Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!
—2 CORINTHIANS 6:11–13 THE MESSAGE
SINCE MY FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST CAME ALIVE, I HAVE LONGED to experience more of the presence of the empowering Spirit as I work out my calling—often, as the Scriptures indicate, “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). Perhaps you come at it another way. You long to put into effect the calling you sense there is on your life, but you lack the power, the energy, or the inclination to do so. So often we think that only other people have callings. There have been times when the calling on my life is strong and I feel confident and ready to attack the world; then there are those seasons when my calling is cold and confidence is low.
How do we keep our callings in good repair so that they grow into a flame and don’t just flicker?
The answer for us, as it was for those first disciples at the beginning of Acts, is the Holy Spirit.
Why? Because we cannot do it without him. His greatest task is to make our callings known to us and to confirm them along the way. We simply cannot flourish in our God-given callings without the daily in-filling of the Holy Spirit. We are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16); our very bodies are where he dwells. When he flows, we flourish. He is the unbroken and unchanging current that courses from creation through Christ to us, helping us to be the people who we really long to be. He is the flow of our lives, the currency of the kingdom. Did you know that the words current and currency derive from the same Latin root meaning “fluidity”? As currency enables an economy to function, so the Spirit facilitates the economy of the kingdom of God.
Whether through worship, prayer, Scripture reading, or meditation, we need to renew our connection with the Spirit each day. True fullness of life is impossible without him, while life with him knows no end of possibility. Therefore we are told to “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). We are constantly in need of his power.
He enables us to break through the borders of self-limitation, and every day he challenges us afresh to live risky lives for Christ. Our lives become enriched, challenged, and changed. The kingdom grows because we are prepared to take up our callings, which change not only our lives but the lives of those around us.
That Christ died and rose again two thousand years ago is of great assurance to me. That he will come again at the end of time and initiate a new heaven and a new earth I have no doubt. But what matters to me is now. The past and the future are persuasive, but the present is compelling. The Holy Spirit reminds us of the events of Christ’s life in the past and of the promise of the full restoration of creation in the future. Above all, he reminds us how to live life to the full in the here and now. That’s why he is key to life.
There is a view that the Holy Spirit is given to those who are especially saintly: the pope, perhaps, or Mother Teresa, or the archbishop of Canterbury. Wherever this view has come from, it is certainly not from the New Testament. Jesus makes it clear that the Holy Spirit will be given to all: “how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Jesus makes it clear that each person who asks receives. Asking is the only test; there is no other qualification for receiving the Spirit. Receiving is the great promise.
James, a youth leader, once came to talk to me about the lack of direction in his life. He had no sense of calling. “Have you prayed to be filled with the Spirit?” I asked. He gave the sort of vague answer that clearly indicated that he didn’t really believe that the Spirit had much to do with his day-to-day life, being instead active only in times of worship and on Sundays. It was a memorable time of prayer as he opened himself for the first time to receive the fullness of the Spirit’s power in every area of his life.
In Acts 1–2, a group of people huddled together in the Upper Room. On the face of it, they could not have been more devoted to Jesus. They were, however, depressed. Their leader had died on a cross. He had returned, but then he left them again. They couldn’t understand. Their calling to see a new kingdom come was seemingly at an end, and the future looked bleak. But the following day, at Pentecost, a mighty rushing wind blew them away, tongues of fire descended upon the whole gathering, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.
We can see ourselves in one or more of these characters who were present at that depressing wake in the Upper Room: doubting Thomas; Simon the hothead; John, Jesus’ closest disciple; Peter, the chosen leader who was desperate to please but became Christ’s denier; Andrew, who responded so rapidly to the first call of Christ; Matthew, the tax collector who must have been ostracized by the community; Matthias, the new kid on the block who had only just been elected an apostle the day before; not to mention Joseph, a.k.a. Justus, who lost out in the election as successor to Judas. And Mary, who had been filled with the Spirit when the angel Gabriel appeared to her more than thirty years before. She was there. Why ever did she need to be filled with the Spirit again? Here they were together, along with other women and Jesus’ brothers. All had different temperaments, backgrounds, and spiritual conditions; all needed the Spirit to enable them to make the most of the rest of their lives. Far from their callings ending along with Jesus’ life on earth, the Spirit came visibly to reignite them.
