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Transcribed
and edited
by Lynn Margason
from the cassette series
Dealing with Loneliness
The
Greeting
Ruth
2:4 Now behold Boaz came from Bethlehem and
said to the reapers, “may the LORD be with you,” and they said to
him, “may the LORD bless you.”
That
is how the ancient Israelites greeted one another.
I suppose you could say in some
respects it is equivalent to what we mean when we say, “have a
good day,” but they were saying something that contained all their
faith in one sentence. When
they met each other they raised their hands in blessing and said, “May
the LORD be with you.” And the response to that is, “and
may the LORD bless you.”
In so saying, they spoke to each other in a way based on God’s
revelation of His covenant with His people that had been given at Mt.
Sinai.
I
want us to really understand that.
We are dealing with how to be made whole in our inmost being, in
our mind and in our emotions. This
blessing which every Israelite communicated to every other Israelite
whenever they met, contains within it healing for our inmost person.
But, when they said, “may the LORD be with you,” they were not
making the general statement that God is omnipresent and because He is
everywhere, He is with you. They
were saying something far greater than that.
They were implying a special relationship; the LORD who is indeed
everywhere, is in a special sense with you.
When I say, may the LORD be with you, I am indicating that He is
for you. He is on your
side. He is with you in the
sense that He is actively seeking your highest and your best.
He wants you to come to your fullest potential as a human being.
He is seeking to bring us to completion as human beings.
He is with us to bless us. God loves us in unconditional,
infinite love. Now, I’m
speaking of us as Christians. Christians
are the ones that experience the unconditional love of God.
He is declaring our special ness; He is saying, My love comes to
seek your best; in favoring you I am pouring out upon you all that I
AM.
"With"
You
The
LORD be with you. We use a similar expression.
If you tell me of a special cause you are pursuing, I may say,
“I’m with you.”
I don’t mean I’m
walking alongside you; I mean I will place at your disposal all of my
talents, all of my assets, any strengths I have, and whatever wisdom I
have that may be a help to you in your cause.
I am standing behind you. Anything
I can do to supply you out of my own resources, I will do.
So, in saying, may the LORD be with you, I mean all the strength
of God, all His wisdom, all His infinite love be with you.
Israel
had a unique relationship with God; they had a blood covenant
relationship. For God
to
state that I am with you was a statement of that covenant.
God said He has joined Himself with His people; He is one with
them. He has bonded
Himself, by blood, to this people. He said this to them in Deuteronomy.
He promised, I will never leave you or forsake you.
Now,
notice the order of the Hebrew greeting.
It said, may the LORD be with you.
It didn’t say, may you be with the LORD.
If the LORD isn’t with us, then there is no hope of us being
with the LORD. You are in a
covenant relationship to God, not because you thought it would be a good
idea; but because God in His infinite love took the initiative.
He loved you when you didn’t love Him.
He came to save you when you didn’t even ask Him to pursue you.
You received pardon out of His hand, not because of some urge you
had to be close to God. Always
keep in mind that God comes to us first.
Faith does not buy anything from God.
Faith is not the currency of the Kingdom of God.
Faith is a response. God
takes the initiative and I respond and say, thank You.
If God does not take the initiative, I have nothing to respond to
and faith does not exist. So
the LORD be with you, is saying, He who has made the covenant and has
taken the initiative to be with you; He who in His great love for you
came to you, is with you. May you enjoy that.
That’s a lot better than saying, hello, don’t you think?
You
probably know the blessing that was placed upon Israel every morning and
every evening. The priest
would stand beside the altar and raise his hands upon Israel and say,
“The LORD bless you and keep you. The LORD
make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.”
You know what a shining face means?
It’s a smile. When
a face is shining; it is smiling. So,
he is saying, may the smile of God, the delight of God, be upon you and
be gracious to you.
May
the LORD lift up His countenance upon you. That’s a nice expression in
Hebrew. If I were looking
through a crowd of people, let’s say I’m speaking to an auditorium
full of people and my eyes suddenly light on you.
I see you. You nod
at me. That’s what it
means. God has picked you out of the crowd.
You are His in a very special way.
In a special sense may the LORD lift up His countenance upon you
and give you peace. Israel
had the presence of God; the smile of God; the nod of God; the
graciousness of God; the peace of God.
That was the blessing. God
said, I give you My presence by My initiative; I know you don’t
deserve it. Don’t think I
am rewarding you. I do this
for you because of Who I AM. I
AM blessing you.
And
so when they said, may the LORD be with you, may you know the covenant
today. They weren’t saying, we believe the covenant because we’ve
read the book of Deuteronomy and we know from it that we are people who
are in covenant with God. No, this is a dynamic and vital doctrine.
I can’t state this strongly enough. The dynamic, vital presence
of our covenant God is actually with you.
It is doctrine, but it is doctrine that’s alive.
Our God, the Creator, is with us.
It is a term God used when He entered into covenant with Abraham.
Abraham was called the friend of God, the intimate of God.
God’s friend: that’s the ultimate of intimacy.
We’ve entered into a real union; it’s not just that we
believe some long series of words.
We’ve entered into a vital closeness, a presence with God.
A
Comparison
Other
humans can only contact us at a physical level, or sometimes on a mental
or emotional level. You can
be in a crowd of people and be alone. It’s tragic, but you know as
well as I do, you can be in a marriage and be totally alone.
Two bodies living beside each other, but no contact, makes for an
awful aloneness. But, when
we say, the LORD be with you, you have the uncreated Spirit, the LORD,
with you, your real self. God
says, I am with you, closer than any human being can ever be. This
blessing the Israelites gave to one another was ultimately fulfilled in
Jesus. Everything that they
anticipated, Jesus fulfilled. You remember that Isaiah said that
One is Coming, born of a Virgin and you shall call his name Emmanuel?
Well, that means the God who was with them in covenant, was going
to actually come, take on flesh, become bone of our bone and flesh of
our flesh. And in His death
and resurrection we have been pardoned and we have been brought into the
family of God.
Then,
the grand finale of the gospel is that He sent the Holy Spirit who is
the living presence of Christ here and now.
We couldn’t be closer to God.
