Words of Encouragement

We spent the month of April in the US. One of my best friend's from college got married and it was a good excuse to take some vacation time. It was incredibly needed. Wonderfully restful. Honestly, I didn't want to come back. One day I was praying to the Lord about this on a walk. I then came home and started catching up on emails. Read one from Laura Jewell who had sent a devotional over a week before. It hit me between the eyes so I thought I'd share. After the one on submission is another from Laura about Gideon.

Not My Will

by Laura Jewell

6/9/09

And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone‘s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Luke 22:40-44, ESV

Lord, how did You drink it? I cannot relate to the depth of suffering or agony that You experienced in the garden. I cannot begin to compare my life, my sacrifice, my cup to Yours, but I do know what it feels like to have a cup before me that I want no part of…one that I know is filled with pain and heartache and yet be asked to drink of it. I know what it feels like to want to run the other direction and yet recognize that if I run, I run away from the presence and power of God and into darkness; but if I stay, I must drink the cup of His will and that will most certainly mean death…to self.

Many times we aren’t given a choice. If offered the opportunity to forgo suffering, we would likely choose the easier road. If offered the opportunity to skip the death of a loved one, I don’t know of any who would choose the cup. Many times the cup comes to us without the choice to decline, but there are those times when we do have that option. Lord, You had the choice and no matter how pretty we try to make it look for our children in Sunday school…You chose to go through hell for us.

Why is it that we think that our cups are supposed to be filled with champagne and that all of life is supposed to be one big party? A party is what I signed up for. Freedom, peace, joy, heaven…they all sound so inviting. The garden, on the other hand, is not where I wanted to go. The place of submitting my will to Yours -- the place of choosing suffering, sacrifice and death is not a cup that entices us. We don’t really understand do we, Lord? We don’t really understand that it is all tightly woven together…the dying and the living…the giving and the receiving…the suffering and the joy. We want to skip the pain, but receive the peace. We do not want this gift to cost us anything. We want the Christ, but not the cross.

My will…what a tight grip it has on my heart. I might think I have given it over… but let the first person spit in my face and see how I respond. How did You do it, Lord? It wasn’t easy for You. You struggled in the garden…You fought on Your knees until the blood flowed, Your energy was spent, and the angel came to strengthen You. Your will was defeated on Your knees. This was no pleasant day, no easy journey. You submitted Your will to the Father for us. Now the question we must all ask ourselves is…Will we submit our will to the Father for You?

What did You mean when You said “Follow Me”? Did You want more than for us to learn the words to Amazing Grace, attend a Bible study, and quit cussing? Isn’t that enough, Lord? Can’t I just live nicely, simply, cleanly? Must I fight battles on my knees until the sweat falls down around me? Must I yield my will to Yours? Must I drink the cup of Your will? Can’t I pick and choose to drink from the vine…must I drink the bitter gall as well?

This yielding of my will can never take place in a Sunday morning worship service. This battle must be won the same way Yours was…on my knees…agonizing over the process and receiving the strength of angels.

We say we want You to teach us to love, but do we really want that? What it may require of us is dying for both our friends and our enemies. It will definitely require dying to ourselves. We don’t want to die, Lord. We just want to live. We are all trying so hard to live. I’m not so sure we get it, Lord. But You know that…and You knew it in the garden…when You chose to drink the cup…to die in order to live…so that You could teach us to do the same.

Not my will, but Yours be done.

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I Can Do Anything God Can Do Through Me

4/26/11

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. When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.” “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.” Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.” And the LORD said, “I will wait until you return.” (Judges 6:10-18)

God gives Gideon a sign and then some verses later we see…

Then the Spirit of the LORD came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him. He sent messengers throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms, and also into Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, so that they too went up to meet them.

Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised - look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.

(Judges 6:34-40)

I receive so much strength from Gideon’s weakness. I am so thankful that these verses are in the Bible! These verses make me feel better because I feel like Gideon must have felt. At the beginning of this passage we find Gideon hiding in a winepress threshing wheat. The reason he’s hiding is that Isreal has been mistreated, attacked by the Midianites. He’s hiding the wheat to keep it from the Midianites.

I can only imagine how he must have been feeling at that moment. Here he is a grown man, hiding in a winepress. He’s doing what he needs to do to survive, but he’s not feeling particularly confident about it. And then in the middle of his “not-so-strong” day, the angel of the Lord appears to him and wraps a title around him that doesn’t feel like it fits very well. He calls Gideon a “mighty warrior.” He doesn’t just throw that title on Gideon, He builds it on the foundation of truth that “the Lord is with you.” It’s not just that Gideon is a mighty warrior, but it’s the reality that the Lord is with Him that will make and is making Gideon a mighty warrior.

The truth is that Gideon isn’t convinced that the Lord is with him, or that he is particularly strong. He's not seen much evidence of the power that God displayed for his anscestors and he sees himself as the weakest member of the weakest clan in Manasseh. The neat thing is that God isn’t swayed by Gideon’s doubt and insecurity. He tells him in so many words to climb out of the winepress and go save Israel from the very Midianites that he’s hiding from. He doesn’t tell him to sit there until he’s mustered up the courage to go, He tells him to go in the strength that he has and He promises that He will go with him.

I love Gideon’s response, because I can so identify with what he was feeling. He says, “give me a sign that it is really you talking to me.” He isn’t about to climb out of hiding unless he is sure that it is God that is calling him out and that it is God that is going with him. I love the Lord’s response. He is compassionate and patient enough to reveal to Gideon that it is God who is speaking to him and that it is God that will go with him. You see, Gideon really didn’t believe he would be able to do this thing and wasn’t about to attempt it unless it was God that was calling Him and God that was going to be the power behind the promise.

Gideon makes an altar to the Lord and the Lord tells him to destroy his father’s altar to Baal and the Ashera pole beside it. Gideon obeys, but he does it at night because he is afraid. I find strength in the fact that although Gideon didn’t have a deep sense of peace at this point, He stepped out and obeyed the Lord. That is what God is asking of us…to trust Him enough to step out…even if we are not feeling particularly confident about doing it.

I’m also encouraged by what I see in verse 34. Here we see that the same man who was hiding in a winepress is now out in the open blowing a trumpet and calling men to follow him. What was it that gave him such courage and confidence? The Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Several years ago I was reading Experiencing Godby Henri Blackaby. A statement that I came across has stuck with me until this day… “I can do anything God can do through me.” I see this being lived out in Gideon’s life. It wasn’t that Gideon saw himself as a mighty warrior. It was that he believed that he would accomplish this task because God had promised to do it through him.

I continue to receive encouragement as I read verse 36 and 37. Gideon says to the Lord, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promise – look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” So God graciously gives Gideon that sign. As if that wasn’t enough, Gideon changes his request and asks God to verify it one more time. I love Gideon! He is a mighty warrior! He is just a human mighty warrior. One thing we know for sure, Gideon wasn’t going to fight the Midianites in his own strength. He was only going because God said go and he wasn’t going unless God was going with him.

The neatest part of this story is that God knew Gideon. He knew his fear and frailty and yet he took feeble, fearful Gideon and fashioned him into a mighty warrior. He didn’t draw the strength and courage out of him, he put the strength and courage into him and He will do the same for me. It’s not that God wants me to be strong for Him, it is that He wants to demonstrate His strength for me by doing it through me. The miracle is that God would take the weakest of people and accomplish the most amazing things in and through them…not because of their strength…but because of their willingness to step out and trust in His.