Today is Disney day at school. Everyone is supposed to dress up like a Disney character. You know Mickey, Minney, Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, etc. Not Blake. He went donned in a pair of Department of Corrections coveralls (orange) and a shovel. He is Stanley Yelnats from the Disney movie Holes. Understated. Unexpected. Unlikely. Probably unrecognized. I love it. Makes me smile…That’s my boy 🙂
I love how God always goes for the unexpected. Always cheers for the underdog. Always uses the least likely. Over and over he uses the simplest of instruments to do His work. He created the earth out of nothing. He made man out of dirt. He formed woman from a rib. He sent a Savior to the world through a teenage girl who birthed him in a barn. All our favorite bible stories are based on simple, flawed people. People whom the world would never choose. And there is underlying reason for this pattern. So that the glory goes to Him and not the thing or person through which He works.
I was reminded of this again this morning. I was reading Judges chapter 7. Gideon had just “thrown out his fleece” before God and saw God answer specifically. This was in answer to Gideon’s questioning heart – “Will you really save Israel by my hand? I know you said so, but can you show me for sure?” We can all relate to that – we want to believe and move forward, but we want to know for sure. And if we know for sure then we can step out. Here’s the problem. Gideon was looking at God saving Israel through Gideon’s hand. And though God would work through Gideon, it was God’s hand that was going to do the saving.
In verse 2, God says to Gideon, “You have too large an army with you. I can’t turn Midian over to them like this – they’ll take all the credit, saying, ‘I did it all myself,’ and forget about me…” God knows our nature. Even if we don’t mean to, we can believe we are more than we actually are and neglect to give God the credit He deserves. Gideon started with an army of 32,000 and God whittled it down to three hundred. Not nearly enough by human standards. But Gideon has seen God’s answer with the fleece and knows that He can trust God and His “crazy” ideas.
That night God tells Gideon to attack the Midianite camp. But He also recognizes that there may still be some natural residual fear. So He tells Gideon to go down and eavesdrop on a conversation that would be happening in the camp that would give him reassurance. So he did. And it says that the camp was crowded with people – “thick as locusts”. They were clearly outnumbered. And he did hear the conversation – a man telling his friend about a dream he had just had. An obvious prophetic dream that told that the Midianite camp would be totally taken over by Gideon. Can you imagine hearing that? Amazing. And what was Gideon’s response? Verse 15 – “When Gideon heard the dream and its interpretation, HE WORSHIPPED GOD.” God got the credit. He received the glory He deserved.
And God was true to His promise. Of course He was. It’s who He is. And when He chooses the strangest ways or uses the most ridiculous things and people, there is no denying that He is the one who brings the miraculous result.
I like that for many reasons. For one, it takes the pressure off knowing that God does not need our skill or ability to do what He wants to do. Secondly, it gives me hope that He can use, somehow, a simple girl like me. And third, it allows me to look at every person and every situation as a likely candidate for God to use in the most unlikely way. And that makes life really fun, unpredictable and exciting! And of course, I love the fact that I get to see God’s work with my own eyes and share it with others and watch as they discover God’s amazing work in and through them. Awesome, awesome stuff!!!!
