Paul Clark

The race isn’t over until it’s over

Last in a series of devotionals on Gideon's life...

If you read the end of the story in Judges Ch. 8, you’ll see that Gideon’s victory was so huge that the people wanted to make him King. Wisely, he declined. But for some strange reason, he asked them to show their appreciation for his leadership by giving him a portion of the gold they had taken from the Midianites.

I don’t think that was something he heard from God. In fact, I think Gideon ends his own story making the same mistake as the rest of Israel-- doing what seemed right in his own eyes. Instead of leveraging his position, his credibility, his leadership, to perhaps tear down the rest of the Baal altars, do away with the Asherah groves, or lead the people back to genuine worship of God, he gave them a golden image that they turned into an idol.  Just another image they could substitute for the true God.

It leaves me scratching my head. Gideon didn’t finish well. Running well doesn’t mean finishing well. The race isn’t over until its over. The epilogue in Gideon’s life is a hard reminder that what we do at the end is just as important as what we do in the middle. So whatever stage of life we’re in or whatever activity we’re involved in, there’s still the opportunity and the challenge for us to finish well.

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At some point, you gotta get out of the boat

This is fifth in a series of Thursday devotionals on Gideon...

After we’ve dealt with our baggage, after we’ve unloaded all our doubts and fears on God, we have to step out in faith. Gideon was able to do that—which I think is what lands him in Hebrews 11 with all the other great people of faith. God told him to tear down his own father’s altar to Baal—he was afraid of the people in town, he was afraid of his family, but he did it—he did it at night when nobody was around—but he did it.

God told him to sound the trumpet and rally the Israelites to battle, he was afraid—he was full of questions—but he put air in that horn and he rallied the people.

God told him to send all but 300 of the 32,000 soldiers that showed up for battle home—he did it, this time with no questions asked.

God told him to break his small army into three groups and attack the Midianite camp with nothing but trumpets, torches and jars—and he did that too, no questions asked (Judges 7:15-18).

Each time Gideon overcame his baggage, overcame his fears, he learned something about trusting God. With only 300 soldiers, he partnered with God to route over 100,000 Midianites and rescued Israel from their tormentors. Each time God asked him to do something, Gideon had fewer and fewer doubts, and greater and greater confidence.

When God gives us a call—a call to ministry, a call to share our faith with our neighbor or person in the cubicle next to us, a call to a new career, a call to fix a broken relationship, a call to some task in his Kingdom, we may have questions and that’s okay, but ultimately we have get out of the boat—we have to take the first step. And each time we do, we grow in our own trust in God’s leading and we gain confidence in our ability to live in God’s strength.

Is there a decision you’re holding out on? Have you heard from God very clearly, but you just can’t get started? Whatever you’re hearing from God, no matter how big it is, or how small it may seem, whatever he is impressing upon your heart, that’s the most important step you can take. Life’s with God is an adventure, an awesome journey of great things, experiences, really cool stuff, if we just do what God asks us to do. If we step out and follow his lead.

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God doesn’t care about our baggage

[Read part 1]
[Read part 2]

Gideon seems to have had a horrible self-image. But God wasn’t turned off by Gideon’s low self-esteem. Look at Judges 6:14-16. When God finds Gideon, he’s hiding from the Midianite soldiers in the winepress, but he’s not pressing wine, he’s threshing wheat. He’s holed up, trying to stay off the radar of the Midianites. 

Gideon sees his nation, his tribe, his family, and himself as weak and insignificant. He’s afraid of the Midianites, he’s afraid of his townspeople, and he’s afraid of his own family. Even when God calls him “mighty warrior” and says he has all the strength he needs to save Israel, and promises to go with him, Gideon shrinks away. He’s got a lot of baggage to overcome. 