Without the Spirit, they would have been dejected followers of a failed Messiah. The Acts of the Apostles is the continuation of the story of Christ. The last act of Jesus is the beginning of a new story that continues today and will continue until Christ comes again. As Jesus said to the disciples, “Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Our understanding of the Gospels is incomplete unless we have read the book of Acts. In the same way, our callings are incomplete unless we acknowledge and embrace the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God changed the disciples’ lives—and the world. That group grasped their callings with vigor, turned the world upside down, and changed the course of history. A new boldness seized them as they realized that they were part of the greatest calling on earth, and the world has never been the same since.
This is our moment. We are not just given some vague sense of destiny and left to work it out by ourselves. But through the infilling of the Spirit given to each of us, we are taken each day, from where we are and whatever personality type we are, to the next step of the revelation of Christ for our lives. We begin to show the fruit of the Spirit—“love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23)—for no calling is valid if it does not make us more like Christ.
In 1770, a fourteen-year-old boy visited the Sistine Chapel to hear the singing of the Miserere, a meditation on Psalm 51 by Allegri, the sixteenth-century composer. The Vatican at the time did not allow the reproduction of the music for use outside the Sistine Chapel. Anyone who flouted the prohibition was to be excommunicated. The music remained the preserve of an elite until that fourteen-year-old boy heard it. He left the Sistine Chapel and transcribed the work flawlessly from memory. That boy was Mozart. And from that moment, the Miserere could be performed everywhere. It was released to the world and was soon performed all over Europe.
It is now performed regularly worldwide, especially at the start of Lent. I first heard the Miserere on Ash Wednesday in King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. To this day, I remember the effect of this deeply moving reflection on the most famous penitential psalm. I thought of David, desperate for God’s forgiveness, and I thought of the need for my own life to straighten out. The music has a haunting solo part for a young treble that reaches to the depths of the soul.
What was bound into one place for a particular purpose for an elite group was disseminated far and wide and made accessible to all. That is what the Spirit does. He took what was confined to a particular time and place in Palestine and broke geographical, cultural, and religious borders so the risen Jesus would be accessible to all. But even more than that, the Spirit is the one who is constantly by our side reminding us of our callings, giving us insight into our work, and equipping us for each task.
When I was in South Africa with Joel Houston and Hillsong United at the start of their Zion Tour, I sat with some friends for the sold-out evening worship event. It was extraordinarily moving. My eyes clouded over with memories. Around me, with hands lifted high, were thousands of people of every race and age, worshipping together. I remembered the times when, as a student in South Africa during the apartheid years, meetings were racially segregated, and the law prohibited contact between people of different ethnic groups. Now I was at a Christian worship event and around me the “rainbow nation,” so called by Archbishop Tutu, was shining. I choked back the tears, eventually giving in. It was deeply moving, and I was stirred to the depths of my spirit by the sight of thousands of worshippers drawn together from every cultural and racial background, praising Jesus in the capital city, Pretoria, which had been the bastion of racial oppression in the apartheid years.
As I listened through the tears, a young Australian singer, Taya Smith, sang a song, “Oceans,” from Hillsong’s new album. The chorus tells of the work of the Spirit breaking borders, smashing barriers, and crossing divides.1 The words leapt at me. It was the song’s first major outing internationally, and I had not heard it before. I knew in an instant that it was a truly anointed song for our time. Not only is it a Spirit-inspired song, but seeing the borders erected by the apartheid regime now destroyed all around me made it an even more powerful and prophetic experience.
I cannot forget that evening. After the event, while traveling back in the car, I told one of the band members about the painful memories of those days and the healing I’d received from that song. He listened, tears flowed, and we prayed. It is vivid to me even now as I write. I believe that “Oceans” will continue to have a profound and healing effect wherever it is sung.
