PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Judges 6:12–14
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?”
CONSIDER THIS
I have a chronic disease. It’s the disease of wanting to be perfect. Whatever project I take on or job I have, this disease will rear its ugly head at some point and when it does, it can be debilitating, keeping me from moving forward. Surrendering control means believing in the call that God has given me.
In the book of Judges, Gideon is called by God to face the people who had kept the Israelites from flourishing. The Midianites had crushed their crops and bullied them into a place of fear. Gideon had two questions: Why were they suffering and what is God thinking? Gideon was from the weakest clan and he was the weakest in his family. Surely God had gotten the wrong Gideon. Maybe there was a Gideon in the next town who could be called a mighty warrior, but surely God didn’t mean him.
Remember that the purpose of the burnt offering was to express the total surrender of their obedience to the Lord, to not hold anything back. The Israelites had not been devoted to the one true God. They worshipped other idols and disobeyed the Lord’s commandments. Yet, in the face of their disobedience, God was still willing to save them from their suffering and the Lord would ask Gideon to fully surrender himself. “Am I not sending you?” God was not calling Gideon to fight the Midianites on his own but to trust in the call of God on his life. Would he surrender himself fully?
If Gideon listened only to the voices in his head and contemplated the circumstances in front of him, he would never have stepped up to face the obstacle of the Midianites. But God loves imperfect people. God loves when we surrender our weaknesses to Him because it is in those moments we experience the miraculous power of the Lord in our lives. The Japanese art form of kintsugi is a visually beautiful illustration of God’s perfection shining through our surrendered imperfections. Japanese artisans will take cracked pottery and fill the cracks with gold, not to hide the imperfections, but to celebrate that gold which makes it whole once again. God’s call on Gideon’s life and Gideon’s surrender would allow the Lord to shine through him.
In response to God’s promise to be with him, Gideon prepares an offering to the Lord which is wholly consumed by fire just like a burnt offering. In this encounter, he experiences the power of God through a supernatural peace and he names the altar, The Lord Is Peace. It is not through perfection that we find peace, but through surrendering our control to God’s call on our life.
THE PRAYER
Lord, we know that we can only find peace by surrendering our plans to You. We commit ourselves to the call You have placed on our lives and believe that You are the one who equips us and sends us out for Your glory. Amen.
THE QUESTIONS
When have you struggled with God’s calling on your life? What has held you back from fully living into that call? How is Gideon’s story an encouragement to lay down control and how will that change the way you live this week?
For the Awakening,
Susan Kent
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5 Responses
This post brings to mind the situation that Paul, who had been given the Spiritual Gift of healing, and had in fact even brought a young man back to life, “a thorn in his side” that he could not get relief from. Christ told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Paul would admit, “Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) So it is with us as well.
There are many reasons to ignore and disobey the presence and the promptings of the Lord. Gideon had his reasons to do that. He asked: “If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all His wonders that our ancestors told us about?” But the Lord prompted Gideon to do what was impossible for him to do–to go and save Israel by sending all of his 32,000 men army home except for 300. Then God prompted Gideon to have the 300 men light lanterns in the dark and to crack pots. Because Gideon went and obeyed God’s humanly crazy crackpot directions in what looked like a hopeless situation, a miracle of deliverance happened. When God prompts you to do something that makes no sense to you, will you do it? (Remember, God will never prompt you to do evil.)
God has often prompted me to do crazy things. After I had been a full-time motivational speaker for twelve years, God prompted me to burn and destroy all of my client and prospect contact information. It was very hard to obey that inner nudging, but I did. Shortly after that my wife, Ernie, sent her resume to a blind P.O. box to apply for a part-time counselor job. In return she received a call from The Salvation Army looking for a counselor for their 86-bed men’s recovery rehabilitation center in Nashville. She felt the Lord prompt her to put me on the phone and I was hired within a couple of days. That revolutionized our lives!
Two years later The Salvation Army hired Ernie to run a large inner-city resource center full of various services to help those in need. Then after three more years they asked us to start “a non-traditional church” in one of their church buildings and encouraged us to replace the Sunday sermon with open sharing and testimonies. We got to see people openly obey the Lord’s inner promptings for almost ten years and the results were spectacular. I even wrote a book about the experience called: “Beyond Church–An Invitation to Experience the Lost Word of the Bible–Ekklesia.”
Thanks for sharing, Steve,
Steve, I’ve read in some of your previous posts that the powers to be caused that experimental church to eventually close. Did you begin or plan to plant another one like it?
Surrender?
Surrender is tough because we are taught to fight to the end. Never give in or give up. Fight until we’re the King of the Hill, the best of the best! Surrender? Never! Surrendering is a sign of weakness, not strength.
Or so the world says.
As a child, I was told it takes more strength to walk away from a fight. It didn’t make sense, then.
What if surrendering is the Way to spiritual strength? It is if we surrender to the Authority of all of Creation, Jesus.
Colossians 1:15-17
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
When we surrender ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses are His, and His Authority is ours.
Luke 10:19
Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.
Stying 💪’n Christ
Ephesians 6:10
Finally, stay strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.