A Sense of Mission

Copyright © 2005 by Ralph Williams. All rights reserved.

Isaiah tells us of a vision, in which he witnesses the glory of God, with the Seraphim flying around the throne crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

When Isaiah sees this, he is immediately struck by a sense of his own guilt, and he cries out, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips! And I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!

An angel is dispatched with a burning coal, with which he sears Isaiah’s lips, cleansing him--in his vision--by fire.

Then God asked a question:  Who shall we send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah responds with words that have become a common cry among missionaries, “Here am I! Send me.”

I always felt that Isaiah had it pretty easy. He got his marching orders directly from the throne of God.

On the other hand, we have Jonah. He got his marching orders directly from God as well. He didn’t like them.

He ran away from God, and from his mission. When God rather forcefully reminded him of his mission, he preached to Ninevah.

Jonah was to warn the people of Ninevah of the destruction that would be visited upon them if they didn’t repent. When you look at Jonah’s message, and his behaviour afterward, you get the feeling that he didn’t necessarily deliver the whole message. Jonah seems to gloat in his message that God was going to destroy Ninevah. After preaching about the destruction, Jonah sets himself up on a hill to watch the show. He didn’t expect them to repent—in fact, he didn’t want them to. He wanted to see God destroy them.

 The Ninevites were evil people. They might have laughed at a culturally sensitive missionary, pleading with them to repent. When they saw Jonah reveling in the message that God would destroy Ninevah, they believed him. God used Jonah’s spitefulness to convince and convert the people of Ninevah.

I know a few people who seem to know—as if by instinct, or by direct command—what their calling is. Some of them go so far as to say that God told them what to do. Most of us struggle with our calling. We have a deep suspicion that the people who are so sure are really just making it up. We complain that the people of the Bible had it easy: If only God would send an angel to tell me what to do!

When I look at the characters of the Bible, I see their struggles, even after they have been called by God himself. We think that they are somehow different, that when God spoke to them and gave them their direction that somehow it was easy for them.

I wonder how easy Elijah found it, when he was hiding from Jezebel.

I wonder how easy it was for David to believe that he might be king, when he was hiding from the deadly wrath of King Saul. The road from his annointing to his kingship was long and dangerous, and he must have despaired of ever fulfilling his annointing.

A friend of mine has been preparing for mission work. Every so often, I visit with him and he tells me where he thinks he might be going to do mission work. He’s been excited about Mexico, Argentina and China, each in turn. “I’m setting out my fleece,” he tells me, “I don’t know where God wants me to go, but I’m asking Him to show me if this is right for me. When God makes it clear, we’ll go where He wants us.”

My friend’s imagery—setting out the fleece—comes from the story of Gideon. When the angel told Gideon that God wanted him to go and free the land from the Mideanites, Gideon wanted to make sure that he knew the message was really from God. Gideon asks for a sign.

First, Gideon prepares a meal for the angel, a young goat, and some bread, and the broth from cooking the kid. He puts it allinto a basket, and brings it out to the angel. As a sign, the angel tells Gideon to put the meat and bread on a rock, and pour the broth over them. When he does so, the angel touches them with his staff, and fire springs up from the rock and consumes the offering, and the angel vanishes.

Gideon is convinced, an he goes on to perform his first task in the Lord’s service, cleansing his own home town of idol worship. At God’s bidding, he tears down the altar to Baal, and the Ashera (a cultic fertility symbol...perhaps a tree or a pole) and then sacrifices his father’s best bull on an altar that he builds to God. When the people of the village become angry and want to kill Gideon, Gideon’s father suggests a contest: If Baal objects, let Baal fight with him. Gideon gains a new name, “Let Baal fight with him,” and another sign from God.