He is beside us physically, but He is more than that; He is
inside of us because our bodies have been made the temple of the Holy
Spirit. Therefore, it is
His closeness that fills our essential self.
We are the joy of God. May
the LORD be with you in that most ultimate sense. By a bold act of faith
I declare over you, my brother, and you, my sister, that by God’s
initiative of love, may you know this immediate presence with Him: His
closest possible Presence with you by His Spirit.
Many
times a person does not have that sense that the LORD is with them.
You always find attendant to that lack of awareness: confusion,
loneliness, fear, no focus in life, despair, hopelessness, the list goes
on.
The
Reality
So,
between sincerity in saying, the LORD be with you, and questioning
whether He IS with you, there lies a Grand Canyon.
If you know the LORD is with you, then you have hope.
You have faith; you have strength; you have wisdom; you can walk
into any situation. If you
doubt that, then you’re lonely, confused, fearful, failing because you
are without the essentials of living.
If
we don’t know God is with us we have every evidence of our world
falling apart. We find
every reason to believe that the whole thing is curtains or apocalypse
now. But, if I know the
LORD is with me, I don’t need to know anything else.
When Israel reached Kadesh-barnea, the gateway of the land which
was the reason they had left Egypt, balked.
The reason they didn’t go in, was because God
was not in their consideration. They did not have a sense
God was with them. They
were a people who were overwhelmed with fear; they panicked, they cried
with loud wailings. They wailed all night long.
They were full of self-pity.
They were imagining vividly how they were all going to be killed,
because they didn’t see God was with them.
Caleb stood up and said, surely God is with us, we can go in and
do as He says. What was
lacking in their perspective was all in that one phrase.
Loneliness
If
you understand that God is with you, you have life by the tail.
Why do I say that this one phrase, given backwards and forwards
throughout scripture when Israelites met, is the secret of wholeness?
Because one of the greatest problems we face today, especially in
America, is loneliness. Our
congregations have some very lonely people in them.
It would be a very strange congregation if this were not true.
In
our day and time there are so many people who know the loneliness of
being divorced. There’s bound to be someone reading this who knows
that experience. You know
the loneliness of having been rejected by another human being, and
you’ve seen the death of a grand dream, and you dwell in loneliness
and walk through an empty house, or empty apartment, feeling the echo of
your own presence and knowing there is no one else there.
Possibly
someone reading this is living with someone, but you’re not married.
I don’t know if you realize this, but that can be the loneliest
existence. You live with
someone who refuses to commit to you, which is basically saying, when
you get old and sick I’ll be gone; I don’t want to tie myself to
you. The world today is filled with this kind of relationships.
There are others of you who are lonely because you are single and
you long for a mate.
Then
some of you are lonely because you have experienced the death of a
spouse. Your house is empty
and the old restaurants where you used to eat together, and the
different things you used to do together, are painful reminders.
This kind of loneliness is sorrow too deep for others to
understand.
And
it is possible to have trouble in your life that even your spouse cannot
comprehend. It’s too heavy; the
burden is too great. People
come along and say they understand and you want to punch them, because
you think it is insanity for them to say they can understand your pain.
They can’t understand.
Have
you ever been lonely in failure? It
could be in a business venture; it could be in an immoral experience.
If you go bankrupt your
friends look at you as a leper and walk away.
When the news of your failure gets out, it seems like the whole
world knows about it, and you are cast into loneliness, loneliness in
dire stress, with no one to give you advice and wisdom.
Jehoshaphat
Remember
Jehoshaphat? His crisis
came when he had sent most of his army away to a distant outpost and
once they were gone it seemed that every enemy had gotten his address.
He had only a skeleton force.
He was the CEO of Jerusalem; his decisions would affect all
within the city. When the
news came across his desk, telling him of the invading forces,
Jehoshaphat was afraid. He
was alone. There was nobody
he could turn to.
Remember
when Sennacherib came to the gates of Jerusalem and they handed Hezekiah
his letter? The letter
said, basically, you’re dead meat, Hezekiah.
It pointed out to him that every confident leader in the past who
said their god would protect them, was long dead.
Hezekiah was alone. When
you’re the CEO, the buck stops with you.
Lonely
at the Top
You
can even be lonely in success. There
are not too many people at the top and they are usually in competition.
It’s lonely up there. Did
you know that one of the loneliest places on earth is a pulpit? Those of
you that aspire to ministry, and those who are in ministry, can get the
idea it is the loneliest place on earth, because it is so difficult to
make special friends. I counsel pastors’ wives.
Who can a pastor’s wife turn to?
She can’t turn to her pastor; he is her husband.
She can’t turn to the people.
Where does she go? As
I counsel these pastors’ wives I see many healings take place. But,
where do pastors go? They
can’t turn to their wife; they can’t turn to the people.
Where do they go? For
them to have real relationships with people is difficult, that’s just
the way it is, it goes with the territory.
As
I walk into this new century, it seems like the cries of the lonely are
what I am hearing more and more. Lonely
people come into the church thinking surely someone is there who can
take away their loneliness. Although
it helps to be in a body of believers, still they are lonely.
They become part of a crowd, but they are lonely.
How
Do People Cope?
So,
how do people cope with loneliness in this Twenty-first century?
They fill their atmosphere with television, radio, noise… they
scream at each other. They
don’t want quiet time to think about how lonely they are.
A prison chaplain once told me that in the prisons of our land
when curfew time comes for turning off the radios and televisions, if
there is going to be a suicide that night, it will happen in that first
ten minutes of silence. When
there is silence we have to face that we are alone.
The
crazy thing is, we believe that there is some human being out there that
can solve the problem of our loneliness; we really believe there is some
human being destined to be our refuge and strength and very present help
in times of trouble. There
are married people who believe that if they could only get out of their
present marriage and be single again, they could find the right person,
the one they should have found in the first place.
At the same time the singles are looking at those who are married
thinking they would not be lonely if they had the bliss that those
married people have. Aren’t we a mess?
Psychiatrists
have said every human being needs one essential friend; one they can be
intimate with and expose their whole heart to and know in so doing that
what they reveal about themselves will not turn up in the National
Inquirer. They need a
friend they can be absolutely honest with.
