A Call for Courage - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, October 30th. Today's podcast revisits the story of Gideon, highlighting how resting in God's presence is essential for overcoming overwhelming odds. Let me ask you this. How many of you have ever thrown out of police to God and said, Lord, if this happens, here's what I'm going to do.

If that happens, here's what I'm going to do. How many of you have done that? You know why you're laughing? Because you have. We've all, in some fashion or the other, thrown out some kind of fleece and say, okay, God, I'm willing to do this and so. Or you flip a coin. Listen, coin flipping is not the way you find the will of God. That's not His way.

All throwing out fleece. Because you see, the truth is, we're all smart enough, if we want to do a certain thing, we can throw the fleece exactly the way we want it to land. But you see, that's not God's will. But here's God asking Gideon to do what appeared to be an impossible task.

So what did He do? Scripture says in verse thirty-six, then Gideon said to God, if you will deliver Israel through me as you have spoken. Here's what you've said, God. You've said you're going to deliver Israel from the Midianites and the Melchites. If this is what you're going to do, behold, I'll put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor, and if there is dew on the fleece only, and it's dry all around on the ground, then I'll know that you will deliver Israel through me as you've spoken.

So what happens? Next morning He wakes up and the Scripture says He arose early in the morning, squeezed the fleece, He drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. Well, what did He ask for? He said, God, if you'll do this, I'll know this is it. Now, I just love this verse. Then Gideon probably ducked his head and said, God, please one more time. I just need to know, just please give me just a little more assurance.

And so what does he do? He says, then Gideon said to God, do not let your anger burn against me, which is what we feel. Now, Lord, don't get upset. But what I'm asking is if you'll do this once more, that I may speak once more, please let me make a test once more with the fleece. Let it now be dry only on the fleece and let there be dew on all the ground. God did so that night for it was dry only on the fleece and dew on all the ground. Here's what God is saying to us. He said, look, I know where you are. I know sometimes you have doubts. I know sometimes you feel like you can't do what I'm asking you to do. Trust Me.

Just trust Me. And so Gideon's way at this point in his life, and remember, Gideon didn't have a Bible. You and I don't have to throw out fleece because we've got promise after promise after promise of God's will. We've got experience after experience and illustration after illustration, how God leads and guides and conquers. We have everything we need to trust God.

They didn't have that. And so what happens? He says, Lord, if you'll just show me this, this is what I'm willing to do. Little did he know that that was one test in his life, but that was not going to be the last one. And so God is getting him ready to go to war.

He called him O valiant warrior, and now he's been testing him and finding him true. And he has been encouraging over and over and over again. Now, when you find out what God is asking him to do, you'll understand why he needed encouragement and why God gave it to him. And sometimes I think we feel weak if we say, Now, Lord, you know, I don't know how to handle this and I just need some help. All of us have been there.

And you know what? All of us are going to be there again and again and again when we don't know what to do in a given situation or it looks like that situation's impossible. And how many times have I heard testimonies of people who'd say, You know, I just knew it was all over.

There's no way in the world to save this marriage. And God did thus and so. Or I knew that there's no way for me to get this promotion because other people were much more qualified than I was. And so I just prayed, Oh God, please help me. And sure enough, they got it. And you can just go list after list after list of things that people have not given up on and trusted God in how He came through. Listen, He's a God of awesome love. He wants to demonstrate His power and His love to us. If we will keep our hearts clean and obedient to Him and just trust Him, just trust Him, then He'll do exactly what He asks us to do because He'll do it through His nennas we said in the very beginning. Whatever He calls us to do, we have His presence and His power. We have the promise of those two things. God, you've called me to do it, you've got to be with me. You've got to have your strength and your energy and your power and your wisdom and your knowledge to get it done.

He's always there to help us get it done. Now, when you come to this next test of Gideon, all of us would have had a reason to say, Oops, and yet God had answered his prayer. He said, Lord, now I'm throwing out this fleece. And He did it twice.

Now, for it to happen twice, that leaves Gideon without any defense and argument. So, look, if you will, in the seventh chapter now, in verse twelve, Now the Midianites and the Melchites and all the sons of the east were lying in the valley as numerous as locust, and their camels were without number as numerous as the sands of the seashore. He knew what He was up against. He had three hundred men.

He had to be thinking, let's go back and recount this a little bit, Lord, and reevaluate this and see if what we can do. The Lord said to Gideon, I will deliver you with the three hundred men who laughed and will give the Midianites into your hand, so that all the other people go, each to his own home. So the three hundred men took the people's provision and their trumpets into their hands, and Gideon sent all the other men of Israel to his tent, but retained the three hundred men, and the camp of Midian was below him in the valley. So below them in the valley is this vast host.

