AS GOD SPEAKS INTO YOUR FUTURE
Stop saying, “Look what the devil did” and start shouting, “Look what the Lord has done!”
HOW CAN YOU be in tomorrow when I am still in today?”
My five-year-old daughter’s voice revealed both her excitement and disbelief when I made my first trip to Australia to preach at a conference. Eva stayed home with the children, and the difference in our time zones—a whopping nineteen hours—meant that my call to tell the kids good night at bedtime took place in the afternoon of the next day there in Sydney.
“Well,” I said, “you remember how I showed you the way we can move the hands on the clock? And then we looked at the globe, and I showed you how the earth spins on its axis as it orbits around the sun?” At the time, back before I left, I thought she understood, but suddenly I felt unsure. In fact I felt unsure that I understood it anymore!
“I remember,” she said. “But I don’t see how you can be in the future and ahead of us here at home! Is it like Star Wars or something?”
“Not really,” I said, trying to wind up the expensive international call. “I can explain it again once I get home, OK? Now brush your teeth and get in bed. Mommy will read your bedtime story, but I am going to pray with you right now.”
I prayed for my daughter and the rest of our family, keeping my prayer similar to what I usually prayed in Sacramento to tuck her in. After our shared “Amen,” I said, “I love you! And I will be home soon.”
She paused and said, “I love you too, Daddy, but I just have one question before we hang up.”
“What, honey?” I said.
“What will the weather be like tomorrow? Is it raining where you are? Because if it rains tomorrow, then I want to make sure I find my galoshes tonight!”
Even though my daughter is all grown up now, that precious story still makes me smile.
Time travel remains one of the basic conventions of science fiction stories. While I had not traveled through time, to my young daughter it certainly seemed as if I had. As I mentioned, I am a die-hard Trekkie and grew up watching the original Star Trek series in syndication as well as its spin-off Star Trek: The Next Generation. You do not have to be a fan to guess that traveling backward and forward in time—usually due to a black hole or some other anomaly in space—made up the plot of quite a few episodes.
In fact, one of the episodes in the first season of the original Star Trek series, entitled “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” involved the USS Enterprise going back to Earth in the 1960s, a clever wink to the time of the original broadcast. When an Air Force pilot spots the Enterprise and gets caught in its tractor beam, Captain Kirk saves the man, named John Christopher, by beaming him aboard. Unfortunately, Christopher quickly sees that Kirk, Spock, and the crew have traveled from the future and, much like my young daughter, tries to make sense of the situation.
Fearing the consequences to history if they let Christopher return to Earth with knowledge of the future, at first Kirk and Spock decide to take him with them back to their time, an unspecified stardate in the twenty-third century. Then Spock, perusing history, realizes that while Captain Christopher himself seemed to live an ordinary, unremarkable life, he would go on to father a son who would lead the first expedition to Saturn. Basically, removing one domino from history would set in motion a topple effect, changing everything! Kirk manages to wipe Christopher’s memory and get him back to his time, as well as take the photos snapped of their ship, but the show raises several intriguing questions about the way our present decisions have a ripple effect into future consequences.
Coming back from the fictional future to the reality of the ancient world, consider the man at the pool of Bethesda once more. With the paralyzed man’s encounter with Jesus as our basis, we have looked at the way God confronts our present moment and requires us to make a choice about whether or not we want to get well. And then we considered the new life we experience when God releases us from the past. But now we will explore the impact on your life when God speaks into your future!
When you encounter Jesus Christ, He draws a line between your past and your future; they will never be the same!
If the man at Bethesda had been content to remain paralyzed, his future would have mirrored his past. He would have continued to be a victim of the debilitating physical limitations hindering his mobility. Day after day he would have remained a familiar figure there at Bethesda, watching others being healed upon entering the pool right after the angel stirred its waters—lying on the ground, crawling like a worm, and never fast enough to receive the healing splash.
When you encounter Jesus Christ, He draws a line between your past and your future; they will never be the same! When you accept His invitation to be healed and to stand up and walk by faith, you no longer know what your future, which once seemed so bleak and predictable, will be like. It will actually exceed anything you can imagine or make happen for yourself. But it all starts with your willingness to engage with the present, relinquish the past, and receive the future God has for you.