I agree with that. But,
human beings can only go with you so far.
And anyway, they are not always there.
Usually when I need a friend they are somewhere else: in some
other state or some other town or it is the middle of the night.
You
Are A Dangerous Person
It
is always a problem whenever we try to fill our deepest needs with
created things. We try to
fill these deepest needs with food, with drink, with sex, with clothes,
and with people. The fact
is, our deepest need is for the uncreated Person.
We were created for an infinite Companion.
There is no human being that can fill that role.
I
am not safe around people until I have met my deepest need in the
Uncreated. If I am still
looking for somebody to fill the emptiness of my life and I’m lonely
and I get with you, I’m going to suck the life out of you trying to
get you to fill my need. You
see I’m a dangerous person to be around in that condition.
It is the same as going into a grocery store when you’re
starving; you’re dangerous. You
are going to buy stuff you shouldn’t buy.
If I’m lonely and you put me among human beings, if I don’t
understand what I’m really looking for is the Uncreated person to fill
my deepest needs, then I’m going to mess up your life while I’m
messing up my own.
We’ve
got this hunger inside of us, so what do we do?
We stuff ourselves with food as if that were going to answer the
problem. Isn’t that
ridiculous? Jesus said, I
am the bread of life. We
pour liquid down our throats. Jesus
said, I’ll give you the water of life.
We think we can fill an uncreated need with created stuff.
We can’t.
Created
That Way
When
we speak of God creating mankind, we tend to say God created the first
man, but really that first man was mankind.
When God made Eve, He didn’t start with a heap of dust over
there, he took Eve out of Adam. She
was already there. It says
He took a side of Adam. The
word in the Hebrew would also apply if I said, “there’s a side of me
that you’ve never met.” God
took the female side of Adam and made Eve.
I
don’t know what Adam was like. He
wasn’t male. He was
Mankind. He was male and
female. He was the two of them in one.
Why did God do that? I believe that the first three chapters of
Genesis are so important. Whenever He created rabbits, there was Mr.
Rabbit and Mrs. Rabbit. It
wasn’t a he/she rabbit; there were two rabbits.
Rabbits looked at each other and they were fulfilled in their
rabbitness. That was it.
But,
not with Adam. There were two of all the other animals, but when it came
to man, there was only one. What
on earth was God doing? Wouldn’t
Adam be lonely? Shall I
tell you why? Every
creature that God made, He made with a mate.
When He made Mankind, He made mankind in such a fashion that
mankind had to understand that God is his mate.
And it was only when mankind knew his first intercourse was with
his Creator, then God said, it is not good that you be alone.
And so He split them. He
took the female side out. Mankind
was only allowed to find the fulfillment in another human being when he
had learned the prime fulfillment is in our God.
Do you see that?
Doomed
To Loneliness?
That’s
the blueprint. We’re not
talking about a good idea; this is how we work.
If I do not spend my time in relationship with God, I’m not
going to function. I’m
going to be lonely, along with a lot of other things.
Loneliness will come whether I am with other people or not, if I
am not in fellowship with God. It
is right to desire human friendship; God Himself has said it is not good
for us to be alone. But, He
said that only after it was established that our deepest need can only
be fulfilled in Him.
It
was after the fall of man, when mankind turned away from God to find
fulfillment in each other, that chaos came into the world.
Because man apart from God doesn’t work properly. He
only functions when he has first and foremost the knowledge that God is
with him.
Give
Me Somebody!
Remember
Moses? When God gave him
his commission to bring Israel out of Egypt, Moses almost fell apart.
He said, I can’t do that.
You’ve got to give me somebody to help me.
So, the LORD said, your brother, Aaron, is on his way.
Moses relaxed and thought, good, Aaron is coming.
Of course, Aaron was hardly what Moses had had in mind; in many
ways Aaron was a pain from day one, but Moses quickly learned that it
was the Presence of God that made things happen, not Aaron.
Aaron was there, but he didn’t really amount to much.
You remember a while later, in the wilderness, Moses told God, if
you don’t come with us, we won’t go.
Moses had learned that it wasn’t another human being he needed,
it was God.
Now,
if you understand that, can you understand this?
It is very possible to be alone, but not lonely. It is
possible to have no human beings around and not be lonely, because the
prime relationship we have is with God. Remember John 16:32, says, the
hour has come when you will be scattered each to his own home to leave
me alone. And yet I am not
alone because the Father is with me.
Jehoshaphat,
the one we spoke of, who was alone with great stress and decision, spoke
some of the most beautiful words in the Old Testament.
Looking to God he said, "We do not know what to do.
But our eyes are on You." I love what Hezekiah did. He
took that nasty letter Sennacherib had written, into the temple, the
house of the LORD, the house of his best friend, and he laid the letter
before the LORD and said, read it.
He went to his chief advisor, the LORD who was with him.
And Hezekiah received direction.
When
Everyone Deserts You
You
know only too well Psalm 23, I will fear
no evil, for Thou art with me.
When Paul was preaching in Corinth it seemed like nobody was
listening to him. He was
ready to quit, to walk away. He
tells us later that the LORD stood by him and said, do not be afraid, do
not be silent, for I am with you. Go on speaking. You’re not speaking
to the crowd; you’re speaking because I’m with you.
Then one of the most tragic of scriptures, II Timothy 4:16 tells
us that in Paul’s first defense, when he stood before Nero, being
tried for his life because he was a Christian, Paul said no one
supported him. Everybody
deserted him. Can you feel
that? Paul the Apostle was
being tried and every Christian in Rome ran for their lives thinking if
I am associated with him, I’ll be thrown to the lions.
I’m sorry Paul; you’re on your own.
Paul said everybody deserted him, but he said, “The LORD stood
with me and strengthened me.” Those
were among Paul’s last recorded words, “God stood with me before the
courts of Rome.”
Joseph's
Story
One
of the most fantastic stories in the Old Testament is Joseph’s.
Our album titled A SingleVISION Lifestyle tells the story of
Joseph. Joseph knew God.
Joseph was maybe seventeen or eighteen years old when he was
brutally rejected by his brothers.
