[2023.5.25] The Basin: God's Calling You Out Of Fear

If we bring these two verses together, Gideon, a mighty warrior hiding in a winepress, you, an incredible, creative human being, kind of living in a state of constant, chronic distraction and giving in to the culture around you that wants you to compare and feel terrible about yourself, or compare and feel like you're better than other people, whatever extreme you fall in. This culture of comparison, this culture of cynicism, this culture of reliance on everything else that isn't God, on the seen rather than the unseen, this culture that we seem to live in where we divide so quickly with people, we can't learn anything from anybody, so we stay in ignorance. The Lord says, go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Then after Gideon sees the fire of the Lord and is afraid and God says it's friendly fire, he says, peace, you're not going to die. They built an altar and called it the Lord is Peace. I want to bring those two verses together for just a minute and tell you what the Lord spoke to me. He said, make peace with your strength. Make peace with your strength. Don't you mean with your weakness? Don't you mean with your past? Yeah, yeah, those two. But make peace with your strength. That is so contradictory to a lot of what I was taught, especially in a religious sense. But even growing up in the south, we had this phrase, we say, he's getting too big for his britches. I thought that was just Moncks Corner until I went to Australia. They call it tall poppy. If somebody gets too high, they cut them down. In all fairness, after God gives Gideon two signs with the fleece. The fleece is first drenched and the ground is wet. So that's like the thing God touched was wet and everything around it was dry. Then the second time, everything around it was wet, but it was dry. I take that to mean that God's spirit will be your supply in any situation. Sometimes you'll be dry inside, but God will bring dew from somebody else or somewhere else to refresh you for what he has called you to do and how sometimes everything around you will be dry. The situation will be like valley of dry bones, dry. But man, God is going to drench you with his spirit because Gideon picked up the fleece and squeezed it. All that happened a little, little bit later, after Israel had come out. The people of Israel heard that Gideon went, after he built an altar to the Lord and said, the Lord is Peace. He then went and smashed the altars his father had made to baal, which is crazy, right? Like, to break his father's altar. In order to make peace with God, he went and smashed the altar that they would use to call on BAAL and Asherah. He used even the wood from the altar to Asherah, which was kind of like a sensual sex God in the surrounding area. And he broke it. And all the people came out and they were like, kill Gideon. And his dad was like, no. If baal, who the altar was to was wrong, let BAAL deal with him. They actually nicknamed Gideon and they gave him a name that meant, may BAAL contend with him after that happens and you have God coming to Gideon, calling him out of the winepress, God calling you out of this kind of weak place where you locate yourself. He was there because of fear. The Midianites would come and take their crops, and it said they were like swarms of locusts that would come. I thought that was interesting because locusts are little and Gideon has the strength of a lion, but he's hiding from locusts. That's what God said their enemies were like, like swarms of locusts to take the crop. Gideon's first strategy, because he's so scared, is to try to make himself smaller. Oh, man, I'm the weakest. I'm from the weakest tribe. Now, all of this is Gideon trying to size up his own strength. God has called him a mighty warrior, so he goes immediately to his own strength because he's scared. When we get scared, we tend to shrink ourselves, we tend to shrink others. We even get into the part of our brain they call the lizard brain, which is the survival part of our brain, which is like running from tigers and Bengals and bears and stuff like that. We start running from stuff and hiding from stuff, even though nothing is really chasing us and nothing is really wrong. I know you've done that before. You just feel like, why am I down here in this winepress threshing my wheat? Well, it's because you've been attacked before. It's because you've been rejected before. It's because you tried to step into something before. You look at what's ahead of you in this season of your life, and you're like, I'm not smart as them. I'm not as good as them. A lot of times, the first step to making peace with God and making peace with yourself and making peace with who he made you to be and who he didn't make you to be. Sometimes the first step to all of that is smashing your father's altars. That doesn't mean to me that you Go outside if you're a teenager and just start going through your dad's garage and throwing his power tools around because he spent too much time out there