He said, they're like grasshoppers. You can't even count the camels and all you have is three hundred men with a pitcher, a torch, a trumpet, and a sword by their side. That's all you've got. And I'm sure Gideon must have thought, now let's go back and count this again. Do you mean three thousand? No. Or maybe thirty thousand? No.

Three hundred. Watch this. Listen carefully. It doesn't make any difference what you and I have or don't have. When God commands us to do something, remember two things you have. You have the power of God and the presence of God with you. And when you have those two things, it doesn't make any difference what somebody else has, or how armed they are, or how much they have, or whatever it might be. When you have the power of God and the presence of God, you're always a majority and you're always better armed, better equipped. At every turn, He's encouraging you.

Now, so now that He has three hundred, what do you do with three hundred men against a hundred and thirty-five thousand? Have you ever been in a situation that looked impossible to you? So let me ask you, if you were, what did you do?

Did you wring your hands? Did you call your friends? Did you give up and quit?

Did you walk away? What did you do when you felt like the odds were against you in life no matter what? You could give lots of reasons just to give up and quit. But remember this, it doesn't make any difference who you are. When Jesus Christ is your Savior and the Lord of your life, and you're walking in His will, you are always a majority no matter what. Because that is the will and purpose of God. It's when we get discouraged, it's when we forget who we are, it's when we forget what God has said to us, it's when we forget the fact that He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you.

I'm going to be right there with you. The Holy Spirit will be living on the inside of you, giving guidance and direction, and empowering you for your life, whatever it might be. And so, with that promise of Almighty God, here's what Gideon did.

God showed him what to do. Now remember, all these other folks are in the valley, so in the mountaintops all around. He said, we're going to split up in three groups, a hundred in each group. And we're only going to have a pitcher and a torch and the trumpet. Now, I'm sure they had a weapon at some point there. And so, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to all line up around the valley. And so, when they look, all they're going to see is light. And when they look, they're going to be shocked.

Because what they're going to see is going to be different from what's going to happen. Now, even with this in mind, and what Gideon knows that God's going to do and how He's going to do it, even then, for example, here's how good God is. Now watch this. He said, now, I'm going to encourage you one more time.

This whole thing's about encouragement. He says, I want you to go down to the camp. I want you to go down on the edge of the enemy. And He says, if you're afraid to go by yourself, take Purim, your servant, and take him with you.

And so, you'll not be in there by yourself. And so, they slip down there, and I can imagine they took them a little while to get down there. And it's at nighttime. And here He is going down there where the enemy is. And the Scripture says, when Gideon came, behold, a man was relating a dream to his friend.

This is the enemy now. And he said, behold, I had a dream. A loaf of barley bread was tumbling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it, so that it fell and turned it upside down, and the tent lay flat. His friend, his other enemy friend, replied, This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel. God has given Midian and all the camp into his hand. Imagine what Gideon heard. When Gideon heard the account of the dream and its interpretation, he bowed in worship. Now here are two fellows over here talking about a dream, and here's Gideon out here worshiping God. He returned to the camp of Israel and said, Arise, for the Lord has given the camp of Midian into your hands. He divided the three hundreds, as we just said.

So here's where we are. Every single time Gideon needed encouragement, God gave it to him. Why was he such a courageous man? Because God was making Himself known and real to him. And now here's the battle, three hundred of them, and at every turn God has encouraged Gideon.

And now he has heard the enemy say that God has already given them into the hands of the Israelites. So what do they do? They get in position, and Gideon breaks his pitcher.

They all break their pitchers, and remember this. They've been in their sleep, some of them were at least, most of them probably, and all of a sudden they heard this crash all around the mountain. Well, having it all around the mountain sent them a bad message, we're surrounded. And after that happened, all these torches go up. And what does that say? We are really surrounded.

All this noise and all this fire and everywhere you look, there's no way out of here. So what do they do? They get excited. They get up in the night. They get their sword. They go out.

They can't see who their enemy is, and they probably feel like the enemy is already there. So they start killing each other. And the truth is, they wiped out enough of each other's, and those who escaped, they finally caught them and killed them, that God gave them an overwhelming victory.

Now, Gideon didn't even have to draw a sword. Let me ask you a question. Who got the credit for that? Only God. Only God can be glorified in that.

And I want to say this again. Pride will destroy you. If you want God to stop His blessing in your life, just start taking credit. When you start taking credit, it demeans the glory of God, and God is not going to give you His power, nor His strength, nor His assistance when you're taking credit. We have to walk humbly before Almighty God, trusting Him every day for whatever He wants to do in our life, and recognizing it's His life. It's His message that we preach, and it's His work that is being done in and through your life.