The nearest equivalent to what they did with him would be slave
trading. Joseph was
captured by his own brothers and sold into Egypt to be a slave.
He found himself in the house of Potiphar, the Egyptian official.
He hardly spoke the language; he picked it up as he went along.
You talk about lonely? The
kid had never left home before! Here
he is in this lonely place. Then
to this lonely boy comes this woman, wife of Potiphar, with perfume and
an invitation into her bed. This
kid is lonely, he’s been hurt, he’s been rejected.
He’s a slave which means that in the eyes of everybody he’s a
non-human. Hear this, this
seductive woman is telling him that in her eyes, he’s a hunk!
She wants him! He is
Mr. VIP. And he said, no.
How did he say “no”?
Just
immediately before that happened the scripture said, and the LORD was
with Joseph. That’s why
Joseph responds to the woman as he does.
He is not turned on, she has not overwhelmed him, and he’s
talking to her calmly, giving her reasons why he can’t do it.
He sums up the whole lot by saying, I can’t sin against God.
He was showing God he could feel His Presence.
He knew God was with him. He
could feel the woman’s presence, too, but He could feel God’s
presence more intensely than hers.
So, in essence he told her God’s Presence mattered more to him
than she did. He had more
with God than she could give me. That
illustrates what I’m saying here.
When I say, the LORD is with you, I mean it is His Presence that
swallows up loneliness.
The
Holy Spirit
You
may be alone, but His Presence so swallows up the loneliness of being
alone that even when temptations particular to the lonely come, His
Presence with you is stronger. Do
you understand what I’m saying? Those
of you who have great difficulty with pornography, be present to God.
Get our album on Being Present to God.
Be present to God and be aware of God’s Presence with you.
He will never leave you.
You
remember the great benediction of the New Testament?
The Grace of the LORD Jesus Christ, the
love of God of Our Father, and the fellowship, the intimacy of the
Presence of the Holy Spirit, be with you.
Much of what I’m saying here does not make sense outside of the
relationship of the Holy Spirit. You
are going nowhere without the grace that was revealed in Jesus.
That grace revealed in Jesus, in turn reveals to us the love of
God. But, all of that is
just beautiful theory unless the Holy Spirit makes it reality.
I’m
talking about a Presence in our life that is more real than our
loneliness. That’s not
theory; you don’t read it in a book; God has to make that known to
you. He does that by the
Holy Spirit. He’s filling
you even now. God is here,
in the person of the Holy Spirit, speaking to you through these words.
Offer your loneliness to the God Who is with you.
I didn’t say bombard heaven with pleas He will take away the
loneliness.
Obsessive?
Let
me say this very honestly. I
speak from my own experience. Loneliness
can become an obsession. You
can find yourself grossly exaggerating your loneliness until you feel
you’re the only person on the planet who is lonely.
Isn’t that true? Probably
50 per cent of the lonely ones in our church believe they are the
only ones that are lonely. That’s
just the way it works. Loneliness
can become an obsession with self.
Poor me, I’m lonely, I don’t have friends. I look enviously
at others to see if they have love for me today.
I turn to God and pray, send someone to love me.
Me, me me!
Instead,
we should deliberately turn our eyes away from our loneliness and offer
it to God and say, what do You want to do with it?
You see the difference? Stop
sitting in the corner lamenting, I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone. What
I’m suggesting is that God has a reason for this loneliness you are
experiencing. Give
it to Him. See what He
wants to do with it. It
could be that there is a purpose to be worked out, as you find your
meaning in God, your loneliness is swallowed up in a whole new focus.
When you realize that the reason for your very existence is to
find the companionship of God, then take your loneliness to Him and
offer it to Him and ask, what do you want to do with this? I’m giving
it to You.
Paul
in Jail
There
is a place in Philippians I want to mention.
Paul was in jail because of his Christianity.
He had a hard time with his stay there: he was weary, he was
beat, and his friends had left him for the most part.
He was in the dungeon. He
wrote to the Philippians. He
said, in essence, he couldn’t make up his mind.
He said, when I think about where I am going to be going, you
know what I have a desire for? I’d like to depart and be with Christ,
which is far better.
Have
you ever wondered if maybe, Paul was saying, I would just like for this
to end? I’m alone;
nobody cares. And what a
marvelous way to end it all, just tell Nero where to go, tell him I’m
a Christian, that Jesus is LORD and then they can just chop off my head.
I’ll be a martyr then; I’ll just go be with Jesus.
That’s far better than this.
Have
you ever felt like that? Tired
of being alone; tired of trying to make something happen and nobody
cares? Thinking it would be
better to just depart and be with Christ?
But, you know what Paul did?
He took his loneliness and gave it God.
He said, I think I’ll stick around for your sake.
I don’t live because it makes me happy.
I live life for Him. To
live is Christ. And you
know what? When for you "to
live is Christ," you’ll have joy.
If you’re looking for happiness, you’ll never find it; if you
pursue peace and prosperity and health, you’ll never find it.
But when you offer your life to God and say I live unto you,
you’ll have joy. Joy will
dog your heals. Peace will
wrap around you. There will
be wholeness in your mind and emotions and even the cells of your body.
What
to do?
Offer
your loneliness to God. Don’t
fight it. Don’t sit in
the corner and hate it. Don’t
scream at God because of it. Say,
God, You’re in this. You
fill every square millimeter of this room and You are inside me; I’m
in You and You’re in me. And
You’re hearing what I’m calling loneliness.
What do you want me to do? Here
I am. Make this loneliness
the arena of whatever you want to do with it.
I’m here. I
present myself to you.
This
is what happens. When you
are lonely, you move from being alone to realizing the Presence of God.
You can call that solitude.
I’m alone in God’s Presence.
I turn that into prayer, an offering to God.
And you will find yourself filled, then thrust forth to bless
others. Paul said, out of
his own deep experience, the comfort that I received from God is what I
comfort you with, now. He
had become strong as a man. You
will become strong as a man, as a woman, because you will have found the
fulfillment of your deepest need in a relationship with God.
He comforts you; He strengthens you.