Your future matters to God, and what He has called you to do can be accomplished by no other. You do not need Star Trek or me to tell you because God’s Word makes it clear that He wants to do amazing things in our lives if we will only let Him.
As we have seen, the man at Bethesda was not the only underdog whose future transformed after crossing paths with the power of the living God. Time and time again in the pages of the Bible we see God choosing people the world overlooks, from a shepherd boy who became king to a ruthless mercenary who became the apostle to the Gentiles. One of my favorites just happens to reveal one of the most significant transformations.
Like geeky teenager Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man or scrawny Steve Rogers morphing into Captain America, Gideon started out as perhaps the most unlikely hero of the Jewish people. In fact, I think Gideon’s story would be right at home on the big screen as a superhero epic with all the CGI green-screen special effects we can produce with today’s technology. His story begins in one of the worst times in Israel’s history—and when you remember that the Egyptians enslaved them before they wandered in the desert for forty years, that says a lot! The Bible sets the scene for the terrible ordeal experienced by the Hebrew people.
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the LORD for help.
—JUDGES 6:1–6
Yet again, in order for His people to repent and return to Him, God allowed them to face the consequences of their sinfulness. This time He permitted the Midianites to conquer them for seven years, and not just the Midianites but a plague of enemies described here “like swarms of locusts.” This forced the people of Israel to run and hide wherever they could take cover—caves, crevices, and caverns. Their enemies knew how to keep them weak too, because the Midianites and their fellow marauders would ravage the fields and farms of the Hebrew people, stealing or destroying all their food, livestock, and valuables. The Jewish people could barely get over one attack before another occurred.
God heard the desperate prayers of His people and decided to raise up a leader who would, with the Lord’s help, defeat the Midianites. I cannot help but believe God has an incredible sense of humor because the young man He selected seemed to be the most unqualified around. Notice how Gideon himself pointed out his deficiencies right away.
When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”
“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.”
—JUDGES 6:12–16
The contrast between the Lord’s message and Gideon’s response could not be sharper. After seven long years of death, destruction, and destitution, God answered the prayers of His people and began by sharing the exciting news with Gideon. Right away Gideon appeared not only skeptical but downright sassy! In response he basically said, “Really? You talking to me? Uh, excuse me, but if you speak the truth, then why am I sitting here, hiding out and threshing wheat—work often done by the women around here?” Even after God’s messenger reassured Gideon, he still had not convinced this young man! He replied, “But I am the runt of my family, which is from the weakest clan out of them all!”
Gideon could not imagine how God wanted to speak into his future. And it would take some major convincing.
But God took care of it.
God never abandons His people.
He has chosen you just as He chose Gideon.
God had His work cut out for Him with Gideon. The setting clearly reinforces the dire straits of the entire nation of Israel. Before this exchange with the angel, as Judges 6:11 tells us, Gideon threshed wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites. He did not farm, fight, or forage for food with his father and brothers. And to top it all off Gideon does not even have the proper tools in the right setting, typically a mill or threshing floor. So no wonder he struggled to take this angel’s greeting of “mighty warrior” seriously!
Before we are too hard on Gideon for doubting God’s future for him, we might need to think about our own responses at times when God has revealed where He wants to take us. When we moved from Pennsylvania to California to start a new church, I struggled to believe God really wanted us to do it. His Spirit kept affirming it in my heart, and the details continued to unfold as well.
But still I wondered if I had what it takes. Maybe that vision I had as a teenager watching TV amounted to nothing more than wishful thinking. I knew God had called me to preach and pastor, but maybe He just wanted me to remain an associate pastor in a small church back East. Did God really intend for me to start a new church that might grow into a congregation of thousands of people? Did He really want me traveling and speaking before huge crowds? And what if He opened up a leadership position to help other churches and pastors, community leaders, or even elected officials?
