In The Strength I Have

I was recently sitting in a small room with a few people and speaking directly with a man that the years have taught me to admire and trust.  We were having a deep conversation about life—my life—and challenges and difficulties and all of the things that those things include.  After some very intent consideration on his part, he looked up and told me that I should look into the story of Gideon, because something about me brought the story of Gideon to his heart.

I’ve read the story of Gideon several times.  I’ve even watched a couple of cartoon stories and read fun books about it.  But, sometimes, the smartest thing I can do is listen to the people I respect.  So, I decided to take another look into the story of Gideon and what it might mean to a rockhead like me.

Gideon lived in a time when his people were severely oppressed.  They were starving.  Their enemies, the Midianite, were raiding and pillaging and stealing all their food.  So, when we meet Gideon, we meet him in a rather awkward space.  He’s hiding.  Gideon is cowering in a wine press, below the ground, so that he can hide from his enemies with what little food he has.

That’s when God shows up.

Then the Angel of the LORD appeared to him and said: "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior." (Judges 6:12) 

There is just something about the way God starts this conversation that strikes a severe chord in me.  Gideon—the youngest son of a poor family—is hiding like a weakling and God tells him what he is.  God tells Gideon that he is a might warrior.  It could almost seem sarcastic, but God’s not speaking with sarcasm.  God is telling Gideon what Gideon is—Gideon is a mighty warrior who doesn’t yet know his identity.  God tells Gideon that he is the one being sent to rescue his people.

I parked my car in front of the gym just as my Professor and coach was pulling into the parking lot.  It was still a little bit dark and there was no class this morning.  There was no class because the academy was closed for a tournament.  I tossed my gear into the back of his car and jumped into the passenger seat.

“How’s your weight?” he asked.  It’s odd the way fighters often start their conversations.  I mean, who opens with a question like that other than a fighter?

“I think I’m good.  I might need to cut a pound or two when we get there.”  He turned on the heated passenger seat for me.  It was the first time that I had ever experienced heated seats and immediately understood their value.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m good.”  I shrugged.

I was not good, but I was committed.  Basically, my coach had signed me up for this tournament.  I did not feel ready for it.  I had competed a fair amount locally and was fairly comfortable with where I stood in the rankings.  I was successful enough at the rank I held—I had lots of shiny medals to prove it.

But my coach insisted that I needed to compete in a bigger, more prestigious tournament with a little bit tougher of a rule set.  And, to make it worse, not only was he insisting that I step up the venue I was to compete in, he had also just promoted me.  No longer was I competing in the intermediate division.  My rank now required that I compete in the advanced division.  So, my first foray into this prestigious tournament would be at a far more advanced level than I had yet experienced.

Obviously, my coach knew me well.  He saw the doubt on my face.

“Don’t worry,” he said as we merged into traffic, “you’re ready for this.”

I don’t know that I’m necessarily a coward, but I don’t know that I’m not.  In some ways, I’m just timid.  I know that most people wouldn’t believe that about me, but my natural inclination is toward shyness.  Sometimes I like my comfort too much to step out into challenge.  More often than I like to admit, I find myself overwhelmed.  The weight of life immobilizes me, manifesting as fear and anxiety that strand me in place.

I feel a lot like Gideon felt, I imagine.  I’m trying to keep my head down and out of sight.  If I don’t extend myself, if I don’t risk, if I don’t place myself in position to possibly fail…well… then I can’t fail.  I can’t fail if I don’t try.

Maybe I am a coward.

But then God shows up and tells me something different.  There’s no preface, no wind-up soliloquy to put me in the mood to hear what He has to say.  He shows up and he tells me who I am.  He makes it simple—He is with me and I am mighty. 

Of course, I have questions.  So did Gideon.  The first thing Gideon wants to know is where God has been and why hasn’t he shown up.

Gideon said to Him, "Please Sir, if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened? And where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about? They said, 'Hasn't the LORD brought us out of Egypt?' But now the LORD has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian." (Judges 6:13) 

This might be the place where I most identify with Gideon.  How often have a screamed at God, “where are you?”  I find myself desperately wondering where He’s gone, why He’s left me here in this place (whether I earned it myself or someone else earned it for me), or why he doesn’t seem to be hearing me.  I am asking, over and over again, for Him to show up in the middle of my pain, or my doubt, or my confusion and He seems so distant.  I find myself losing my grip on faith.  Unbelief doesn’t creep in—it kicks the door in and declares this is the place where it lives now.  It lives here in my heart.