And then you share it with others and you will have forgotten
your loneliness by then.
And
along with surrendering the loneliness, would you also please surrender
the script you’ve written for your life?
You know how it is. You
have this absolute, ironclad idea of how your loneliness is going to
end. You’ve scripted it.
Well, believe me, you don’t know.
While you have an agenda that you keep on insisting that God keep
to, you are only increasing your loneliness.
Rather, surrender the agenda, surrender the script, and live by
God’s agenda, which is always interesting because you never know what
it is. That is spontaneous
living. You take no thought
for tomorrow. You don’t
go off on excursions into tomorrow.
Live by the moment; arise every morning; and adapt to God’s
agenda and you’ll see Him working out His purpose in your life.
Gideon
The
Bible does give us some practical examples to consider. We’ve looked
at Joseph and Paul’s response to loneliness. How about this one?
Judges
6:11 Then the Angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak that was in
Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was
beating out wheat in the wine press in order to save it from the
Midianites. And the angel
of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, The
LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.
Then
Gideon said to him, O my Lord, if the LORD is with us why then has all
this happened to us, and where are all His mercies which our fathers
told us about, saying, did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?
But, now the LORD has abandoned us, and given us into the hand of
Midian. And the Lord looked
at him and said, go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the
hand of Midian. Have I not
sent you? And he said to
him, O Lord, how shalt I deliver Israel?
Behold my family is the least in Manasseh and I’m the youngest
in my father’s house. But,
the Lord said to him, surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat
Midian as one man.
The
Scene
Remember
Gideon? Poor Gideon, I feel sorry for him in a sense.
I can get inside his head, though.
The whole nation has fallen apart and the enemy was walking all
over them. Here’s Gideon
who was the youngest son of the smallest clan in his tribe.
The only thing I can give him credit for is that he was quite
creative in his fearfulness. He
took the wheat into a great big barrel, a barrel big enough to put part
of the congregation of your church in; it was in that barrel that they
made their wine. He went
into the barrel with all his wheat and he thrashed the wheat in there
hoping when their enemies came, they wouldn’t think of looking in the
wine making vat for him.
Get
the picture: he comes sneaking out of the barrel, this kid who thinks
he’s no good, worthless, not likely to ever amount to anything, and
there sitting under a tree is a messenger from God.
The messenger says, The LORD
is with you, you mighty warrior.
God doesn’t look at us like we look at ourselves.
Gideon, knows he’s a covenant person, but he’s about given up on
that. And he says, if the
LORD be with us how come all this is happening?
You
can almost always figure that when you ask the question, “why?” of
God, that’s a sin. But,
Gideon asked, if God is with us, why is this happening?
Gideon lists everything that has gone wrong.
But God never even bothers to comment on Gideon’s list; God
doesn’t get mad at Gideon for mentioning it, rather He comes straight
back and says, “The LORD is with you, you
mighty warrior, go in this your strength.”
But Gideon says, I’m nobody, I’m not capable, I don’t have
any resources, and I don’t have any allies.
How could I ever get together an army
Surely,
I am with you, God says. That’s what he needed to know and that’s
all he needed to know. That
God was with him.
People
of God
Gideon’s
people were called the people of God because they had received a
revelation of the character and nature of God.
They had received a revelation of God’s’ unconditional love
for His elect. They were
the only nation which had received this revelation.
That revelation came to its fullness in the coming of Jesus who
we have believed upon. It
began with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and it went to the people of Israel.
He came first to Israel, and then in Jesus Christ He has come to
us, the church. The
revelation is that God loves us unconditionally, and that this God Who
loves us has initiated a covenant.
In
plainer English, you might say He has initiated a marriage.
God married His People. God said, I love you because of Who I am
and I now initiate a marriage with you. That’s the covenant.
He entered into a union with them and so now He doesn’t just
love us, but He places His love in His people.
A very real marriage takes place.
God marries this people, and in the marriage the love which He
has for them now enters into them and there is birthed through them His
love for the world.
Just
the Beginning
It
is not only that God loves us, that’s only the introduction of the
preface of of the first volume. God
loves you, now, what do we do with that?
He says, I called you into covenant with me.
I married you and in marriage you are united with me and I put my
love inside you and then we give birth to the expression of that love in
terms of behavior. We begin
to reveal God’s love in what we do, our lifestyle.
We begin to produce His love purposes to other people.
We, in fact, become the revealers of God’s love on earth.
We
become little unconditional lovers. Jesus told us that this would be
how the world would know we are His disciples: "That
you LOVE one another." Christians should love one
another to be obedient to Him. From the very beginning this is what the
Bible shows us a functioning human being should be.
A whole person. Jesus says He makes you whole.
He means healthy emotionally as well as spiritually.
The
word "whole" comes from the word, holy.
In ancient English “whole” and “holy” were one word.
Whenever I am a whole person, I am a holy person.
I am completely healthy from the inside out.
If I am a functioning person in this world, I am a person who
loves others with the love of God.
When Israel lived in the light of that revelation, when they were
obeying that covenant they had a rhythm in God unlike any other; they
had a strength from the Almighty no one could stand against.
They were enabled from within to be who God told them to be.
But, when they were ignorant of that covenant, or when they
walked away from that covenant, disobeyed it, they became disoriented.
They didn’t know who they were anymore.
They were dysfunctional. They
were no longer whole people. They
became sick. In their
spirit and their mind and their emotions, they became lost, wandering
around not knowing who they were. They
became like the rest of the human race.
Dysfunctional.
Baal
Just
before our coming to Gideon, Israel had turned away from their covenant
with God and turned to other gods as they did so many times in the Old
Testament. When you read of
Baal and Ashtaroth as the gods they served instead of God, we need to
know what Baal means? Baal
is the ultimate changing of the meaning of life.
The meaning of life is to be one with God, with His love in me
going through me to others. He
shows me the meaning of life is shedding abroad of His love to others.
Baal was the total distortion and twisting of that.
It
is interesting that Satan is never original.
He can only take that which is truth and twist it.
He never comes up with anything original.
With Baal he says that God is not the meaning of life; he says
that to love others is not the meaning of life.
Baal says your happiness is the meaning of life.
