Warrior - The Hesitant Warrior
Notes
Transcript
The Hesitant Warrior
The Hesitant Warrior
Let me start off today by telling you about a Minnesota couple...
A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of their hectic schedules, it was difficult for the couple to coordinate their travel plans. So the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, while his wife planned to fly down the following day.
The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter of her email address and sent the email without realizing his error.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral. He was a Baptist minister who was called home to glory following a heart attack. The widow decided to check her email, expecting condolence messages from family and friends.
But after reading her very first email, she screamed and fainted. The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:
To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I’ve Just Arrived Today. I know you’re surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones. Since I’ve just arrived, I thought I would send you an email.
Everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.
P. S. Sure is hot down here!!!
That joke has nothing to do with our topic today, I just thought it was funny. It’s difficult to find good clean jokes now-a-days. Especially if you are trying to find topical jokes that will help lead in to whatever subject we are talking about on that day. Then trying to deliver the joke adds another level of stress. Most of the time I feel like the guy who attended a conference and was inspired to tell a joke when he got back to his church...
A preacher, who shall we say was “humor inspired”, attended a conference to help encourage and better equip pastors for their ministry. Among the speakers were many well-known and dynamic speakers.
One such speaker, boldly approached the pulpit, gathered the entire crowd’s attention, and said, “the best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman that wasn’t my wife!” The crowd was shocked! He followed up by saying, “And that woman was my mother!” The crowd burst into laughter and delivered the rest of his speech, which went quite well.
The next week, the pastor decided he’d give this humor thing a try and used that joke in his sermon. As he approached the pulpit that sunny Sunday morning, he tried to rehearse this joke in his head. It suddenly seemed a bit foggy to him.
Getting to the microphone, he said loudly, “The greatest years of my life were spending in the arms of another woman that was not my wife!” The congregation inhaled half the air in the room! After standing there for almost 10 seconds in stunned silence, trying to recall the second half of the joke, the pastor finally blurred out, “…and I can’t remember who she was!”
Well, lets shift gears. Last week we started a new series called, “Warrior.” The name alone might make most guys want to utter a Tim the tool man grunt. “Aaarrgghh Aarrgghh Aarrgghh.” What we talked about was hopefully even a little inspiring. As God’s warriors, He gives us SOMEONE to PROTECT! He gives us a KINGDOM to ADVANCE! He gives us a BATTLE to WIN!
Even though this is kind of a manly topic, women, you are warriors too! Fighting the against the same enemy. We stand up to fight for people and against the powers and principalities of the unseen world. Protecting our families. Our friends. Or some stranger that God has brought into our lives. Helping them armor up with God’s armor. Training them to wield God’s Word.
I love this series. It is very inspiring to me. Makes me feel like a warrior. With God’s strength behind me, I feel unstoppable. I may even appear fearless and brave. I stand up here sharing with you and am unwavering and confident! But on the inside I feel different. I don’t feel like a warrior. I feel inadequate. Unsure. Weak. Afraid.
Does anyone else ever feel that way? You know what to do, but when you face your giant you don’t immediately stand up to him. You don’t do like David and reach down for a rock, instead you try to find a big one to hide behind.
God brings someone into your life at a specific moment and you have an opportunity to share what God has done in your life, but you can’t speak. The words won’t come to you. Even when they do, something stops you. You feel inadequate, unsure, weak, or afraid. You step onto the field of battle, but your insecurities scream louder than your faith. You feel alone.
I definitely don’t feel like a warrior for God. I feel more like a coward. If I’m a warrior, at best I am an insecure warrior. A hesitant warrior. Have you ever felt that way? If so, there is someone in the OT that you may be able to relate with. As a warrior for God, he was a little insecure. He was definitely a hesitant warrior. His name was Gideon. You can find his story in chapter 6 of Judges.
If you have your bibles, go ahead and turn there. While you look for it, let me tell you what is going on in Gideon’s life at this moment. The people of Israel are trying to survive. For 7 years the Midianites have been causing them to live in fear. They were so afraid that they were hiding in the mountains and in caves. Similar to the way the enemy causes us to be afraid and hide.
Their enemy, the Midianites, have been raiding villages, burning homes, destroying crops, and murdering families. The Israelites have been living in abject poverty. They were scared for their lives. That’s where Gideon lives.
Gideon is an interesting character. We’ll see in this story how Gideon was exceptionally brave at times, yet at others he was exceptionally hesitant. I think that is an interesting trait that makes him easy to relate to. When I read his story there are moments where I think, “Why would you do that? You are talking to the angel of YAHWEH. Why doubt Him?” But then I think about my own life and realize how often I hesitate. I think about all the times I don’t feel certain and just hope for a sign.
Now, try to visualize the moment we meet Gideon. He is threshing wheat in a winepress. When people would thresh wheat they would toss it in up in the air so that the wind would blow away the stalks and the seed would fall to the ground. A winepress would be a hole in the ground. They would pile grapes in this pit and walk on them and the juice would flow out through pipes or channels into another area.
