Bad News is Good News

“And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” (Jud 6:13 AV)

This is typical Gideon.  He has to see the end from the beginning before he will exercise faith.  If God was blessing and the Midianites were not your captors, Gideon, there would be no need for your calling right now.  The fact of the circumstances above dictate God calls a judge as a deliverer.  The conditions of which you see, Gideon, are the indications you are called and needed.  Not the opposite of which you are suggesting.

The LORD has granted me two privileges of ministry over the years.  The first is to influence young men for the ministry.  He has granted me the awesome opportunity to encourage them and guide them in the more spiritual aspects of preparation for the ministry.  Not so much the academic.  More so the practical and spiritual.  For this I am truly humbled and grateful.  The other blessing is the opportunity to take challenging churches and try to influence them to a more stable or sound foundation for which another man of God can build thereupon.  The LORD has asked me to take churches that most men of God would pass over.  Which is a shame.  Most of these churches are gems.  They are a diamond in the rough.  Recently I had a conversation with a young man preparing for the ministry.  Among other observations of thirty years of ministry which I shared, we talked of candidating at churches.  I mentioned that there is no perfect church.  And, sometimes God may send you to a work who’s short-comings may dissuade others, but God has called you there because they need you to be the pastor that assists the Spirit in growing them out of those short-comings. 

Gideon’s question was actually an answer.  He may have seen it as a problem without a solution.  But, he was the solution.  The circumstances around him were not cause to reject the call.  They were verification of the call.  He saw a lack of God’s blessing and a merciless captor.  These were not a reason to quit before one starts.  They were the reason to start!  So, if all we see in from of us are obstacles, then perhaps that is not a reason to circumvent those challenges, but rather, to take them head on.  This is the reason why we are here.  Not the reason to retreat.