When God gave Gideon his marching orders, he started him out small. I believe that Gideon’s first mission was essentially a demonstration: God was showing Gideon that He was in control of the situation. Gideon must have had some trepidation about his father’s reaction to the loss of his best ox, and clearly—since he went out in the dark of night—he knew what the villagers’ reaction would be, when they saw their altar destroyed. They probably believed that Gideon was deliberately causing a famine: by destroying the altar, he was interfering with the fertility rituals, thus their crops would not grow. They were angry at the loss of their altar, and the potential loss of their crops.

Knowing this, the intervention of his father—and the villager’s acquiescence—must have looked like Divine intervention, from Gideon’s point of view. When he pulled down the altar, he was putting his life on the line, and God demonstrated that He was in control of the situation.

With that in mind, Gideon’s test of God’s will with the fleece seems a little extreme. He has already had a visit from an angel, who demonstrated by a miracle that his message was from God. Then God demonstrates His power to protect Gideon when he tears down the altar. What more does a man need? Apparently, Gideon needed reassurance

Gideon, at God’s bidding, began to call out an army, and people came to him from all over Israel. The Bible records that the Spirit of God came upon him, causing the people to answer his call. That’s when Gideon began to have doubts again. He asks for another sign.

 Gideon suggests to the Lord that they put a fleece in the middle of the threshing floor, and if the fleece is wet with dew in the morning, and the threshing floor is dry, then he would know that the Lord is really with him. In the morning, Gideon is able to squeeze water out of the fleece, but the floor is dry. That’s not good enough for Gideon.

The next night, Gideon asks God to do the same thing in reverse: Gideon will set out the fleece, and in the morning, if the fleece is dry, but the floor around it is wet, then he will know that the Lord is truly on his side. Again, God delivers. This time, the fleece is dry and the threshing floor is wet. Gideon is convinced, at least for the moment.

We see the Lord continuing to work in Gideon’s life as he prepares for the battle at hand. God wants Gideon and Israel to know that He is the One fighting the battle, so he instructs Gideon to pare down his forces considerably. First, Gideon is instructed to excuse all who are frightened. Two-thirds of his force—twenty-two thousand men—withdraw. The spring where they were camped is named Herod: “Trembling,” in Hebrew.

Considering the odds, it’s a wonder that Gideon is left with anyone at all, yet God says that the remaining 10,000 men is still too many. He instructs Gideon to select only those who scoop water up and lap like a dog, rather than kneeling on the ground to drink.

It’s been suggested that the 300 who brought the water to their mouths were likely more experienced soldiers than those who put their faces down to the water. That’s possible, but God’s point was that He was the conqueror. Not Gideon. Not the vastness of the army. Not the strategy, but God.

The strategy is undoubtedly brilliant. Josephus tells us that the Mideanite camp was a loose confederation of forces who spoke different languages and didn’t trust each other. The Israelites took possession of the only available water, so the Mideanites were camped in the Valley of Jezreel, which made Gideon’s God-given strategy possible.

As they approach the Mideanites, God directs Gideon on yet another mission to build his courage for the battle. God tells him, “If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah.” You have to wonder whether Purah was really Gideon’s bodyguard.

Gideon and Purah penetrate the enemy camp, where Gideon hears a soldier telling about his dream. The soldier dreams of a barley loaf rolling into the camp and striking the tent with such force that it knocks the tent down.

Another soldier interprets the dream: The barley loaf—barley being a poor substitute for wheat—is a metaphor for the Israelite army. “God has given the Mideanites and the whole camp into their hands.”

As we look at Gideon’s story, we see God calling him and leading him all the way through the process. Look at all the times God shows Gideon that He is controlling his mission:

·        Gideon gets his initial call, and asks for a sign.

·        Gideon destroys the altar, and God preserves his life.

·        Gideon calls out the army and God causes people to come.

·        Gideon puts out the fleece, and God gives him a sign.

·        Gideon puts out the fleece again, for another sign.

·        Gideon excuses all who are frightened, at God’s command.

·        Gideon chooses only 300 men to attach the Mideanites, at God’s command.

Do you suppose that God was coaching Gideon along for a reason? We like to think of Gideon as a hero of faith, but he needed constant reassurances that God was on his side, that he was actually fulfilling God’s mission.

