The Man You Think You Are, The Man God Knows You Are

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“When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.'” Judges 6:12

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Hot, sweaty, dirty, smelly Gideon hated threshing wheat in the bottom of his wine press. It was the ultimate humiliation. But threshing wheat in the bottom of a hot wine cistern was necessary because the invading Midianites had stripped him and his neighbors of everything they had. Only by hiding this last stash of grain could he and his family survive.

Wham! Wham! Wham!

Beating that grain must have been cathartic. I’m thinking Gideon imagined himself beating his Medianite enemies with every bang of his club.

But then, suddenly, a voice came out of nowhere: “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!”

Gideon climbed the steps leading out of the bottom of the wine press. Who was this man sitting there in the shade of an oak tree?

God, it turned out. It was God who was sitting there under that oak tree telling Gideon that he was, quite literally, with him. More specifically, it was God in the form of “the angel of the Lord” – otherwise known as the pre-incarnate Christ – who was calling him “mighty warrior.”

Gideon was unimpressed. He had already mentally composed a sarcastic response by the time he got to the top of the wine press and stepped out.

“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.” Judges 6:13 (NIV)

To this wavering monotheist the Lord replied that he himself was Gideon’s strength and that he himself was sending Gideon to save Israel from Midian. But Gideon still wasn’t convinced.

“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” Judges 6:15 (NIV)

This story of the calling of Gideon, a defeated, doubting, and insecure man who ultimately became one of Israel’s greatest judges, illustrates a problem we believers have. It’s the fact that there is often a huge difference between how we think of ourselves and who God says we actually are.

Notice in this story that God didn’t tell Gideon that he was going to be a mighty warrior. Rather, he told Gideon he already was a mighty warrior. God wasn’t simply describing Gideon’s potential, he was describing Gideon’s reality.

Brothers, do you know that the same reality God described to Gideon about himself is precisely the same reality God describes to us about ourselves? Just as God made Gideon a judge, God has made us judges as well. “Do you not know that we will judge angels?” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:3. “How much more the things of this life!”

Take a moment to think about this. There you are, sitting behind a judge’s bench hearing arguments about some magnificent angel gone bad. Or, broadening the definition of “judge” to include all of its biblical connotations, there you are, a “mighty warrior” leading an army, or ruling over a people. That is who God says you are. Not could be. Not may be. You are. You are a judge! You are a mighty warrior!

Gideon had become a slave of his circumstances and a slave of his own low self esteem. But God said to him, “Gideon, what you think is true about yourself isn’t true at all. You are a mighty warrior. Just watch. I’ll show you. I will make you a judge over Israel.”

Men, it doesn’t matter how low you are, how dark your circumstances have become. God says you are a mighty warrior and a judge. Now climb up out of that wine press of yours and act like it.

“I write to you young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one. 1 John 2:14

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry

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