The following devotional was for a meeting of the TruthMedia staff on Wednesday, May 26, 2010.
We’ve all heard the story of Gideon and how he went through the process of putting out the fleece at night. In the morning, the fleece was sopping wet and the ground around it was dry, it was a miracle. The next day, if the opposite occurred, it was God again.
Gideon, like many of the important leaders in Israel’s history, had many reasons to doubt that God would choose him to rescue Israel. When God first called him, he was hiding at the bottom of a wine press, threshing grain because of fear, for good reason. Interestingly, God’s call to him was “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”
Gideon’s response, much like Moses’ before him was, “But Lord, how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”
He then asks God to prove that He is serious. God does, over and over again. Gideon apologizes for not trusting Him, then asks him to do the fleece thing again. God does.
Then God goes through the process of building the army that Gideon was to lead. Instead of increasing numbers however, God went through the process of taking the army from 22,000 to just 300. The reason was simple. The Israelites could not say they won the battles themselves.
We have come out of a strategic planning season with the rest of the Power to Change ministries and there are some massive numbers which require us to either hire a dozens of highly skilled full-time staff, with money we do not have, or trust God for the “300″ that God has called to join us. I’ll let you guess which way we are leaning.
God picks the people to lead that can’t see why they were picked at the start. David, Moses, Gideon and every New Testament disciple were the opposite of what the world would have chosen to be their leaders. However, God did call them. He called them because they would have to depend on Him.
There are many in our ministry that don’t feel they were born to be leaders. I am one of them. The fact I am leading at all is only because God called me from the hidden cubicles of the IT department and has pulled me along for over a decade.
Power to Change is about leaders. I ask you to take the step into leadership, no matter what your role is, and own your role. The best part is, the qualification for whether you are a leader in God’s mission is that you are unable to do it on our own.