and not enough with you. That's not what I mean. I don't mean if your parents drink, you go through smashing their liquor bottles. That'd be kind of bad if you heard me say that. But realistically, though, I think a lot of us never make peace with the strength we have, the capacity we have, the potential we have because we are limited by what we've seen before us. I thought it was crazy how Gideon's dad came out and he's like, hey, let BAAL deal with him if he's really God. Of course BAAL didn't and BAAL couldn't because God was with Gideon and God is with you. There may be some altars you need to smash beliefs. You need to smash agreements. You came into like, everybody in our family does this. Nobody in our family did that. I actually remember this cool moment where somebody was saying to my dad that I would never be able to afford to go to college, talking about me and my dad never graduated high school. So that triggered on me. It's like, don't you ever tell my boy. You shut up. You don't ever tell my boy he can't go to college. He's like, I'll rob a bank. I'll kill somebody and take their money so he can go to college if he wants to go to college. I'm not saying that's Christlike. I often joke that's not going to land him on Focus on the Family with that kind of parenting. But it kind of meant a lot to me. He's like, don't let my limitations become your insecurities. That's what I think he was trying to make sure of there. This isn't a video devotion about my dad. It just got me thinking about him. I was sharing with a friend of mine a little bit about his story yesterday and how his life was so hard. My dad was a barber, and he never made more than $12 a haircut before he died. And how in many ways, I think the fears he experienced. He grew up in a real rough household. His dad was an alcoholic, a really mean drunk, and would beat them and stuff. Eventually, his dad committed suicide. He actually committed suicide on my dad's birthday when he was a little boy, like 7 or 8 years old. I think it was kind of important to him, and I know it was to my mom, too, that they gave me opportunities, even based on their own sacrifices to enable me to go forward so that I could have the strength, so that I could have the skills that I was supposed to have. Every parent wants that for their child. I want that for my children, too. Yet at the same time that they gave me opportunities, there are ways in which God will call me to grow into my own man, my own family traditions. And sometimes moving forward in what God has given me is going to feel like I'm being disloyal to somebody I love or something I always thought, or something I believe. To me, this image of Gideon making an altar to God that says the Lord is peace and going forward in the strength he has means in many ways, leaving behind a lot of the life. He was loyal to all the people around him, the clan he was a part of, how they saw themselves. Breaking out of that is not easy. Making peace with your strength isn't easy. So you try to shrink yourself. You try to shrink what God is doing and fit it into your previous experience. If you've never seen it before, you think God can't do it. You feel God calling you up higher. It kind of scares you. You're like, well, I. I can't do that. That's not me. But what if it is? What if it is me? What if the other stuff, the fear, the holding back, the not being encouraging, the going through life guarded, the hiding in a winepress, not coming out and really being creative, not engaging my day, not wanting to lead, not wanting to set an example, not wanting to do the things that I know are going to make me feel better. Just trying to get relief through the day so I don't have to feel bad right there. What if that is false? And what if mighty warrior is true? What if wimp in a winepress is just where fear has put you? What if wimp in a winepress? I'm not calling Gideon a wimp. Between me and you, I think it's pretty crazy how much faith he did have. He just needed a few signs. He blows a trumpet, boom, he goes out. The first thing God does, though, he starts taking people away and gets Gideon's army down to 300. The army doesn't shrink Gideon. He calls Gideon a mighty warrior, but yet he shrinks. The things Gideon would depend on that would make Gideon think that it was his own strength that saved Israel. He didn't want Gideon to rely on his own strength, but that doesn't mean he didn't want him to own his strength because he called him a mighty warrior. So you have to get this. This is crazy. He says, you're a mighty warrior. That's who you are. You have a lion within you. And the Midianites are swarms of locusts compared to the lion of the spirit of God that's in you. Gideon did go and do amazing things. Powerful, powerful things are ahead for Gideon. But the first thing that has to happen is he has to break his father's altars. Which doesn't mean that he hates where he came from. It just means he's moving forward and he has to go. Say this out loud. Go in the strength you have. Then the next thing he has to do