Gideon is threshing wheat, but he is doing it in this low place so the Midianites don’t see him and take it, probably killing him in the process. So picture him working to survive and being in this mindset when the angel of the LORD appears…
11 Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. 12 The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
“Ah, I can’t be seen doing this. They are gonna find me. I need to hurry and get this grain back…”
“Hello, mighty warrior.”
“… Is He talking to me? Umm… You must be looking for Chuck Liddell.”
It can’t be me! I’m no warrior! I’m afraid. I’m not confident. I’m weak. I don’t carry influence. Nobody listens to me. If you are taking notes, write this down…
GOD ALWAYS SEES WAY MORE IN YOU THAN YOU SEE IN YOURSELF.
GOD ALWAYS SEES WAY MORE IN YOU THAN YOU SEE IN YOURSELF.
God says, “Here, protect this person. Advance My Kingdom. Win this battle.” And He gives me these tasks because He believes in me. Knows I can do it. He sees way more in me than I see in myself, so I doubt. I feel insecure. Afraid. That’s exactly what is going on with Gideon.
The moment God tries to show Gideon that he has the heart of a warrior, Gideon’s insecurities rise up. His inner fears magnify. His self-doubts stop him in his tracks. God says, “God is with you and you are a mighty hero!” Then Gideon reacts by saying…
13 “Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.”
If I am a mighty hero, then why am I so afraid every time I stand up to share God’s word in front of a small group of people? Why do I shrink back so that I am not singled out to pray out loud over the meal? Why is it so hard to teach my kids about God’s truths? Why is it so difficult to stand up for God’s truth in a world of disgusting lies?
At that moment, Gideon was being hesitant. The good news is that there are also plenty of moments when Gideon was a brave warrior. If you are taking notes, let’s look Gideon’s example to see three truths for every hesitant warrior. The first is this…
EVERY HESITANT WARRIOR:
MUST FIGHT THEIR INNER FEAR OF FAILURE.
Every warrior goes into battle with feelings of both confidence and fear. Every warrior goes to battle feeling both courageous and cowardly. You may go into battle feeling both partially prepared, and partially afraid. At one moment you may feel strong enough, but then in the next moment you feel helpless and weak. God told Gideon to go into battle with his strength, but Gideon saw only his weakness...
14 Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!” 15 “But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”
Have you ever felt lead to witness to a friend or maybe you have even attempted to share with a coworker, but thoughts of not knowing enough stopped you in your tracks. You desire to lead your family spiritually and pray together, but you doubt yourself. You aren’t sure you will do it right. You vow to live a life of purity for God, but never really feel accepted. You are more of an outcast.
Whatever you are facing, every warrior must fight their inner fear of failure. Every warrior must fight their insecurities. Culture often programs us to feel weak. Instead of being told that you are capable and God has made you unique and believes in you, you are told that you need to be different. That your security comes with your beauty, or your following on social media.
We are programmed to believe that our value is determined by our last accomplishment. What have you done lately? Was your last thing a failure? Guess what that means? You must be a failure. We are programmed to believe that we are supposed to be better than someone else. That they are our competition. Our enemy.
The truth about being a warrior is that we fight together. The warrior next to you fights hard! They are fighting a difficult battle, just like you are. We need each other. We need to encourage and stand next to each other as we fight these battles. When we fail, instead of wondering if someone is laughing at us and hoping we fail, we need to know that another warrior is telling us to try again because WE CAN DO IT!
If a warrior thinks everyone doubts him, that he has lost respect, or that he has let someone down, that warrior would rather simply not engage in the battle than to try and fail. In marriage, your warrior will often become what you believe about him. Or her. “She knows me best and doesn’t believe in me. I must not have what it takes.”
The most valuable words my battle buddy, Amy, ever speaks to me are, “I know you can do it. I believe in you. You have what it takes.”
I tend to over engineer things. I am about to build another chicken coop, so I keep seeing things that sound like good ideas so I try to incorporate them into my coop. Why just have a chicken coop when you can just as easily build a chicken mansion! Often, doing this makes me feel like I am not smart enough. I will throw so many ideas at something that it becomes impossible to do and I get to the point of being ready to give up.
I’ll never forget what my dad told me when I was a kid. We were building a ladder for the attic area of the garage where it could retract and be out of the way. I was doing the same thing I always do by over engineering it. “It could be like an accordion and expand downward. We could have it on a rope and pulley to lower it. We could make it fold up into a door and serve 2 purposes!”
I stood there scratching my head going over these ideas with my dad when he said this...
“You can figure it out. I believe in you.” Then he just walked off. Even though those words are so simple and seemingly insignificant, I will never ever forget them. Every time I see that ladder in the garage I remember what he made me believe. “I can figure it out.” My dad believed in me.
