I wanted to continue to share some of the teaching from this year’s Thailand Foursquare Convention. Mike Kai, pastor at Hope Chapel West Oahu and leader of the annual Equip and Inspire Conferences, brought several powerful messages to the national church in Thailand. I believe the churches left equipped and inspired to get after the ministry that God has before them. In this post, I want to share Mike’s message on Gideon with great application to our daily life.
Let’s remember this guy Gideon. He came around during the age of the Judges. The people of God entered the Promised Land with Joshua and Caleb, but when the Joshua and Caleb generation passed away, the people began to follow their own way and turn their backs on God. This began a vicious cycle. The Joshua and Caleb generation did not pass on their values to the next generation. Thus, the younger generation did not honor the Lord and no longer remembered what he did for them.
The cycle went like this. They followed God, but slowly turned away. Things began to get bad for them. Enemies invaded the land. Things got worse the more they turned from God and followed their own path. Finally, they cried out to God for deliverance. He rescued them through the hands of the Judges. Then the cycle began all over again.
Two themes seen early in the Gideon story found in Judges 6 include ‘the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord’, and ‘everyone did what was right in their own eyes’. The cycle begins again. Have you ever been in a cycle like that?
In this case, the Midianites, a band of marauders, entered the land and took the crops, destroyed everything and sent widespread panic throughout the people. The Israelites went running for the hills and hid in caves. This went on for seven years before they began to cry out to God for deliverance. At the end of their rope, the Israelites cry out to God. And God hears. God is always listening. God is merciful and compassionate. If we cry out to God, He will hear us.
The angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon at the tree of Orpha.
Now, we find Gideon hiding out in a winepress threshing wheat. Umm, what is wrong with this picture? The winepress is the complete wrong place to thresh wheat.
Ordinarily wheat gets threshed at the top of a hill. The worker takes his pitchfork and tosses the wheat up in the air allowing the wind to blow the chaff away. However, in a dark, damp underground winepress, there is no breeze to blow the chaff away. Gideon did not work here for convenience, but to hide the food and livelihood of his family from the evil Midianites. He worked hard and long sweaty hours to thresh the wheat. Gideon didn’t want to be seen on the top of the hill, so he was in a musty old winepress with sticky floors. A complete wrong place, a little weird if you think about it. But you do what you have to do.
Gideon was doing a right thing but in a wrong place.
A winepress can represent a limited vision or limited perspective. Sometimes we work really hard but get frustrated with limited results. Things are not going the way we want them to go. Now we are in a sticky mess.
What Mike knows about winepresses…
- You are headed toward one.
- You are headed out of one.
- You are currently in one.
All of a sudden an angel can come and meet you, and you won’t even know it as you have been in the winepress too long.
The angel comes to Gideon and says, “Mighty warrior, the Lord is with you.” But Gideon responds like any of us would if we were in the winepress for so long. We often start to decorate our winepress and make it look comfortable. We start to get accustomed to the winepress. Then we talk back to God like Gideon did. God, if you were here, then why did you let all these bad things happen? Gideon, said, God look at this situation.
Don’t allow your current circumstances to limit your vision. God said to Gideon, go up with the strength you have for I am with you. God starts off by talking to him by saying, Mighty warrior. If he is so mighty, then what is he doing hiding out in a winepress?
What is so awesome about this is that God doesn’t see us for who we are or according to our situation. God sees us for who we can be. (I Cor. 1:27), God chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong, and the foolish things to shame the wise.
God is like a sculptor seeing us for who we can become. Mike told the story of Michelangelo. When he worked on his masterpiece, David, it was said that he called David forth from the rock. We see the rock, others see the rock, but the sculptor sees the masterpiece. God sees us as his masterpiece.
At this point, Gideon does what any of would do. He starts complaining. He lists his qualifications for not being capable of this mission. He says, I am from the smallest tribe, and the least significant clan, and smallest family. I am a nothing he says. But God says, go in the strength you have, and I will be with you. God will be with us when he calls us to something. We can be the mighty warrior he wants us to be. He can lead us out of the life we are in and into a wonderful place of promise with him.
You might think you have nothing to offer. When someone comes into your life and says mighty warrior, you might not believe them, but God will make up the difference.
Have you been stuck in a winepress before? What is God saying to you?
ASK THE BLIND PASTOR 