When I look at my own blog posts, I realize how much my faith has grown since I began to write them. But I was reminded, the other day, of what my mindset used to be. Truthfully, there is nothing I have learned that is new, even to me. But, in the past, when I heard talk of prayer or faith, it seemed distant. I couldn't generate a lot of interest in the topic. I thought of myself as a practical person. I had practical problems, and they needed to be solved before I could get interested in otherworldly matters. It's not that I didn't believe. But, I didn't let believing get down to the level of my problems. I was talking to someone, the other day, who was honestly expressing some of the same doubts that I had expressed. I realized that you can be a Christian and have almost no faith. I don't say that to belittle anyone. I don't see myself as "there," yet, at all. I think it is the default position of almost all "Christians." You believe in God. You believe in Jesus. You are frustrated at how broken the world is. Outwardly, you might look slightly "better" than your neighbor. Inwardly you struggle with the same stuff. I don't say that is the way it ought to be, but, unfortunately, that is often the way it is.
I have always been able to argue a point with the best of them. That was the core of my Christianity; enough knowledge to win any argument. It has been awhile since I posted, and the reason is that I didn't have a good feeling about the way I was approaching the subject matter for this post, which is the nature of faith. It seemed argumentative. It wasn't attached to any kind of life. So now I am writing it differently. I realized that the thing that got me from doubt to faith was not an argument. It was an encounter with Jesus that changed the way I looked at everything.
I want to take you to a story in the Bible from the book of Judges that, I think, illustrates what happened to me perfectly. The Israelites were living in what could only be called a constant state of defeat. Every time they planted crops, the Midianites would swoop down like locusts and destroy them. Not only would they ruin the crops, but they would take all their livestock. Judges 6 says that "Israel was brought very low because of Midian." It is against this backdrop that the Angel of the Lord appeared to a young man named Gideon as he was threshing wheat in the wine press. Normally, you would toss the wheat up in the air so that the wind would blow the chaff away and the good stuff would fall to the ground. But, because he was afraid of the Midianites, he was hiding in the wine press. A passerby would see wheat appearing out of the top of the structure at regular intervals, with puffs of chaff floating off like smoke signals. It might have looked comical, but in truth it showed that Gideon and his countrymen were learning to live with the realities of misery and fear. That is why it is so crazy when the Angel of the Lord says to him, "The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior." Gideon is no valiant warrior. He replies, "If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?" He goes on to complain that the Lord has abandoned them and left them in a bad spot. You need to know that, in the Old Testament, when it says "The Angel of the Lord" it is actually God, Himself, appearing in the form of a man. He looks at Gideon (I think that part is important), and says, "Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian." So there is no acknowledgement of Gideon's complaint; just an odd command to deliver Israel "in this your strength!" When I look at this I think, "What strength?" Gideon must have been thinking the same thing, because he protests that he is the least qualified person for the job.
I used to think of this as an ironic story, where God deliberately picks the least qualified person in Israel to make a point about His ability and our strength. And maybe that is still true. But I think there is more to it. God saw the situation differently than Gideon did. Gideon saw defeat and abandonment. God saw an opportunity for a dramatic victory. God saw Gideon differently than Gideon saw himself. Gideon saw himself as an "also ran." God saw him as a hero about to take the stage. That reminds me. My grandson, Ashton, has this little music mixbox that he got for Christmas. He can press different buttons and different types of high energy music come out. He can make little adjustments with a "turntable." If he wants to make a grand entrance, he presses one of the buttons and walks through the door with his own accompaniment. Its like his life has a soundtrack. When I was little, my soundtrack was the roar of the crowd. I dreamed I was a great baseball pitcher, throwing strikeouts to win the last game of the World Series. As I grew up, my dreams started to grow up, too, into things I thought I could accomplish for God. But then I ran into a few obstacles, and I let go of my dreams. Even though I had dreams of doing great things for God, it was still just me, trying to do them. It turns out I was no hero. So I got realistic and moved on with my life. I started chasing after the same stuff we all chase after, things that are O.K., but leave us empty if we chase them. Twenty years later, I was Gideon, hiding and spinning my wheels at the same time, with a defeated attitude. As I look at what I just wrote down about myself, I am conscious of the tone, that it seems like a sad tale of woes. But I don't think you would have been able to tell any of that if you knew me. The more I talk to people and listen to their stories, the more I am persuaded that my own tale of woes is a universal one.
And then I looked up one day, and there was Jesus. In the form of an answer to a prayer that I had prayed years ago, He revealed Himself to me. Did you know that every answer to prayer is a revelation of God's nature? It is Him telling you how much He loves you. Even though I had put distance between us, God was still chasing me, and He was still right there. He wasn't mad at me or disappointed in me. That is why Jesus called His Holy Spirit the "Comforter." It means "the one who comes along side." That one initial encounter with God caused a shift in the way I believed. He had been there the whole time, trying to get my attention. But, I guess I was finally ready to see Him. Now, I saw everything differently. I saw God working in my life. The Bible came to life for me, and I saw promises that He has made to me. It was as if God had walked up to me, just like He walked up to Gideon, in my discouraged state, and said, "The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior!" Now, I was a hero, ready to take the stage, and there was an epic drama playing out before my eyes. All my discouragement, my frustration, even my bad habits, everything I thought I needed to clean up before I was worthy, melted away, because God said I was already worthy.
I have talked to people about God before, and sometimes they will say, "I wish I could believe that." They might be thinking, "I am too far gone," or "I am too much the skeptic," or "I have strong objections to this or that detail about Christianity." I just want to encourage you to suspend your disbelief for a moment and ask God to reveal Himself to you. Pick up a Bible and read the Gospels. You will find Him there. There is a promise from God for everyone on this earth: that He will be found by everyone who sincerely seeks Him (Jeremiah 29:13), because, in truth, it is He who is searching for you. God loves you so much, that He sent His own Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for everything you have done, or ever will do wrong, so that you can become His child, just by believing.
Gideon stumbled his way forward from his encounter with God to become what God saw in him. And God used him to gain an epic victory and save his people, despite his weakness, or maybe because of it. I am convinced that each of us, no matter how tragic our story has been so far, no matter how epic our failures, has a hero inside us, and God is calling us to rise up and save our people.