So subtle. God will give you joy, only joy isn’t the meaning of
life, God is. Satan twisted
that and said the joy is the meaning of life.
And he said, wherein shall you find happiness?
If you’ll worship me, said Baal, I will look after your crops
and your herds and they will produce and you will be wealthy.
A distortion. God
said He would make us prosper so we can give it away to everybody else.
But Baal distorted it to say; I’ll give you riches for your
sake.
Sex
At
the heart of Baal worship was the distortion of sex.
In fact, in order to worship Baal, one had to enter into
intercourse with prostitutes at the Baal temple.
It involved the entire practicing Baal worshipper in every sort
of sexual immorality. It was no longer seeing a person to be loved, but
it was seeing a person as a thing to be used to gratify their own
desires, to feel the ultimate pleasure. Satan-Baal twisted it so they
were using others for their own happiness.
This
is the atmosphere and the language of the times of Gideon.
They believed their happiness was of first importance.
That was the meaning of life to them.
And what happened? There
no longer were a functioning people as God intended them to be. They
became weak and helpless like everyone else.
What’s the first thing that went?
Their crops and their herds were stolen.
Those things that Baal promised to give them were taken away.
And so there was a systematic raping of the land. Israel became
reduced to something like slaves. They
found themselves paralyzed by fear.
They were lonely people full of fear.
Their only common bond was that they still clung to their belief
that in Baal there was still safety and the meaning of life.
"You
Are Here"
Today
people believe they must protect themselves from all hurt and all pain
and pursue their own happiness; that that’s what life is about.
And they will use whoever is available to foster their own
happiness. This is the atmosphere of an obsession with self.
Have
you ever been in a shopping mall where you see those maps that have a
directory of the stores? You
look at the map and there is a little arrow labeled, “you are here”.
I wonder sometimes, shall I believe that map?
What if somebody in their meanness, took that arrow and put it
somewhere else on the map other than where I really am?
Wouldn’t that make a difference?
You look at the map and you think you are here, but you’re
really not, you’re over there. But,
if you believe that you’re there, you are going to make all your plans
based on the fact that you’re there when you’re really here.
And that means, then, that all your calculations are wrong.
It means you’re not where you think you are.
It also means you are not going to get where you think you are
going.
If
I believe that my happiness is the meaning of life, then I’m at the
wrong end of the shopping mall. All
my calculations about life and all my belief about everything is
inaccurate. I’m confused
and I’m disoriented. That’s
why Jesus continues to use the word to describe the human race that He
does: He says we are lost.
The
Angel
Now,
God came to Gideon as he sat disoriented, lonely, sad, self-pitying.
How will He take this man, who is at the wrong end of the
shopping mall, and get the arrow back to where his life really is? Here
comes this wimp of a man, although he’s the son of a mayor.
He pokes his head over the edge of a wine barrel to see if there
is a Midianite around and he sees an angel of the LORD sitting under a
tree. I don’t know what
you are imagining he saw when he saw an angel, but don’t think of a
pale guy in a lingerie outfit. That is not an angel.
The
word angel is a word we never translated from the Greek, it means a
messenger. You wouldn’t necessarily notice he’s different from
anyone else. An angel may
have a business suit on; he’s a messenger from God. This messenger sat
under a tree and as soon as this kid pops out of the top of the wine
barrel, the messenger says, Hello, there; the
LORD is with you mighty, valiant warrior.
At
the sound of the messenger’s voice I’m sure Gideon ducked down
again. Terrified.
Valiant warrior!
In the Hebrew that word meant strength, power, ability; also
wealth, wisdom and substance. They used the same word to describe an
army with terrible military might.
The messenger says, as Gideon’s head pokes out of the wine
barrel, here he comes the mighty warrior everyone is scared of.
Gideon, with his little heap of wheat he’s protecting, is being
called wealthy. I suppose
you could say he was being called a hero,
a knight in shining armor.
Gideon
is a man who has forgotten there is a covenant; he’s been hanging out
with Baal; he thinks happiness is the meaning of life.
He is weak as water before his enemies.
And this messenger of God tells him, the LORD is with you.
You are an army in disguise.
How
Do You See Yourself?
Again,
God does not see us as we see ourselves.
He sees us in the light of the covenant that He has made with us.
God sees you on the basis of the covenant that He has made, even
if you are not aware of it. We
are not what we think we are. We
are not what we think everyone else thinks we are. Nor are we the sum of
our behavior. Some people
think that’s who they are. When
God looks at you He doesn’t make an evaluation based upon your
history, or your behavior. You
are who God says you are, which is based on the truth of what He has
done for you.
Gideon
thought that the Midianites thought that he was a wimp.
So, he’d been acting like a wimp.
He thought he was helpless. I married you, God tells him.
All my ability is yours if you’ll just wake up and forsake Baal
and come back home. He came
to Gideon at the lowest point in his life, when all Gideon could think
of was hopelessness and despair and loneliness.
But,
notice what God didn’t do. He
didn’t say, Gideon I know how you feel. I know no one cares.
I know they’ve mistreated you.
This is often how we comfort each other.
I know people in my life who are having a hard time and they are
expecting me to come up to them and do that.
And I just am forbidden by the Spirit of Christ in me to be that
kind of a friend, to nurture them in their self-centeredness.
God doesn’t comfort that way.
He doesn’t come to us and say, “there, there”.
He doesn’t concede that Gideon has a reason for despair; He
rather invades that despair by holding truth in his face.
You have to laugh at what He does.
What
God calls Gideon seems so ludicrous when contrasted with what Gideon
thought about himself. God
spoke to Gideon as he really was. I’m telling you who you really are!
And that’s what you are to be.
That is the beginning of taking that little pointer from the
wrong area in the mall and putting it right where it should be.
He showed Gideon he was not a person going around saying
happiness is the meaning of life; he was a person in covenant with God;
I am with you, says the LORD
Gideon's
Response
Good
old Gideon, his immediate response was in terms of the evidence he could
sense. Basically he said,
how can you sit there under that tree and tell me that the LORD is with
us? Come on.
How can God be with us when I’m hurting like this?