I saw a story on CNN a while back about a young man who was living on Skid Row who had every reason to let his baggage keep him from aspiring to something greater.  It's a great story—that someone would have that much hope, that much ambition, even when they have all this baggage hanging around their neck. Some of us have more than others, but we all have baggage. When our baggage gets in the way of responding to God, like it was with Gideon, when it gets in the way of stepping out in faith, then we’ve got a problem we have to overcome.

Get hold of Paul’s words to the Corinthians in his first letter:  "Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God."

God deliberately chose Gideon—a meek, unnoticed, perhaps even cowardly man, to demonstrate his willingness to use anyone. God doesn’t call the best, the brightest, the tallest, the most attractive, he calls the willing…he calls those whose hearts are fully committed to him. God doesn’t care about our baggage.  That's an important truth no matter where we serve. God can use us.

God is always engaged with our life

[2nd in a series of devotional thoughts about Gideon; see part 1]

If you read Exodus and Joshua, you’d have to agree that God was totally engaged with the Israelites: he led them out of Egypt, he parted the Red Sea, he gave them the Mosaic Law, he brought them into the Promised land, and when they refused to take the land by faith, he still provided for them for all those years wandering in the desert. Then when it was time for Joshua to lead the people into Canaan, he gave them explicit instructions—he gave them a covenant to follow—he was totally engaged with them: you’re to drive the inhabitants out; you’re to break down their altars; you’re not to mix with them or make any covenant with them. And by the way, as you do this, I’ll go before you and give you success.

Even as you read about Israel’s disobedience in the early chapters of Judges, you find that God looks at them with kindness and compassion. He sees their distress, he hears their cries and he brings along these judges to rescue them. He’s engaged with their suffering, even when it’s self-inflicted!

When God first approaches Gideon (Judges 6:7-13) with the call to rescue the Israelites, Gideon responds with the prevailing thought of the day: “If the Lord is with us…” Israel perceives that God is no longer with them, yet we know looking through the window of Scripture that God was with them in a big way. Gideon just couldn’t see it.

Why is it that whenever we feel distant from God, whenever we feel alone, we assume God has backed away from us? I’ve felt that way at times.

I’ve wondered why I don’t sense the Holy Spirit prompting me to do certain things, say certain things, share my faith with certain people, like I very clearly have in the past. Like Gideon, I wonder why God isn’t doing the dramatic in my life like he used to, and I make the mistake of thinking that if God isn’t doing something big, he isn’t doing anything at all.

What I’ve consistently found, at least in my life, is that God is always offering to me as intimate a relationship as I am willing to accept. The problem isn’t God, the problem is me. God never moves away from us, we move away from God. God is always engaged with our lives.

a time to pray

This weekend, we’ll gather for an all-church prayer summit. We’ve done these for the last three years. “Prayer meetings” seem old-school, and maybe the image we have in our mind is sort of a throwback. But when the community of faith comes together to pray for the power of God, the presence of God, the holiness of God and the plan of God, it’s not passé, it’s awesome. Paul sets the example for us in his prayer for the church at Ephesus:

“For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”

Great leadership and sound management are important for any church to advance the Kingdom. But the foundation must be our dependence upon the power and grace of God. Here's a sample from one of our previous summits: Download Prayer Summit 06

Let’s pray…

life lessons from Gideon

I been studying the adventures of Gideon.  As you know, Gideon was a judge in Israel and his role is extremely interesting and encouraging.  Over a series of Thursday blogs, I want to highlight from Gideon's life some lessons that can instruct us as we face whatever we’re facing in our daily lives.

1) God is always engaged with us
2) God doesn’t care about our baggage
3) It’s okay to be human
4) At some point, we gotta get out of the boat
5) The race isn’t over until it’s over

On Thursday's over the next five weeks I'll take this space to look at each of these lessons in detail.  What are you studying?  How do you stay connected to God in the midst of crazy schedules, tough situations, high stress and long hours?

superficial faith- Samson pt. 3

[last of a three-part series on Samson]

Samson treated the calling of God, his Nazirite vow, the favor of God… callously, indifferently… Samson’s religion was superficial. Samson was a hypocrite. He was not the same person on the inside as he was on the outside. That’s the definition of a hypocrite.

