Saying Yes in the Weak Spots

I've asked big questions of the Lord now and then: Are you calling me to missions rather than to college? (Answer, at that time, yes.) Should I move to Albuquerque and teach instead of heading to school as I had thought I would? (The answer, at the time, yes.) Should I marry this man? (The answer: No!) How about this one? (That's the one I have for you). :) 

Obviously, the situations were far more involved and detailed than what I just made this sound like. But the questions were essential to the situation. I needed to know what the Lord thought about the options that had presented themselves, and I needed to hand those things completely over to Him. Without Him, I would have been hopelessly lost, like a man who goes to war, but forgets to follow his general and winds up in the wilderness alone with no clue how to get out.

Here's the thing, though... once I accepted those answers as the Lord's will, the situations were not automatically made cut, dry, and easy. Some of my most intense, hard, desert experiences I've ever had came to me after I said yes where I had heard the Lord say yes. I thought, at times, that the pain would quite literally shatter my heart in some instances, or that I would never make it through the battles as I fought to put one plodding foot ahead of the other. There were joyful times, too... but there were times I wanted to run back to my home and my simple girlhood and never, ever, ever move forward again.

It's too hard, Lord, I told Him multiple times.

I'm not letting you quit, He told me. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.

This morning, I read Judges 6 and well into chapter 7. It was about Gideon, remember him? The Midianites were the power in Israel, they and the Amorites, and they kept the Israelites subdued. The Israelites had to stay out of the way, essentially hide if they saw them coming. In Chapter 6 of Judges, we find Gideon threshing grain in a wine press. Normally, grain threshing spots were done on a hill top or an open area so that as the grain thresher tossed the grain into the air, the wind sweeping through would take the chaff and blow it away while the heavier grain seeds fell back to the ground.

A wine press was a place where grape juice could flow downward into a collected trough or area (yes, I looked up ancient winepresses to satisfy my curiosity). Most of them were covered with stones like a mosaic (so the juice wouldn't seep into the ground), and all of them had a downward slope that fed into a pit where a secondary grape pulp crushing could occur. 

In other words, Gideon took his grain and chaff, intended for a hilltop, and threshed it in a hidden pit instead -- because of the Midianites and the Amorites. In even more other words... Gideon was scared.

Scared of the enemy. Scared of his weakness against them. Scared of what they might do to him if they found him.

So he's standing there with his pitchfork (I guess) and his grain and is tossing it up to remove the chaff, when suddenly, he notices this guy sitting nearby. Can I point out something that I heard Priscilla Shirer say once, and it's stuck with me?

In Judges 6:11, it says: "The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites."

Pause there. The angel of the Lord came and sat down. Gideon is threshing wheat. The Word doesn't say exactly how long the angel of the Lord sat there, but there is a distinctive time notation between verse 11 and verse 12, which says: "When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.'"

So... it could very well be that the angel of the Lord watched Gideon's sweating efforts -- before He appeared to him -- for... one minute... two... ten... an hour... we don't know. What we do know is that Gideon was scared of the Midianites and the Amorites, and because of that, he was stuck in a hole, sweating under the strain of trying to clear chaff from wheat. Feeling horribly ineffective and unproductive, no doubt. Spinning his wheels. Feeling purposeless. Pointless. Certainly anything but a mighty warrior.

But that's exactly what the angel of the Lord called him. Note, the angel of the Lord (a Christophany: an appearance of Christ before taking on His earthly form of Jesus) waited... and then He spoke. Gideon, meanwhile, had no idea that the Lord was with him... physically, that is. He had no idea that the Lord was watching him and preparing to speak.

In the midst of his backbreaking, pointless, pointless work, the Lord was with him and considered him a mighty warrior -- even when he couldn't feel the Lord's presence.

Gideon's frustration shows up in his answer to the Lord. "But Sir," he says, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."

Have you ever heard yourself say the same thing? I sure have. But God, why are you letting this happen? Why are we nearly into our third year of pandemic? Why are people turning away from You in record numbers? Why haven't you just... you know... fixed everything yet? If anything, things keep getting worse.

I had a long talk with a close friend recently about a portion of her life where she was truly struggling. Something she had dearly loved had been stripped from her, and she admitted her shaken faith. But this is what she said that so deeply touched me: "When nothing else makes sense, when I don't have anything else to stand on, I go back to the beginning, back to what I know. In the beginning, before anything else... was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning" (John 1:1).

That, my friend, is bankable. It's trustworthy. He is trustworthy.

Where was I?

Oh yes, so Gideon pours out his doubts, fears, and shaken faith in the presence of the angel of the Lord. And look what the Lord tells him: "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"

Wait, what strength? Gideon had just admitted his weakness and his frail and shaking faith. He hadn't said anything powerful or mighty or even particularly inspiring. All he'd admitted to was that he was questioning the Lord Almighty.

And the Lord Almighty said: "Go in the strength you have." In other words, the strength of the Lord was there... for Gideon to use... as soon as He stepped forward in faith to use it.

Mighty warrior.

Gideon wasn't a mighty warrior, from all appearances, except the Lord called him that. The only thing that makes sense to me about this whole passage are these words that the Lord spoke to Paul centuries later: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The power of the Lord reigned in Gideon, as we see from his ensuing actions through the rest of chapter 6 and 7. But there was nothing powerful about that day in the winepress, threshing wheat while hiding from his enemies.

And yet, the strength of the Lord was already with Gideon and in Gideon, and all Gideon had to do... was say yes.

Yes, he would destroy the altar to Baal. Yes, he would cut down the Asherah pole. Yes, he would lead his people to come against the Midianites, Amalekites, and other eastern nations. Yes, he would have 22,000 of his fighting men leave, and then even more, until only 300 were left to fight for the Lord. 

He said yes. He said it hesitantly, he double-checked, he even triple-checked (Judges 6:33-40). But he still said yes.

What's your answer? When the Lord asks you to do a hard thing in the middle of your fear, what answer will you give him? What strength do you have that you may not even be aware of... but it's still there? The Lord sees it, and if you just open your eyes... you might see it, too.

Because the power of the Lord is made perfect in weakness.