He even interprets God’s words and rejects what God’s word is
because his interpretation is based upon his false understanding of the
meaning of life. How can
God be with us if I’m unhappy?
Many religious people in church are saying that in our day.
They argue, if God is with us, where is the evidence? Notice God
completely ignores Gideon’s drooping countenance; He doesn’t even
mention it. He keeps on the
theme He started with: The LORD is with you,
valiant warrior, be who you are!
He disregards what Gideon says and goes on to say, “Go,
in this your strength, and deliver Israel.”
Gideon
wasn’t getting the point; God is not with us because we have evidence
and are happy. When we dare
to believe the covenant, we will recognize He is with us; He is in us.
It isn’t, I’m happy so God must be with us.
It is, I look at the face of darkness and say, God is with me and
I shall now begin to love with His love, and then I have joy.
I don’t look at my life and say I’m unhappy, I’m lonely,
where’s God? No, I’d
rather look into the loneliness and say, God is with me; I shall love
with His love. Then I find that it swallows up the loneliness and
destroys the sadness and fills me with joy and peace.
You see, Gideon had it the wrong way around.
This is your strength Gideon; “I am with you”.
Now, Gideon, you go and change the evidence.
Go Gideon and create a new history. Go and deliver Israel.
Gideon says, I’m unhappy, I’m hurt, and I feel so lonely
hiding in a wine barrel like this.
I’m a poor man; you’ve got to deliver me, God.
God says, the rest of Israel is lonely and hurting, you go tell
them about me. He is returning Gideon to the true meaning of life.
In
Him we’re creating a new history. Let the love of God flow through you
to others and you’ll forget your loneliness.
You’ll become a functional person. In a relationship to God, we
become a lover. We dare to
act and love. We risk
getting hurt.
Gideon
says, You tell me to deliver Israel - give me a break.
He’s says, I am the youngest son in my father’s house.
It is not kosher for me to do anything; my older brother should
do it. Anyway, this is the
smallest clan in the tribe of Manasseh.
You’ve got the wrong guy.
You’ve come to the wrong address.
When I look at the strength of others, I’m ashamed; I’m just
a weak little nobody, the weakest in a weak clan.
Understand, Angel, I don’t count,
Do
you think you don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to other
people? Do you tell
yourself you have nothing to contribute to anybody?
Have you ever faced a promotion in life in your job, and backed
off of it, and said, I can’t do that? A missed opportunity could be in
any area. I’m not
just talking about what we’d think of as full-time ministry, I mean
you had an opportunity to bless people.
Or, you had the opportunity for promotion, which would put more
money in your pocket with which you could bless people.
In
true
to Gideon’s style, you say, I can’t do that; I’m not equipped;
I’ve never done that before; let somebody else do it.
You turn it down. You
sit in your wine barrel where you’re safe.
Where you’re secure. You
won’t get hurt as long as you stay there.
You won’t risk anything. You’ve
wrapped your talent into a napkin and buried it. I hear from people all
the time in terms of relationships and friendships, they say, I’m too
dumb to have a relationship with anybody; I’m just too stupid; I’m
too backward; no one in their right mind could love me; I’m so
insecure. I’m just
nobody. I know if I really
let myself love that person sooner or later they’ll see right through
me and sooner or later they’ll reject me like everyone else does.
So, I dare not risk it. So,
I stay lonely. You know the
safest place in the world is the coffin.
We lock ourselves away. We
don’t risk. We won’t
become vulnerable because we don’t want to get hurt.
We’re buying into the idea that the meaning of life is
happiness.
God's
Response
God’s
answer? He doesn’t even discuss it with us, He says, surely I
AM with you; I AM your
strength. I’m not asking
you to go out in your strength. I
AM your strength. I
AM your wisdom. You
can fulfill your destiny as a human being because you’re joined to Me.
You can reveal my love to other people because you are joined to Me.
If I am with you, you will find that in
Me is everything you’ll ever need: the courage, the
strength, the resources, the wisdom, the finances, the manpower…If I
am with you, I determine your
potential as a person. I
AM, that’s the name of God.
So, I AM, is with you.
Until you have seen that your ability and your potential is more than
your family history. It is more than what your childhood dished out to
you; it’s more than all your achievements to this date. Your
potential is greater than all the failures you’ve had, your potential
is in God Himself.
Your
concept of what you can do is based on what you’ve done.
Everything you have done, everything that you have been and are
known for up until you sat down to read this article, is your resume.
That which you have never done, never thought of doing, what
only God can do through you, is your potential.
God made you. He says, don’t tell me what your parents are
like, don’t tell me what your clan is like, your
potential is Me.
Back
to what He told Gideon. I will be with you and you will deliver
Israel. Notice God
didn’t say God would deliver Israel.
We call on Him to zap situations all the time.
But, God says, you do it; I’ll be with you.
It is like Jesus told the disciples.
You feed them. God
reveals Himself to us. The
scripture says, as He is, so are we in the world.
It is also true to say, as we are, so is He.
He has limited Himself to us through His love purposes for the
people around you, for those He would have you be friends with; His love
purposes for your neighbors, and in areas beyond our imagination.
He has limited Himself to accomplish those purposes through
you.
The
Lord Clothed Himself
A
little while after that, the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon.
In fact, a good translation would be that the Spirit of the
LORD clothed Himself with Gideon.
The Spirit of the LORD put him on like a coat.
It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to love.
The fruit of the Spirit is love.
When I say love, I do not mean that you try to be like Jesus.
I mean that you let the very Spirit of Christ be the source of
love and strength in your life. In
Colossians 1 Paul prays, “that you might be
strengthened with all power according to His glorious might.”
Paul told the Ephesians to be strong in the
Lord and in the power of His might.
Power
to be Longsuffering
Strengthened!
If you are a student of the Bible, dunamis is that word (from
which we get the word dynamite). Dunamis also means power.
It says with all dunamis.
With all strength and power.
Jesus said after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall
receive power. And the word
might is the word that means almighty power.
So, Paul is saying, you will be empowered with all power, which
is in harmony with almightiness. What
are we going to do, raise the dead?
No, he says, this is order that you might attain to long-suffering.