On the outside Samson was a judge of Israel. For 20 years he was moderately effective in keeping the Philistines on their heels. They were scared of him. Rightfully so, because he was erratic and unpredictable. He was super-humanly strong. He wore the hair of a Nazirite holy man. When the Spirit of God came on him, he was something to behold. So from all outward appearances, he was God’s man in Israel.

But what was he on the inside? You can always tell what’s on the inside of a man if you know how they conduct themselves when nobody is watching. Sampson repeatedly violated his Nazarite vow, usually when his parents or others were not watching.

Samson was attacked by this wild lion, kills it, tears it apart, but in doing so, comes in direct contact with a dead carcass. A Nazirite is to have no contact with a dead carcass. Samson doesn’t perform any cleansing ritual, which is prescribed in Numbers 6 for just such cases as this, neither does he mention it to his parents. Later on he goes back to the dead carcass and sticks his hand in the shell and scoops out the honey, which he then shares with his parents! He drags them into his fraud.

Later in the passage it says Samson convened a wedding feast, and the Hebrew words denote a “place of drinking.” Guess what, they weren’t drinking Kool Aid. The area was a vineyard. They were drinking wine and fermented drinks like beer, which Samson was expressly forbidden to drink. It’s naive to think that Samson, who spent way too much time in and around vineyards, did not drink forbidden wine or grape products, when he so easily violated his other vows.

Samson kept his hair long in order to maintain the outward appearance of devotion to God, while all the time he was regularly violating that vow.

The last straw was when Delilah cut off his hair, which was the outward expression of what was supposed to be an inward covenant with God. And the Bible says, “the Lord left him.” Samson cast his pearls before swine when he told Delilah the source of his strength…and God walked away from him.

Samson could have rallied Israel to drive out the Philistines. He could have used his vow and his strength to lead Israel to judge these horrible pagan people, just like God wanted to do.

Is your walk with God penetrating the surface of your life? Or are you just wearing the “hairstyle” of a Christian, when the reality is there’s nothing happening on the inside?

• Transformation happens when we have a clear sense of who we are in Christ—we’re his redeemed, his beloved, we’ve been bought with a price… that shapes who we are and how we seek to live…
• Transformation happens when we face our weaknesses head on and ask God to guide us to victory over our own failed humanity… when we crucify the flesh as Apostle Paul says…
• Transformation happens when we live each day allowing God to get below the surface of our lives—letting his Word and his Spirit touch the biggest and the deepest issues we face as Christ-followers…

an unshakable faith

This week we launch our fall spiritual growth series (we call it our fall campaign), called “Unshakable.” We’ll have over 1,000 adults meeting in weekly small groups using a curriculum we wrote that includes brief vignettes from staff pastors and integrates the weekly sermon messages.The students and children develop their own curriculum around the same topic, so it's an all-church series.

It’s a huge undertaking, but one of the highlights of our year. Check out our website at

    www.unshakablelife.com

and feel free to contact me with questions or access to our curriculum. It’s awesome-- I can't wait!

God uses imperfect people- Samson pt. 2

[this is a long post, violating every rule of good blogging... sorry blogging gods]

Last week we looked at one subplot in the story of Samson that had to do with his identity- an identity that he lost somewhere along the way. Today, we'll look at Samson's humanity.  God uses imperfect people, and Samson is certainly an example of that.  But wouldn't his story have been sweeter had he been able to get control of his passion and his weaknesses?

Samson's humanity.  Samson isn’t listed in Heb. 11 because of his godly lifestyle or his ability to control his human passions. He’s there because of God’s sovereign work in his life in those moments when he did connect with the Spirit of God and was used by God to punish the Philistines. No, his fallen humanity is displayed in all its ugliness.