I find it interesting that, in this understandable moment of doubt that Gideon experiences (a doubt I think I all too well understand), God doesn’t even acknowledge it.

The LORD turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not sending you?" (Judges 6:14) 

I actually didn’t need to cut weight when we arrived at the tournament.  A sauna suit and my coach’s heated seats had seen to the couple extra pounds I thought I might need to shed.  I stepped off the scale after weigh-in and headed toward the mats where I would soon be competing.  I did the thing that every combat artist does in the minutes before a fight—I started sizing up my competition.

This would be the first time I ever participated in a format like this.  This wasn’t an elimination or bracket style tournament and there were no points.  It was a submission-only round-robin arrangment.  I would compete against everyone in my division and whichever one of us clocked the most wins would be the winner.  I was going to have to fight every fighter in my bracket, and they all looked bigger, tougher, and stronger than me.  To be honest, I think every fighter I have ever fought looked bigger, tougher, and stronger than me.

“Look at me.”  I heard my coach’s voice.  He had been watching my face.  “Look at me.”

I turned to look him in the eye.

“You’re ready for this.  I wouldn’t have brought you all the way down here if you weren’t.”

There’s a beautiful moment in this exchange between God and Gideon that just wrecks my heart.  It wrecks my heart because I think I get Gideon.  He’s scared, obviously.  A lifetime of living in fear has crushed his spirit.  He doesn’t believe he’s even close to good enough.  He knows he’s a coward and he knows he’s a failure.  But God doesn’t even pause to give those doubts credibility.

The LORD turned to him.

Despite, and in the midst of, all of Gideon’s doubt and self-deprecation, God turned his face toward the least likely deliverer and looked intently on him.  Then God gave Gideon words that cut through all fear, anxiety, and doubt. 

"But I will be with you," the LORD said to him. (Judges 6:16) 

Time compresses and expands in strange ways when I’m in competition.  It felt like it took forever for my first match to start, but it also felt like it happened suddenly.  I heard my name called and walked to the edge near the scorekeeper’s table (even though there was no score to keep because this was a submission only thing).  My coach—my friend—walked alongside me and took his seat in the coach’s chair.

“Go run your game,” he told me as the referee waved my opponent and I onto the mat.  “You’ve got this.”

The continuing narrative of Gideon makes me love him even more.  I totally get him.  He buys in and makes a choice to trust God—but, still, He’s not sure.  He tests God a few times and is still riddled with doubt.

God even gives him a mission to complete—he tells Gideon to go tear down some idols.  So, Gideon—being the kind of guy he is and I am—chooses to obey God.  But he only does it under the cover of night, because he’s still frightened.  Sure, it’s an obedience, but it seems to lack a measure of conviction.  I don’t condemn it because I get it.  I live it.

But darkness can’t fully conceal Gideon’s courage.  Word gets out about him, and when need arises, the troops rally to Gideon.

And yet still he doubts.

Gideon has looked upon the Angel of the Lord.  Gideon has witnessed fire from God.  But Gideon still isn’t sure that he’s the man God is looking for—even though God directly told him that he was the man God was looking for.

But still…God.

There’s no accusation from God.  He doesn’t seem threatened an iota by Gideon’s doubt.  Instead, He works inside of that doubt and meets Gideon in those frustrating places.  He confirms His calling on the man’s life and verifies the next mission.

My first match of the day was rough, but I managed to pull off a win.  I was utterly surprised, to be honest.  I had expected to be crushed and started out with a great deal of apprehension.  A minute or so into the match, after weathering the first couple of attacks from my opponent, I found a groove of sorts.  I started flowing and moving and, with just a short amount of time left on the clock, managed to lock in a triangle choke that secured the win.

It had been a physical match and I was tired.  I was also sweaty because I tend to sweat a lot.  I walked off of the mat still surprised by my own win.  Immediately my brain began to do a thing that it does quite naturally—it began to doubt.

What if that was a fluke?  Maybe I got lucky.  He just made a mistake.  Maybe he was the worst grappler in our bracket and I was just the second-worst.  Even in the midst of victory I can’t help but doubt.  It’s my nature, I suppose.