And so what an awesome victory that was. And I'm sure that they worshiped God and praised Him and blessed Him and honored Him for all that He was doing. And when I see how God worked in His life, you see, He was just human like we are.

And over and over and over again, what did God do? He gave him enough encouraging experiences that he didn't get discouraged. So, when you look at this whole chapter and you see how God worked in their lives, what's the message? What is the message from the Scripture?

So, I want to give you five statements because these are five other things I want you to remember primarily. First of all is this, don't underestimate what God can do in and through you, no matter who you are. He does the most amazing things through sometimes the people who expect the least. Don't underestimate what God can do in and through you. Secondly, God will always be with you in whatever He called you to do. He's always there, I'll never leave you nor forsake you, no matter what.

All your friends may forsake you, you may feel alone, you may feel deserted, you may feel helpless, but you're never helpless because you have Him. Third thing is this, He's ready to give you assurance when you doubt Him. Everybody doubts some things at some point in life. And there's not anybody who says, I've never doubted. We've all hit those situations. We have doubted at least for a few moments or a brief period of time until God did something in our life to remind us and to show us that we can trust Him. So, He's ready to give you assurance when you doubt Him. Number four, His ways are often surprising and challenging, but always the best and the most successful. Now watch this, sometimes God will do things in your life that are totally unreasonable. I could name a few in my own life, but I keep probably can.

Totally unreasonable. But what happens? If it's of God, it works. There is no way to fail being obedient to God. And that brings me to the last point. He always works in a way that exalts Him and brings Him glory.

That's the way He operates. If you're willing to die to yourself and surrender your life to Holy God through His Son Jesus Christ, He will accomplish in your life more than you expect, more than you anticipate, more than you think you're worth. He will accomplish in and through you His perfect will.

And when you have those doubts, remember this, He's always there to encourage you if you listen. And this is why I say to you almost every Sunday, you need to be in the Word of God every day reading the Scriptures. Some days the Scripture may not mean anything to you.

Some days it'll be extremely meaningful. But when you and I are in the Word of God, we're listening to God. We're getting the view of God.

We're getting the mind of God. We're not only on these praying before Him, we're listening to Him. He can speak to us. He can give us guidance and direction and encourage our hearts. When you close this book, what you're doing is you're closing your mind to the encouraging words of God. All of us have particular verses that are meaningful to us. And He says we're not to be afraid. We're to be strong and of good courage. Fear not, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. That's who He is and that's what God wants us to hear, that He's willing to encourage you and He's willing to use you to work in you and through in your life if you'll just let Him do it. But the requirement is a clean heart, a surrendered life, an obedient life, and then watch what God does in you.

Remember the illustration I gave you? You can do what I ask you to do, God said, and find out what I will do in your life. Or you can disobey me and spend the rest of your life wondering what I would have done had you obeyed me.

To me, that was a challenge that I was certainly unwilling to live the rest of my life wondering what God would have done. So I want to ask you this question, who's running your life anyway? Are you living by your decisions? Are you asking the Lord to give you guidance and direction each day of your life? You say, I'm not even a Christian. Well, let's talk about it.

If you're not, here's what you're saying. I'm sufficient, I'm adequate, I can handle my life the way I am. I don't need God. This is the God that created you. This is the God who's given you breath and life. This is the God who's given you opportunities and abilities and talents and skills, and you're telling Him you don't need Him. That is a foolish statement.

It is a disastrous statement. You're looking God Almighty in the eyes and telling Him you don't need Him when your next breath's coming from Him. What you really need is the death of His Son applied to your life. What He did at the cross paid your sin debt in full. And the only way you're going to die and go to heaven is accepting Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God who died an atoning death, a sacrificial death, a death that made it possible for your sins to be paid for and you to have your sins forgiven and spend eternity with Him.

That's the only hope that you have. Look around you. Look at what's happening to people who are living in sin.

You don't even have to read the Bible. Just look around you and then look at people who are trusting God and walking in relationship to Him. God will transform your life. He will do in you and through you more than you ever expect.

But first of all, He must have your heart. He must have your surrendered will so He can call the plays and because He wants the glory. Father, how grateful we are You've made it simple for us to be saved, to simply confess our sins to You, acknowledging that You are the Lord God and that our sins have separated us from You and only by the shed blood of Jesus at Calvary are our sins atoned for. I pray for every person who's listening that Your Spirit would speak to that person right now.

You know where they are, the kind of trouble they're in, heartaches, burdens, emptiness, loneliness, frustration, fears. And Father, You know exactly what it'll take to change all of that. Give them the wisdom and the courage, God, to call upon You and seek Your face and believe in their heart that You will hear and answer their prayer. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to part two of A Call for Courage. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.