God’s involvement in Gideon’s life and mission should be a sign to us, that God is willing to work with us in our weakness. Gideon never seemed to have a clear sense of mission, but he was willing—so long as he felt secure that he was doing God’s will—to let God lead him. And as long as he let God lead him, God used him to do great things.

I’m not comfortable with the notion of direct revelation, in our time. Too often, when someone says, “God told me to do thus-and-so,” it’s patently clear to everyone except the speaker that the message didn’t come from God. I recall a preacher who left his wife, ran off with another man’s wife, and took all the church’s money with him. When the police caught up with him, he announced that God had directed him to do so, and furthermore that God had directed the church, his wife, and the other fellow to forgive him and take him back. He belonged to a group that believed in direct revelation from God, but they didn’t believe his “revelation.”

At the same time, I believe very strongly that God helps us and directs us in our lives. If I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t believe in the power of prayer. When we ask for God to “guide, guard and direct us,” we should be prepared to notice some guidance.

In my own life, and in the lives of those around me, our awareness of God’s guidance is often better in hindsight. I can look back at my life and see junctures where I was quite stubbornly headed for disaster, and I was turned away. I believe that God led me to choose the ideal spouse, that he led me away from mission work in Belarus and into Ukraine.

I’m not a good quitter. There’s a stubborn streak in me that makes me want to hang on until the last gasp, even when it’s obvious to everyone around that I should have given up long ago. It served me well in sports, and has at times served me well in life, but it has also caused me great hardship and heartbreak. The times I see God’s hand most clearly in my life, are those when I was trying desperately to hang on, and praying that God would help me, and He gently helped me to give up, to change my course.

If you’re a skeptic—like me—you might argue that it wasn’t God at all. I got a bit of good advice and took it, or some bit of common sense led me in a smart direction, or simply that some of these things were coincidence .I’m naturally a skeptic. I’d like to argue coincidence, but this has happened to me far too often to be coincidental.

I identify with Gideon. If I asked God to make dew come on a fleece, but not on the rocks around it, I’d wonder forever if it was just coincidental that it happened that way. So Gideon tried it the other way too. I’d have wanted the same sign.

I wish God would give me a vision and hand me my marching orders. I’m afraid of how I’d respond if his mission were as distasteful to me as Jonah’s mission to Ninevah.

I’m comforted as I read the stories of the Bible, and I see characters who seem as uncertain as I feel, and I see how God coached them along. Even those who seemed to have a clear vision of God’s will—like David, even in his darkest times—were guided and coached as they needed it. When David needed to be prodded into repentance, he had Nathan.

I’d love to be an Isaiah, with a clear sense of God’s mission in my life. Sometimes I feel like Jonah, running from what I should be doing in the place God has put me. More often, I feel like Gideon, constantly needing God to show me what He wants me to do. The comforting thing in the story of Gideon is seeing God reassuring him, helping him, guiding him.

God has called us to do His will. He didn’t call us to become perfect, and then do his will. He didn’t call us to do it all by ourselves. He calls us, incomplete and imperfect into his service, and He works in our lives to guide us and to work his mighty deeds through us.

We don’t have to submit a great resume, or sit a panel of interviews. God isn’t looking for people who can do it all on their own.

Remember, His strength is made perfect in weakness.

If you aren’t certain what He wants you to do, that’s okay. God can deal with your uncertainty, if you will let Him.

This is the second lesson of the clay pot. God will form you into the vessel He needs. Your calling is to become a clay pot, a vessel for His treasures. Whether you are to be a work of art or something more common isn’t your concern. He is the potter, you are the clay. You won’t always know what He wants you to become, and you have to let Him make the choices.

If you want a formula for discovering God’s will in your life, here it is: Pray for Him to use you. Ask Him to guide you in the things you do. Ask for wisdom and for faith. And put yourself, like a lump of clay, into the hands of the Living God.

As the song goes, “…and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”