1. His stubbornness. Samson was a stubborn guy. He was raised by two godly people and most certainly understood the command not to intermarry with the Canaanites. It’s clearly stated in Exodus 34, which Samson most certainly was familiar with. No matter, when he saw a Philistine woman who attracted him, he steamrolled the warning of God not to do it and then he steamrolled his parent’s warning not to do it. I’m disappointed in his parents—his Dad could have flatly refused. He had that right in the Jewish tradition. He could have just said “no.” But you wonder if Samson’s Nazirite vow, his incredible strength, his intimidating long hair, and his apparent encounters with the Spirit of God, created a situation that made his parents unwilling to say “no.” Whenever a parent can’t say no to a child, trouble is nearby. Samson’s reaction to his parents is revealing: “Get her for me…she’s the right one for me.” In other words, I know what’s best for me, not you two. How many young people have steamrolled their parent’s objections…and then lived to regret it? Samson seems full of himself—full of his own self confidence. No humility, not a teachable, gentle spirit. He’s stubborn and willful, and his sinful nature, his human depravity is in plain sight.

2. His personal weaknesses. Everybody has weaknesses. Mine may be different from yours, but we all have them. Now I’ve met some people that act like they don’t have any, but I know that’s not true. John’s epistle says plainly that if we claim to be without sin (without personal weaknesses), we deceive ourselves. All of us struggle with sin, whether we admit it or not.

Two specific vices, two personal weakness, that seem to drive Samson: lust and revenge. Samson’s problem with lust is all over the story:Samson fell for the woman in Timnah, he goes to Gaza (a city that he had no business being in) and he sees a prostitute that he spends most of the night with, and he falls “in love” with a woman from the Valley of Sorek, Delilah, whom most scholars conclude was also a Philistine prostitute.

I doubt that Samson understood what real love was, because Samson is controlled by lust. His lust is fed by his eyes. Whatever he sees that captures his sexual passions, he wants. And he seems to be missing both sensitivity to how destructive and wrong this sin is in his life, and how better off he could be if he could just get control of his passions. Samson’s story begins and ends with his fatal addiction to lust.

Listen to the words of Proverbs 6 and catch how closely they describe Samson’s story: For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths are crooked, but she knows it not. These weren’t ugly women Samson was attracted to… I’m sure they were sweeter than honey, smoother than oil. And Samson follows his eyes straight to the grave.

Isn’t it interesting that at the end of his life, when he lost his strength and was captured by the Philistines, they put out his eyes. His eyes were the source of so many of his mistakes, and in the end, he lost them completely.

The second vice that demonstrated Samson’s fallen humanity is his thirst for revenge. Samson takes revenge on every situation that doesn’t go his way.

• When the riddle about the lion gets solved through trickery, he kills thirty Philistines and steals their clothes.
• When his wife was given to his best man because he never consummated the marriage, he burns with anger and uses the “old tie together the fox tails with torches trick” to burn down most of the Philistines crops and groves.
• The Philistines in turn burn his wife and would-be father-in-law to death, which makes Samson take revenge of a whole lot more Philistines.
• After he’s captured through by the Philistines because of his own ignorance, he asks God for one more endowment of strength so he can… READ 16:28. There’s a pattern of revenge that runs throughout the story.

How does this touch you and me? We know we all have weaknesses. In that way, we are no different than Samson. 1 Cor. 10:12 says, “let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”

What weaknesses do you struggle with? Is it lust? Is it revenge? It is stubbornness? Is it anger—we didn’t talk about that but it’s certainly in the story. Is it disobeying or disrespecting those in authority in your life? Samson did that too. Is it ignoring the clear commandments of God in some specific way—had Samson not done that, he would avoided almost every mistake he made. Our weaknesses can either drive us to God, or separate us from God.

If we understand our own humanity—fallen nature, we can partner with God to overcome those weaknesses, then they actually become a means for wonderful grace in our lives.  Paul said in 2 Cor. 12 that his weaknesses only served to make him more dependent on God, and therefore they became a good thing. Our weaknesses can drive us to a deeper relationship with God.

