But God’s Spirit gives us power to do what he asks
Judges 6:34 Then the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with power.
Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.
1 Corinthians 4:20 For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.
2 Corinthians 12:9 God said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
Gideon, self-identified as the least important member of the weakest family in Israel, hid at the bottom of a winepress to thresh wheat for fear of the cruel oppression of Midianites.
(Remember Jesus’s disciples hiding in a locked room for fear of the Jewish rulers?)
Out of all Israel, the angel of the Lord appeared to this frightened young man and greeted him with “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
(Remember Jesus’s disciples hearing him say to them, “I am with you always, to the end of the age”?)
It must have felt to Gideon like a sarcastic joke. I picture him, startled, looking around the small space where he was hiding to see who this strange guy was talking to. It couldn’t be to him. Mighty hero??
Gideon responds with bitter questions, an overflow of anguish ending with, “The Lord has abandoned us.” How could this stranger possibly believe the Lord was with them?
(Remember that on the mountain in Galilee where God gave the disciples the Great Commission, Matthew makes a point of telling us that some of them doubted—even after walking so closely with Jesus for three years?)
And the angel, speaking for God, says, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!” Gideon replies, “But Lord, how can I …?” (Judges 6:14-15 and on). He didn’t realize that the strength he had was God’s strength, not his own.
(Remember Jesus saying to the disciples, “I have all authority … therefore, go”?)
The unlikely interchange between Gideon and the angel of the Lord reminds me of Moses at the burning bush. “Who, me? You want me to do what?? You’ve got to be kidding! Send someone else better qualified!”
You know these stories, right? If not, read Judges 6 and 7 and Exodus 3. If you’re like me, you’ll find a LOT to identify with in Gideon’s and Moses’s protests.
I am with you. With God’s call comes the power to accomplish what God asks of us. And because we know our own inadequacies, we know it’s only the Lord who can fulfill through us his purposes. All glory goes to him.
The Lord walked closely with both Gideon and Moses, patiently encouraging them and giving them specific instructions along the way. In each case, they started from a place of acknowledged, painful loss and defeat and failure. Their relationship with God was transparent from the beginning, with no pretense of being worthy of God using them. They learned to recognize and rely on the Lord’s voice. They depended absolutely on him.
In both cases, later, after God successfully accomplished his initial call to them, Gideon and Moses tried to go forward on their own and got into trouble. King Saul is another biblical example of the way self-confidence can become self-defeating (1 Samuel 15). The author of 1 Chronicles summarizes Saul’s life in this terse statement, “Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He failed to obey the Lord’s command” (10:13).
We don’t ever outgrow our need to depend on the Lord and submit ourselves to him. We are always beginners in this walk of obedience and faith; forever, the rest of our lives, learning and growing.
And on the flip side, in our desperate dependency, we can feel the delight of watching God do through us what we could never do in our own strength. I experience this every time I hear someone say that the Karis book has encouraged or challenged them in some way. I wrote that book with so much fear and trembling, so keenly aware of my own inadequacy.
Like Gideon and Moses, I tried to get out of doing it, asking God to choose someone else, a better writer, someone with a platform and experience in the publishing industry. Someone not so closely tied to Karis. I feared being accused of bias and lack of objectivity; that what I wrote couldn’t be relied on because I am her mother. I feared not being capable of summarizing her thirty years of life in a way that would do justice both to her faith and the Lord’s faithfulness to her. I fussed and protested for months.
And in the end, holding this little book in my hand three years later, I experienced the truth God’s Spirit expressed to Paul, which became Karis’s life verse: “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”
How is the Lord stretching you? What is he asking of you that seems impossible?
Can you hear him saying, as he did to Gideon, “I am with you”?
Are you willing for the Spirit to clothe you with power to do what he is asking you to do?
Debra Kornfield 