” faith, … BUT,
surprisingly, we will discover an enlarged capacity to experience a more
authentic faith. ● We
often assume that once our faith becomes “more mature”, we will have
outgrown that “childlikeness” that Jesus insisted was essential for
initiating and sustaining relationship with God; that once our
“faith-skills” are honed, we will no longer need such naïve faith.
Instead, every day (multiple times a day), we return to the epicenter
of our faith… the conviction that
“God is” and that
“our search for him will be rewarded”
(if we seek, we’ll find).
If we don’t, we actually run the risk of developing a faith that has
little to do with God. |
