From Judges 6-8 (NLT).

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.

Isaiah 55
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

This past week has been quite difficult for Power to Change Ministries as well as Campus Crusade for Christ, International. As we gathered in prayer on Thursday, we mourned the sudden passing of a Canadian staff member and grieved with a number of other families that experienced loss.

Just as Job trusted God as his life was turned upside down, we must remember that God’s love for us does not mean that He will do what we feel is best. He has said that everything will work out for good but He does not say when. He doesn’t even say that He will tell us the answer to our prayer, only that He will hear them.

What does it mean when it says that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours? I’m pretty sure that what He is saying is that He has a plan and that we need to trust that He knows what He is doing and that even as the sparrow is under His care, so are we. He can see the big picture in light of eternity. We can’t even accurately predict what is going to happen in 15 seconds with any certainty.

In the meantime, pray for our staff team. Even though we know our team member is celebrating with Jesus and the Father in Heaven, we’ll still miss her and so will the family she left behind here.

Yet this passage isn’t just about the difficult things in life. It is to give us hope that God can take our dreams and visions and expand them to points that we couldn’t even dream of. It is the project that starts out small and seems to blow up on you only to take you to a place that you never would have thought possible. Again, His ways are above ours and His thoughts are too.