is make peace with God at the altar so he can know that that is God calling you, Gideon. That is God using you. Then when God starts removing people who aren't going to be ready for the battle, people who God doesn't intend to move into the next season, it's getting Gideon ready to experience a strength that doesn't come from him. If you have felt in this season like you've been shrunken, maybe your options, maybe your friendships, maybe your possibilities, maybe your energy, maybe your time has been shrunken. That could be God setting you up to rely on his strength like never before. I want you to go in the strength you have. What does that mean? It ties into the teaching I've been doing. Do the thing that you would do, mighty warrior. You. Capable you. Anointed you. The you that has made peace with your strength. When you make peace with your strength, that's because you know it comes from God. It doesn't come from you. You make peace with it, like God. These are the gifts you've given me. These are the abilities you've given me. I'm good with being Gideon. I'm good with being Steven. They had a prompt one time when I was a little boy in class that we thought was funny. It was a vocabulary prompt. And it said, even Steven knows this word. I don't remember what the context was. I just remember that was funny to me. We laughed at it. Even Steven knows this word. While I was reading this morning, the Lord brought that up. It's funny. Even Steven. It's like a little saying. The Lord was saying, you know, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Gideon, and even Stephen. Because I'm like, man, Lord. I'm from Moncks Corner. I'm from Manasseh. And I wasn't a star athlete at Berkeley High School. I was like a water boy. God, you want to use me to speak to People influence people. That's crazy. I'm not a trained or crazy talented musician. I talk. That's what I do for a living. That's my strength. I speak. What do we say about people who talk? They're all talk. Talk is cheap. I come to God sometimes. All I know how to do is talk. I don't even know if I'm very good at that sometimes. The Lord is bringing me into a season that he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Gideon and the God of Mead. Like I'm here where I'm supposed to be doing what I'm supposed to do. Make peace with that. Make peace under the oak of your orpah that I'm making peace with my strength. I think a lot of times we talk about accepting your limitations and that's great, but that should lead to making peace with your strength and action. When you accept your limitations, it shouldn't paralyze you and make you go, no, I can't do that. Let me just sit back and watch YouTube for four hours. Because I can't do that. I don't have any opportunities over here. Nobody's calling me, Nobody wants me. No, go. In the strength you have, do the thing that you would do if you believed you were a mighty warrior. What would you do? Do that. Do that. I thought about how when you hear about a target, they always say it's harder to hit a moving target. How God is telling, gideon, get going. Be a moving target. If the enemy is going to hit you, don't let him find you in the winepress. If you're going to fail. I wrote this down the other day. I may end in failure, but. But I will not live in fear. Boy, that thing got in me when I said it. I don't mean that I am a failure, but shoot, man, I don't know how my story is going to end. I don't know if I'm going to win great victories in every season or climb up or fall down. I don't know any of that. But if God is with me, then I have to go. If I'm going to get hit by the enemy, I'm going to do it while I'm moving toward something that's worth moving toward and enjoy my life and make peace with my strength. I hear God saying to somebody, that's me you're running from. That's me calling you. That is the real you. I'm trying to show you. Don't reject it. When you feel yourself going like, man, maybe I could be more of a patient person. Maybe I could be more kind. Maybe I could be more encouraging. Maybe I could do these things. Maybe you could go into strength you have and find out what it can be. But the first step to going in the strength you have, you have to be grateful to God for it. It insults God when we diminish that it does. So make peace with your strength so that you can be at peace with the God who gave them to you. Don't fight the fire God has given you. Don't fight the flow he's given you. Don't downplay yourself to fit in with people that honestly a lot of times they are weaker than you are. Don't worship at the altar of everything your family knew. God might have brought you into the season to even set some of them free. There are so many applications of this I know we could take it to crazy places. I hear the Lord saying, make peace with your strength. Thank you for watching. Make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a single video or livestream and share this video with a friend. And don't forget, you can join me live every Sunday. Thanks again for watching.