Have you ever had a Gideon moment of your own? Maybe you had a sense of God calling you to do something, and yet you felt underprepared or ill-equipped to do the job. Perhaps you felt Him directing you to make a major move into a new role, and yet your circumstances seemed too overwhelming to overcome. You simply could not imagine how you would ever do what God seemed to be telling you to do.
Your mind of fear cannot produce a life of faith.
God’s power overcomes inadequacy, inexperience, or insecurity, whether for Gideon or for people like you and me. God does not see our circumstances the way we do. We look around us as well as inside us, and we fail to recognize possibilities for His power, instead often focusing on our flaws, failures, and fears. Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). Often we quickly limit what God wants to do in our future because we only believe what we see with our mortal eyes. We cannot see ourselves the way God sees us—as His mighty warriors—when we see ourselves as weak and scrawny.
Fortunately God’s power includes the ability to help us see our future with an eternal perspective. He loves to remind us that our thoughts about ourselves do not limit us! No matter how we see ourselves—powerless, empty, sinful, scared, uneducated, underqualified—He only asks that we trust Him. With God on our side, who can be against us? We cannot be against ourselves and limit God’s power in our lives if we simply trust Him and step out in faith.
Too often we allow our thoughts, perceptions, assumptions, and expectations to shackle us to what we perceive as absolute reality. We look for details and supporting evidence to reinforce what we believe, refusing to consider other possibilities—even of the supernatural kind. We know God can do anything—after all, He is God—but we cannot comprehend why He would choose us. And as a result we resist or outright refuse to move into our Father’s future for us.
Instead we cling to our negative, past-focused point of view. We see ourselves as less than others, and therefore we cannot imagine how or even why God would choose to work through us. We think we do not come from a good family or have real ministry training. We have not studied the Bible enough or learned how to be a leader. We get in our own way when God wants to show us the mighty warrior He has made us to be.
When your mind focuses on your weakness, you cannot accept God’s strength. If the man at Bethesda had not believed in the possibility of ever walking, then even after Jesus healed him, he could have refused to try to get on his feet. He could have said, “I have tried before many times, and it was impossible. I am and always will be an invalid, a paralytic, a man who cannot walk.” Instead he received instant healing from his past way of seeing himself, and he dared to believe he could walk!
Your mind of fear cannot produce a life of faith.
Let go of who you once were so God can show you who you will become.
You are next to be God’s mighty warrior …
… if you will get on your feet!
Because of who God is, you do not have to worry, wallow, or wonder about what you cannot do.
Gideon struggled with the way he thought about himself. And as the Bible points out, our thoughts do have power: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7, NKJV). Even when the angel of the Lord showed up there beneath the old oak tree, Gideon seemed remarkably reserved. Instead of getting excited about the opportunity ahead with God on his side, he could not get past his own paralysis. He not only doubted himself, but also he even apparently doubted God!
While feeling afraid does not mean you have sinned, you should not allow our fear to grow into the poison that paralyzes you and keeps you in the past. Everyone deals with fear from time to time. But if you allow it to control your life and keep you paralyzed, you risk missing out on the future God has for you. When Jesus tells you to walk, never allow fear to interrupt the miracle He wants to pour over you.
Always remember: you do not serve a God of fear but a God of love. You have a caring Father on your side. Because of who God is, you do not have to worry, wallow, or wonder about what you cannot do. His Word tells us, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim. 1:7, NKJV). Lingering fearful thoughts that cloud your thinking and hinder your actions do not come from God. He never operates out of fear. Do not let the enemy use fear to block the path toward your divine destiny.
Keep in mind that Gideon’s fear did not disqualify him from being used by God. The Lord just had to break through those fears and help Gideon see himself differently. Similarly, God had not been sitting idly by, ignoring the cries of His own people. The Lord had His plan, and with Gideon selected, He could now begin.
Ironically Gideon’s fearful thinking so enveloped him that he did not recognize God’s answer to the Israelites’ prayers! Remember, Gideon’s immediate response questioned this delay by asking, “Why, Lord? Where is the God who set our people free from Egypt?” (Judg. 6:13, paraphrase). God had chosen Gideon as the leader to deliver His people just as God had chosen Moses to lead the exodus from Egypt. But Gideon could not see the forest for the trees! Or in his case, as we will explore in a moment, he could not see the forest for the fleece!