• Are you spending time with God each day through the Scriptures?
• Are you talking honestly with God each day about the issues of your life?
• Are you participating in regular corporate worship?
• Are you watching for God's activity going on around you?
• Are you nurturing a tender and sensitive heart to God's people and Kingdom?

Let's not get "lost" in the work of the church...

don't lose your identity

I’ve recently been studying the life of Samson. Ever really consider Samson’s life? Wow, what a guy! It’s an intriguing story. Samson was born with incredible promise, yet dies bound, blind, and mocked.

…it’s a humorous story at times – tying 300 fox tails together with torches and letting them run through the dry field burning the Philistine crops. I know I’m probably not supposed to find that humorous, but somehow that seems like a funny sight.

…and it’s almost unbelievable at times. Samson’s strength allowed him to do things we could only read about in a super-hero comic book. I mean, how do you defeat 1,000 enemy soldiers with only the jawbone of a donkey in your hand? …except for the fact that it’s in the Bible and for a 1,000 reasons, we choose to believe the Bible is God’s inspired and inerrant Word. Yes, I’m an evangelical.

As in any good story, there are interesting subplots to uncover and explore. That’s what intrigued me as I studied. In several posts over the next few weeks, I’ll share a few of those subplots with you that are below the surface in the story of Samson.

The first is Samson’s identity. Samson had three great things going for him (Judges 13:1-12) that should have given him an unshakable identity:

His calling. His birth was foretold by the Angel of the Lord: a preincarnate appearance of Christ (Isa. 9:6). Samson would be called, set apart to God, from the very womb, to be a Nazarite, which meant that for a limited time (except in Samson’s case) he would observe three restrictions: 1) abstain from wine or any fermented drink, including any product made from the vine; 2) he must not come into contact with a corpse or dead body of any kind; 3) he or she must not cut their hair for the duration of the entire vow, because the long hair is the outward symbol of the inner consecration to God.

His parents. There’s every indication that Samson’s parents were godly, discerning and sensitive to God’s voice, in sharp contrast to the Israelites you read about in much of the book of Judges. They were people who were anxious to follow God’s instructions to the letter—as they demonstrated when they wanted the Lord to tell them explicitly how Samson should be raised. They would take great care in instructing Samson as he was growing up exactly what it meant to be a Nazarite, why he couldn’t drink grape juice or go near a funeral procession, or cut his hair. Manoah and his wife quickly believed the Lord’s words, as they asked exactly to whom they could direct their honor when this prophecy was completely fulfilled. They already had their eye on the outcome.

His blessing. God showed Samson incredible favor and he had every advantage as a child. Samson experienced the power of God’s Spirit as a young man—very early on the text says “the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him.” That word for stir means to disturb, to trouble… it’s an intense word…so the presence of God’s Spirit was undeniable on Samson. “He grew and the Lord blessed him.” There was a general sense of God’s favor on Samson’s life, very similar to Luke’s words describing John the Baptist and the child Jesus. Yet, Samson lost his way. He forgot who he was. As you read rest of the story, you can’t help feel that Samson let go of his identity: the identity he had being called by God from birth, the identity he had through godly parents, and the identity he had as someone uniquely blessed by God.

What’s your identity? What are the things that help to define you as a person?

• Do you find your identity in God’s calling on your life? Read Eph. 1:11.
• Do you find your identity in the people God has placed around you? I.e. your spouse, your coworkers, your Senior Pastor, your children? God places these people in our lives, not to make us happy, although that’s true, but to make us holy. These special people in our lives help anchor us—make us who we are—become part of our identity.
• Do you find your identity through those things God has done in your life to bless you, care for you, and provide for you? Yes, even when you work in the church, you can lose your way-- you can forget who you are.

What is it that anchors you?  Share your thoughts with other church executives...