Desperate for His Presence

There is a story in the Bible that you might have heard if you grew up in the church. If not, you may never have heard this story, and that is unfortunate, because this is one of the most powerful stories about the power of God.

I want to encourage you to read it over this weekend. You can find the story in Judges 6-8.

The story begins by explaining that there are these people (the Midianites) who are oppressing the people of Israel. In fact, they're so powerful that the people of God are afraid to even come out of their homes. God decides to intervene.

Which, on a side note, is some of the most hopeful words that occur throughout the Bible. God doesn't just look down on humanity and see us in the midst of our fear and suffering, and act like it's not His problem. God chooses to intervene in our lives, and be a part of what goes on in this world. That's extremely hopeful, and I can't get over how wonderful that is to hear. God doesn't just watch us struggle in our own problems, and sit high above us, removed from our pain. He decides to get involved, get His hands dirty, and be with us.

So with this idea of God, we see God get involved with Israel's suffering and send an angel to a guy named Gideon to ask Gideon to lead an army against the Midianites. Now, you have to understand that Gideon is described as the least in his family and he belongs to the weakest clan. So, basically Gideon is the least likely person to lead an army against an army that no one else can beat.

After much debate with God, Gideon agrees to lead the army against the Midianites. Gideon does what any good military leader does, and he gets a bunch of guys. He gets 32,000 men, and he starts running a training camp with them. While Gideon is doing all this, God approaches him to tell Gideon that he has too many men. Which I think Gideon was shocked at, because-if it were me-I would be thinking, I'm going to need 32,000 more. But Gideon is more faithful than me, and he sends away 22,000.

God still feels like 10,000 is crowding His glory too much, so Gideon weeds them out till there is only 300 left. Finally God develops this plan that seems like it's ridiculous, but it works perfectly and God leads Gideon to lead the Israelites to victory.

This story has been on my heart all week long. The amount of faith that it must take to trust God that fully boggles my mind.

We've been talking about how in order to avoid being a Christian Atheist we have to trust God with our entire lives, but it didn't occur to me until this week that I'm not always doing that. I mean sure I can trust God with my salvation and I can trust Him with my finances and I can trust Him to provided for all my needs, but can I trust Him to do what I can't?

I think whenever you're in leadership this is especially tough. It's very easy to look at the tasks you have ahead of yourself, and just jump in and start accomplishing things without ever being desperate for God's power and spirit. I know it's common in my life to get overwhelmed with the amount of things that I have to do, and forget that none of the things that I do will matter if God's hand is not involved.

Gideon realized this. He knew that he could be a brilliant commander and have many soldiers, but without the hand of God moving He couldn't accomplish anything. That's why God was narrowing down Gideon's troops. To show that the victory wasn't Israel's, but that the victory was solely because of God's power.

There is a lot of freedom that exists in knowing that God is in control. That I can trust God to move, and I can be desperate for Him. I don't have to be in charge of everything, and on top of everything. God wants me to do my best and work hard to accomplish His will, but His will is only accomplished when His hand is moving. It's not about me accomplishing God's will through hard work. God's will is accomplished when I surrender my need to be in control, make plans, and work myself to exhaustion.

I want our church to be a place that is so desperate for God's presence that we don't even think about accomplishing tasks before making sure that God's hand is behind it. We need to focus on moving where God's spirit is, and working where His hand was working before us. Just like Gideon we have to trust that God is the one in control, and no matter how hard we work to try to be in control, He always will be.