Gideon resisted God’s future and lingered in the past, fixating on the problem of “Why?” God on the other hand arrived on the scene not to answer a man’s “Why?” but to provide him with a “What?” Yes, Gideon’s family background might have identified him as the weakest and the youngest, but he quickly used this as an excuse. Basically he dared to question God’s choice—as if he knew better than God!
A large family, such as we see with the people of Israel, often considers the youngest weaker than the older siblings. In some cases the baby of the family might be spoiled and even feel entitled, such as we find in the story Jesus told about the prodigal son. So Gideon may have been conditioned to see himself as young and weak, unqualified and inexperienced, by his family, friends, and neighbors. But once again, it does not matter what others say about you—only what God says!
We think that with all our past problems—poverty, probation, powerlessness—God cannot possibly choose us for a glorious future. My friend, do not believe that lie!
The fact that Gideon came from the weakest tribe may have been an economic factor as well as an emotional or physical one. Having little money might have forced him to thresh wheat with a wine press, a reminder of just how poor they were. We may use our own lack of resources as an excuse as well. We assume that because we are the first in our family to be a Christian, we cannot lead a large ministry. We believe that because we did not finish our degree, we cannot fulfill the potential we know God has placed inside us. We think that because our parents were not wealthy or influential, we will always be inferior to others.
We lock ourselves into faulty thinking without even realizing it. We assume that because our parents were not successful, we will not be either—or because they were always stressed out and lived paycheck to paycheck, we must inevitably live that way too. We think that with all our past problems—poverty, probation, powerlessness—God cannot possibly choose us for a glorious future.
My friend, do not believe that lie!
Your past does not determine your future. God does!
When we succumb to our doubts and insecurities, we sometimes need to be reassured. Like Gideon we want confirmation from God. But often in asking for this reassurance, we really just stall and find a way to extend our doubts. Gideon told the angel of the Lord, “Uh, if you really want to help me, then let me go make a meal for you, and when I come back, you will still be here.” Gideon made the meal and returned. And guess what? The angel of the Lord had remained there (Judg. 6:17–21), yet Gideon was not convinced.
Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.
Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.
—JUDGES 6:36–40
Gideon had to work through the process of allowing God to change his thought process. When our thinking focuses on the past, we need help getting a glimpse of our future. Fortunately God patiently transforms us, helping us see the truth. He never wants us to play games or try to manipulate Him, but He loves us enough to humor us in the midst of our foibles and frailties. For this reason He reminds us in His Word to focus not on our own thoughts and feelings but on His eternal truth: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2).
When we allow God to renew our minds, He changes our thinking. We let Him do this by reading, studying, and meditating on His Word. We spend time in prayer and get to know Him more intimately, trusting Him as our loving Father. We obey Him and seek to please Him. We let go of our old way of doing things on our own and embrace God’s way. The Bible tells us, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24).
I love Gideon’s story because even in the midst of this young man’s insecurities and warped thinking, God loved him enough to do as Gideon asked and make the future abundantly clear. God viewed the fleeces as unnecessary, but He nonetheless did as Gideon asked to help him see differently. God does not want to punish us for clinging to our past—He wants to love us into our future. I do not believe Gideon’s requests upset or offended the Lord. Instead God wanted Gideon to trust Him—just as He still wants us to trust Him today.
God spoke truth and let its power permeate the way Gideon thought about himself and the future God called him to fulfill. In fact, the Lord called Gideon a mighty warrior.
God does not want to punish us for clinging to our past—He wants to love us into our future.
The real test comes, of course, when we put our thoughts into action. Will we trust God enough to break away from the past and old ways in order to walk in faith and fight for our future? Once in hiding and fearful of danger, Gideon finally began to act on God’s instruction. At first he gathered an army of thirty-two thousand men, but God said, “Too many.” Instead God instructed His mighty warrior on how to distinguish the soldiers God wanted Gideon to take into battle with him. In the end only three hundred passed the test (Judg. 7:2–8).
