The Humble Hero

“The Angel of the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘Mighty hero, the LORD is with you!’” Judges 6.12 NLT

Ah, Gideon. One of my favorite stories. I love how God takes him from obscurity to glory on the strength of the word of this verse: Gideon was who he was because God was with him.

But Gideon doesn’t enjoy that context at the beginning of this story. When God shows Himself to Gideon, the man is nobody to himself. He argues with God about his lineage. He is, because of fear, doing menial work in the most difficult way possible. And God’s first instruction to him is to obliterate the lies and deceptions in the lives of his people in a direct assault on their most sacred of cows.

Sounds both provocative and impossible.

Plus Gideon has a little trouble getting over himself. There’s more than one monument in his life, and perhaps his dad’s altar to the false god Baal is the least of them. Gideon has major problems with the evidence of God’s faithfulness (he has trust issues). Gideon has lots of evidence about how standing up to the Midianite bullies will end badly, and he very nearly errs the same way Moses did by asking God to “send someone else.” Gideon was chock full of baggage that made him an unlikely candidate.

God, however, knows the entire story and addresses Gideon as who he really is: a mighty hero. God knows that Gideon will begin to subdue the Midianites with a little band of only 300 men, that thousands of mighty warriors not only from his tribe of Manasseh but three others would join him, that Gideon would kill two kings, and that his people would beg him to be their king before it was all over.

Really, why Gideon, though?

We must be careful not to look only on the readily perceivable when we take in all that a man can be. There is much about us that is invisible, even to ourselves. There was something about Gideon that God liked and chose on purpose, even though He knew that Gideon wouldn’t be perfect. Personally, I think quite a lot of what God chose in Gideon was his ability to trust.

That is, his faith.

That is, God chose a kid with trust issues to go and do great faith-works in His name because He is very interested in the building and growing of our faith. God works with living stones. Imagine a building that grows!

God always wins the argument. It is good to shut up and trust Him. And trust means obedience.