I stepped of the mats as I found my slippers and immediately felt my coach’s hand on my shoulder.  He handed me my hoodie as we stepped away.

“Stay warm,” he told me.  “We’ve still got a couple more wins to go.”

Despite all of Gideon’s doubt—in spite of all his hesitation—God still propelled him forward.  But God didn’t make it easy on Gideon.  In fact, he made it downright difficult.  Gideon had managed to recruit 32,000 soldiers to the cause.  Compared to the plentiful Midianite army, their number was miniscule.

But God had something to say—something odd and unexpected.

The LORD said to Gideon, "You have too many people for Me to hand the Midianites over to you, or else Israel might brag: 'I did it myself.'”  (Judges 7:2) 

God sent 22,000 of Gideon’s measly army home.  That left Gideon 10,000.  But God wasn’t done there.  Next, he sent 9,700 of Gideon’s soldiers home.

What remained were 300 troops and an inexperienced commander who was an absolute nobody with no experience. 

At this point in the story there is no mention of Gideon’s doubt, though I have no doubt there was an overwhelming amount of it.  I doubt when things are going well, when they seem to be on my side.  I doubly doubt when things are going poorly.  I doubt even more when I’m not sure if they’re going well or poorly.  Of course Gideon doubted—God was stripping away all of his resources and leaving him with nothing to fight an enemy that had settled down in the valley like a swarm of locusts, and their camels were as innumerable as the sand on the seashore. (Judges 7:12) 

But God met Gideon’s doubt before it could even be expressed.  He sent Gideon down into the enemy’s camp (I imagine that must have been some kind of spy movie adventure).  He sent Gideon down among the enemy so Gideon could be strengthened in the least likely of places to find strength.

That night the LORD said to him, "Get up and go into the camp, for I have given it into your hand.  But if you are afraid to go to the camp, go with Purah your servant.  Listen to what they say, and then you will be strengthened to go to the camp." So he went with Purah his servant to the outpost of the troops who were in the camp. (Judges 7:9-11) 

While Gideon was there, in the enemy camp, he heard the enemy talking.  They were talking about him.  They were scared of him.

(Judges 7:14)  His friend answered: "This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, the Israelite. God has handed the entire Midianite camp over to him."

I won my second match, too.  Now I was even more exhausted and breathing in ragged gasps.  Thank God for mandatory rest time, because I knew my next match was coming soon.  And I knew this guy was going to be tough.  I had watched him grapple and I knew he was good.   I didn’t realize that he was just a few feet away from me talking with one of his teammates—a teammate I had just fought.

“His pressure is really good,” I heard his teammate say.  “He’s tough and has a constant attacking style.  It’s terrible to deal with.”

They were talking about me.  They were talking about my style and about my pressure.  They were talking about it like they were scared of it.God chooses to meet my doubt—my unbelief—in the strangest of ways.  It would probably be kind of fun to watch if I wasn’t so ensconced in my own struggle.  He keeps writing stories that counteract my own low opinion of me.  It’s like He’s trying to prove something to me in spite of myself.

When Gideon’s troops charged into battle, they shouted, "A sword for Yahweh and for Gideon!" (Judges 7:20) 

Obviously, those troops belonged to God.  They were His and they were His people.  Gideon got to lead them.  He was called to the extreme honor of playing a part in God’s story.  Even then, in the midst of the adrenaline and the joy of victory, Gideon did not forget his place. 

His doubt had been overcome, maybe just for that mission.  He could have embraced arrogance, but he chose otherwise.

Then the Israelites said to Gideon, "Rule over us, you as well as your sons and your grandsons, for you delivered us from the power of Midian."

But Gideon said to them, "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule over you." (Judges 8:22-23) 

There is a weird piece to me that tends to overcome my insecurity with arrogance.  Fighting through doubt and unbelief is a difficult battle and I’ll admit that I come out on the other side a little proud of myself.  After all, I earned my standing the hard way.  It would be easy to revert to ego and arrogance.  That’s where my pride lives.

Despite all of my doubts I was now the champion of my division (I later received an email that granted free entry to the next event to defend my title).  I stood at the top of the podium where a cheap gold medal was draped around my neck.

It’s not about the medal.  It’s about what it represents.

As I stepped down I peeled the shiny trinket from around my neck and handed it to my coach.

“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked.

“Hang it up with the other medals at the academy,” I told him.  “It will look best there.”