Can you see the difference in action? Gideon went from thinking of himself as nothing, the weakest and scrawniest, to leading three hundred men to face an army of over one hundred thousand men. With the odds against him, Gideon now knew that God would fight for him! It did not matter how many soldiers he had because God would be on his side. The victory belongs to the Lord, and Him alone!
God then instructed Gideon to surround the Midianites while holding torches and horns—no fancy spears, arrows, or weapons, just a torch in one hand and a horn in the other! Gideon followed the instructions, and the Bible says that when the Hebrew army under Gideon’s command blew the horns and held up the torches, the Midianites woke up, heard the commotion, and became so confused that they began killing each other! They basically defeated themselves thanks to the strategy God gave to Gideon. He and his three hundred men captured the remaining soldiers and secured the victory for Israel by relying on the Lord’s power.
While he certainly witnessed a miraculous military victory, I believe Gideon won a far more miraculous battle inside his own mind and heart! Rescued from the paralysis of the past, Gideon faced his fears with the help of God and overcame them, freeing him to fight for and win his future.
Maybe you want to release the past and face your God-given future, but your fears continue to linger. You hear God calling you His mighty warrior, and you know He has the power to overcome any and all obstacles in your path. Still you wait and wonder and grow wishy-washy. You cannot figure out how everything will come together. You have no logical or rational explanation for what must take place to go forward, so you keep lying on the ground—no longer paralyzed but hesitant to test your new mobility.
We must realize that God still tells us today the same thing He told Gideon: “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” (Judg. 6:14). We focus on all the reasons why this will not work when God insists on us trusting Him and going forward anyway. Basically the Lord tells us, “Just trust Me on this. Go with what you have, and I will take care of the rest. We got this!”
Even when we continue to make excuse after excuse, God washes them away like dew on a fleece! Remember what He told Gideon, His handpicked mighty warrior: “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites” (Judg. 6:16). By my count, God eventually told Gideon “Hey, I am with you!” three times. Then He even went so far as to tell Gideon exactly what would happen. God did not leave Gideon a victim of his past; God revealed his victorious future to him.
Nevertheless a battle ensued in Gideon’s mind. Even though God had already shown him the victory, Gideon had to catch up in his ability to trust and act on his faith. Gideon’s doubts led him to test God at least three times before God finally convinced Gideon He would be on his side.
We have to take every negative thought captive and demolish thoughts that are not of God. We have to train our mind to think through the lens of God’s truth and not our own perceptions and assumptions.
We all have battles in our minds when we know that our thinking does not reflect God’s perspective. At these times, we must claim the victory Christ has already won for us. We must declare our divine destiny and not the derailment of the devil. When negative, defeating, impure thoughts come into our minds, we must take them captive. We must pray and claim the victory we already have been given, reminding our enemy of the futility of his attempts. We can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens us and assures us that we have all we need.
It took a while, but Gideon finally started believing God’s promises. Trusting God fully, Gideon went to battle against the Midianites, followed God’s instructions, and defeated the enemy who had been terrorizing Israel for the past seven years. Similarly it may take us a while too before we can get up and walk, but we already possess the miracle.
My friend, do not allow circumstances, crisis conditions, or the critical concerns of others to leave you lying in the dust when God calls you to run in the sun. If you know you do not see yourself as God sees you, then take time to focus on His Word and learn the truth. You are a child of the King. You are His beloved. You are forgiven in Christ Jesus. You are an heir of righteousness. You are an eternal citizen of heaven.
Let go of the past and step into your future.
Maybe you have been delayed, derailed, or discouraged, but the time has come to go back to your future.
Your future begins right now.
God does not want to renovate your past—He wants to release your future!
God has spoken into what lies ahead, and your old ways of thinking, seeing, and acting no longer have a hold on you. Start viewing yourself through God’s eyes and not your own. Your future depends on it! What God does next in your life will break the rules of expectation and the norms of conformity and bypass your usual way of thinking.
Like the paralyzed man at Bethesda, when Jesus tells you to stand up and walk, you do not have time to come up with excuses! You must believe, my friend, that at long last … you are next!