So simple, yet such powerful powerful words. I believe in you. When someone believes in you it triggers something inside. All the sudden you are ready for the battle. What are you afraid of? Failure? Weakness? Not being good enough? Letting someone down? Losing the battle? Spiritual failure? Every warrior must fight the inner fear of failure. If you are taking notes…
EVERY HESITANT WARRIOR:
MUST REALIZE THAT IN CHRIST YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO FIGHT AND WIN.
God has given you everything that you need IN CHRIST! In Christ you have enough strength! In Christ you have enough discipline! In Christ you have enough faith! In Christ, the LORD, YAHWEH, is with you. God has given you the heart of a warrior. He has given you someone to protect, a kingdom to advance, and a battle to win. In Christ!
God gave Gideon what he needed. He gave him the strength He needed and then He sent him. That is exactly what God does for us through Christ. Pay close attention to what He said to Gideon…
14 Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”
“Go with the strength you have!” It’s already been given to you, stop doubting! “I am sending YOU!” Not someone else. Someone else isn’t going to come along and fight this battle so that you don’t have to. I choose YOU. I am sending YOU.
You are strong in the LORD! Mighty in His power. The weapons you fight with are not weapons of this world. Even your protective armor is not of this world. You don’t just have a belt, you have the belt of truth! Your breastplate is righteousness. Your shoes are the good news of peace! And your shield… Oh this shield is something! It is faith. With this shield of faith even the darts fired by the head evil honcho himself are not only deflected, but their flames are extinguished! The helmet that protects you is salvation. and your sword is the word of God.
You are a warrior in an army unlike any that has ever walked the earth! You get to wield these powerful tools because God believes in you! There is no reason to hesitate, waver, and cower in fear. Because God believes in you and He is with you! And when the dust settles, not only will you have won, but you will still be standing firm. In Christ you are so strong that when the battle is over you are already ready to go again!
13 Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm.
God sends Gideon out to rescue Israel, so he manages to gather up 32,000 men. Even with this substantial force, Gideon is still afraid that he doesn’t have what it takes. He says, “God, if you REEEAAALLY are going to use me to rescue Israel, prove it.” So God does.
So Gideon says, “Okay. Well, in that case… Can you prove it again? Just so we are all sure. Steve didn’t think this fleece thing was a good idea. He said that one day he woke up and his pillow was soaked, but the ground around it was dry. I told him that he was probably just drooling, but I think it would make him feel better if we had one more night to validate your other sign with another one.”
After God reassures Gideon, He goes a step further. God essentially says that it won’t do that there are so many men here to fight. Once the Midianites have been defeated, everyone may think they succeeded with their own strength. So God tells him to send anyone who is afraid home. So about 2/3 leave. Only 10,0000 remain. God says, “That’s still too many.” So He gives Gideon another test, and only 300 pass that one.
If Gideon was nervous before, how could he NOT be nervous now?! Gideon is about to learn his 3rd lesson as a hesitant warrior…
WITH GOD, THE WAY FORWARD OFTEN STARTS WITH A STEP BACKWARD.
For a warrior to win the war, sometimes he must first lose a battle. You’ve probably been there when you were fighting the battle to get out of debt, then your car broke down. You were investing more and more in your marriage and things seemed great, then out of left field you find yourself in the middle of the biggest argument you’ve had in years. You were motivated to be healthy, so you were exercising every day, but at night you couldn’t stay out of the fridge.
Those are the moments that tell you that it’s not worth fighting. It’s time to give up. Walk away from the goals. Give in to whatever the situation is. It’ll never change anyway. But with God, the way forward often starts with a step backward.
After another confirmation from God, Gideon surrounded the enemy camp with his 300 men. They broke clay jars, exposing lit torches, blew rams’ horns, and shouted, “For the LORD and for Gideon!” They ended up with a small group. They had to face a lot of fear. They had to learn to trust God. Then, they had to stand their ground…
21 While each man held his position around the camp, all the Midianites ran, crying out as they fled.
They stood their ground! They didn’t run. They didn’t cower. They didn’t quit. Were they afraid? How could they not be? What if even one person decided to attack them?
The Midianites were all running away and attacking each other in the confusion, there is no logical reason for them not to attack the only people surrounding the camp with torches. How could someone not be afraid? The question isn’t really whether or not they were afraid. The question is, what did they do? How did they respond to the fear?
In every battle there is an element of fear. There is some doubt. Gideon kept doubting and kept doubting, even though he spoke one on one with God’s angel. After several confirmations with very specific signs. When you are engaged in battle you will have to face fears. The important key is standing your ground.
Stand your ground! Still fighting your fears. Your addictions. Your flesh. Lust, selfishness, anger. And still standing!
A warrior does not win every battle. A warrior also NEVER stops fighting. Hold your position. Stand your ground.
13 Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm.
Put on every piece of armor. Fight against that inner fear. In Christ, you have strength in abundance. Never give up. Never give in to the fears and failures. The steps backward are how you know that it is God winning the victory! Never lose sight of what God is doing in your life. The victories He has planned for you.
God sees so much more in you than you see in yourself. Listen to Him. Believe Him. Stand your ground.