Speak UP!

We have lots of messages running around in our heads sometimes.  Turn the other cheek!  Have no other God’s before me! Spread the message!  Love your neighbor as yourself!  Look to Jesus for inward understanding!  Question the directions you think God might be giving you!  Were these from God or from yourself!  Read the Bible to get the answer; how can I understand what of these studies provides answers in this situation?

Help!

And that is where we have to begin! Help.

I am writing on a Monday and my yesterday to this was a Sunday School lesson about Gideon.  Gideon replied to God’s directions to him personally with these kinds of thoughts, “Are YOU kidding me?  Come on!  You know me and there is no way I am equipped to do that!  How on this earthy can YOU possibly think I (little me) can take on a battle as a leader with only an army that is the one quarter the size of those enemies?  Now, You want me to downsize and downsize against, selecting only 300 men out of the 30K to go against 120K.  Tell me.  Please, tell me how and what!”

God did.  The way this happened with the way this battle was implemented and subsequently won is still rattling around in my head with this question:  HOW COULD I EVER GET ENOUGH TRUST TO ACCEPT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE ANSWER KNOWING THE ACTION I (insignificant me) AM TO TAKE IS WAY OUT THERE BEYOND MY CAPABILITIES? 

And there is the answer!

Of course, it is way out there beyond my capabilities, just like it was for Gideon.  God can do anything.  I have to learn to trust that the answer, which I really want to confirm, is a message from God that I need to do what tasks that I am certain (99% sure, almost sure, maybe more like 70% sure, wondering about) I have been told to do and HE WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST!

Help!

One step a time.  Gideon and his crew of 300 showed up and made a ring around that huge camp of many thousands.  Each of these were told to shine their light at midnight and make a huge concerted sound on their ram trumpets.  They had to be shaking in their sandals thinking they would soon be taking their last breath.  Despite this, they did it!  They did what Gideon told them God had said to do.

That huge camp of the enemy turned tail and ran when they heard the horns and saw the lights.  You see, someone in the enemy camp had a dream. and shared it, that the Israelites

would win the battle.  Turned tail and ran is what they did because they were big time shaking in their sandals!  Three hundred men with lights and trumpets put the fear of God in that army!  And, that, my friend, is the point. The fear of God!

God, I trust YOU to guide me. Please help me to know that I know when I think I know what you want me to do.   I trust I’m on the path of this thing, I do, but I pretty much think I won’t be good at it.  The only way this can have meaning and come to fruition is that you take this meager offering of my willingness and use it whatever way you have already chosen.  Please give me baby steps and I will try.

Man, this is hard.  But, I’m grateful.  I’ll try hard to shine and light and blow a trumpet.