You know what that means? It
means to love, and love, and love and love! This is love for the long
haul by the power of God.
Gideon
you are going to go out there to a nation of lonely, disoriented people
and you are going to deliver them, and bring them back into the
covenant. To do that,
instead of sitting in your wine barrel, moaning about being lonely and
sad, you are going to go out there and be a man who achieves something
by the power of the Spirit of God in you.
Only God in you can accomplish God’s goal for you.
Where
Are You?
After
what I’ve said, do you feel that you are imprisoned in a shopping mall
with the arrow in the wrong place?
You started out at the wrong end?
The wrong meaning of life? Have
you always thought your past, your achievements, and your failures were
the sum of your potential? Did
you believe you would never rise above what you have been?
I
trust that you are finding in this article another perspective which
returns us to the real meaning of life; we are loved. Love through
Christ Jesus lives in us. And
He lives by His Spirit in you, in order to birth in you, love to others.
The Spirit does dwell within us, and He has poured out the love
of Christ in our hearts. I
look at you and I say, The LORD is with you O
valiant warrior! And
you are His white knight. Go
out to love the world and risk being hurt.
Risk rejection. Go
out to love the world to fulfill God’s purpose.
You are love warriors.
Christian,
God is IN YOU
What
is His purpose? God’s
will is what God wants to do in and through you.
Where is God? He
lives in you by His Spirit. He
is going to use your eyes to look at His will for you.
You won’t see anything else; that’s all you’ll see.
And you’ll be amazed that other people can’t see it as you
do. Because He is looking
through your eyes. He wills in me; that desire that I have in me is His
will in me, and there is His power for performing His will right there
on tap. No one else can
tell you what the will of God for you is.
Not specifically. I
can point at you and ask, what do you see? What is like a toothache of
the heart that just won’t go away?
Even if it does go away for a weekend, it comes back.
And
when you dream of what should be, could be, ought to be, what do you
dream? Don’t get caught
up in the co-dependent nonsense where others are telling you what you
ought to be doing. If we
were using reason to determine where the greatest need was, we’d all
go to Russia, or Africa. If
I were where others think I should be, I wouldn’t be sitting down to
communicate this to you. If
I dictated where I am to go, or if others did, I wouldn’t be right
here, right now, doing this. If
I went where everybody told me to go, I’d be torn, I’d probably end
up in a mental hospital.
I
am where I am, doing what I’m doing, because of what I see, what I
desire, and what I dream about. And
I know there are other people who dream about other things.
That is for them to do. If
you went to everybody who asked you to come here, do this, go there, do
that; and you responded to every need that was brought to your attention
by others, you’d be destroyed. You
have to walk in the Spirit; you have to known when the Spirit is saying,
“no”.
It
was God who gave Gideon this vision; it was God who gave him a little
picture in his head and said, you’re going to defeat the Midianites.
Gideon received the picture; it was God who gave it.
No one was pressuring Gideon to do it; he saw, he imagined it.
God put it all inside of him.
You
May Be On Your Own
No
one will necessarily see what you see.
Don’t get all upset because they don’t.
I have a client who talks about his visions and what he wants to
do, and he talks about how people in his family and his church throw wet
blankets on what he attempts to do.
He does recognize that their wet blankets are not of God.
Don't get with people and ask, why don’t you see it my way?
Everyone isn’t supposed to see it your way.
Don’t pass your vision on to the pastor and expect him to
organize it. You have the
vision; it is your assignment.
Do it. Mighty warrior go forth!
What
Do You See?
What
do you see as a need? I
don’t mean, necessarily, in church work.
As you walk through your office at work, is there something that
somebody ought to do something about?
Well, maybe God is telling you to do it so that you can bless the
people at work. Don’t
limit God’s will to just religious work.
Is there some need that there doesn’t seem to be an answer for?
Maybe God wants to invent something through you, or start
something through you and bless the world through this means.
What makes you angry? See
our article on anger and you’ll see that when you are angry about
something that is wrong and nobody else seems to be concerned, it may be
the Holy Spirit putting the desire to see the wrong righted through you.
What do you see that could be done?
As
you walk through life, you come upon things that you feel ought to be
addressed. Ask the LORD if this is what He wants you to do.
I think by now you can say that something has inspired your
desire? He says, I am with
you. To bless the world. Don’t
think that blessing the world is done within the church walls.
The church comes together more to edify one another, to build one
another up. Then we go out
and are witnesses to the world, in the world.
You love at every level, wherever you meet people, you bless
them. God is in you and He
is love.
Get
Started!
Then,
whatever has to be done to get started, do it and get started.
Gideon had to go to the altar of Baal.
His dad was the mayor of the town.
The Bible says Gideon was afraid.
He was so afraid that he went to tear down the altar of Baal at
midnight. His legs were
trembling. He was
terrified. He was wishing
he was back in his wine barrel. He
was daring to tear down the obscene idol of Baal, while scared out of
his wits about what his dad would think.
But, he did it. God
isn’t looking for great giants. He’s looking for you, even with cold
sweat running down your back, willing to do what He’s telling you to
do. God is with you and
the blessing of God is yours.
Strange
thing though. When Gideon
did it, it was his dad who stood with him.
His dad said, if Baal is what he is cracked up to be, let him do
something about it. Baal is
supposed to be such a powerful god, but my son just put him on his face.
Let him get up and fight if he’s a god.
So they waited around and of course nothing happened.
So they called Gideon in the Hebrew Jerubbaal, which means Baal
chaser, devil chaser. The
power that had held them bound in fear all those years was shown to be
totally powerless before a teenager.
Be
Who You Are In Christ
You
do whatever has got to be done; even when shaking and trembling, you do
it. And you’ll find the
strength and the wisdom to take the next step and the next step.
That is the way Gideon delivered the Israelites.
You
are loved unconditionally. He
who is love lives inside of you by His Holy Spirit which means that you
have a destiny to fulfill which is to love others with the love of God
in ways that shall be revealed to you from inside by the Holy Spirit who
lives in you. Walk with Him
to fulfill your destiny, with God as your potential,
you valiant warrior.
Amen.
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