At the same time, the news broadcasts were telling us of the activities of a French charity, Médecins Sans Frontières, which operates without borders in the world. Their clear calling was to meet medical needs wherever they occurred. The spokesperson was reporting on their work in Syria for people caught up on both sides of the civil war. He explained that there are no frontiers to human need, and the charity workers are where the needs are. These are truly works of the Spirit of God. His grace knows no borders when it comes to meeting the needs of humanity.
We see in the book of Acts that the Spirit of God breaks down people’s preconceptions and prejudices, their limitations and assumptions about what is or is not possible. The Spirit of God is here to break down borders, and he gives us the power to roam freely across them. The ultimate human borders of sin and death do not hold. The Spirit is at work, breaking every obstacle to living out our callings in the world.
All of us have preconceptions of how God should work in our lives. We need the Spirit to show us how these assumptions might not be the true understanding of his ways. In Acts 1, the last question the disciples asked of the risen Lord before his ascension was, “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (v. 6 ESV). In other words, “When are we going to have executive authority so we can throw the Romans out?”
In that one sentence, they showed that they misunderstood Jesus’ mission of the three previous years. They still longed for a new regime: they wanted to define a group of people living in a finite geographical area and sharing a particular privilege. They fixated on their expectations of a political regime change. They had not grasped the message of grace, which transcends borders.
Then, in the powerful response, the paradigm was broken. Their model was one of an enclosed group, but Jesus replied, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” (v. 8). He now comes to establish a new dynamic in which his power is not restricted to one people but can be given to all people. Jesus continued, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (v. 8, emphasis added). He could not have made it clearer that there are no limits to the power and the reach of God in heaven to the peoples of earth.
Perhaps the most moving account of a barrier being broken is the exchange between Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10. We need to read this seminal exchange with the same openness to the Spirit that Peter had. There will be the same challenges in our time as there were for Peter.
Peter saw a vision filled with every imaginable unclean, non-kosher animal, which must have been anathema to every instinct he had. He heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat” (v. 13). He resisted and was rebuked with the words, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (v. 15). This happened three times, and then the vision disappeared. Peter, despite being “inwardly perplexed” (v. 17 AMP), had heard the Spirit speak to him. In obedience, he followed. He mentioned the difficulty of his position and concluded, “But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean” (v. 28 ESV). Peter then stood up and said, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (v. 34–35). This graphic encounter surely lies behind the great statement of the borderless Christ of Saint Paul: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
Here, at the start of the life of the church, is a clear and powerful example of how we are called to behave around people of different backgrounds, cultures, languages, religions, and lifestyles. This liberating story should guide us each day when we encounter the inevitable differences of the workplace. God created all the people we live and work with; he loves each one of them and calls us to respect them while remaining firm in our calling to serve him alone as we demonstrate his love to others.
At Pentecost, people started speaking in other languages (Acts 2:4). Languages are closed universes except to those who understand. To the outsider, any foreign language is gibberish. But in one act, the Spirit broke linguistic borders, and people spoke to and were understood by others in their own tongues.
Those around them were perplexed: “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia . . . we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God” (vv. 8–11 ESV). The great genius of Pentecost was that they could understand the truth that was being spoken in the languages with which they were most familiar.
This moment at Pentecost was a supernatural breaking of usual linguistic borders—and a highly unusual event. However, the Spirit can still help us today to break through the barriers of language and culture to reach others with a sensitivity and discernment born of God. If we are truly to fulfill our callings in the world—both generally, to make the good news of Jesus known, and individually, to pursue his calling for our own lives—then we need to be able to reach people in their vernaculars. We need Spirit-inspired words, not dry and dusty “religious” language. Our words must recognize our common humanity to find intimacy and shared understanding with people from all walks of life.
This was made clear to me when I recently took a non-Christian friend to an evangelistic talk. In truth, the talk didn’t do much for me, and I left feeling disheartened that my efforts to share the gospel seemed to have been wasted. But when I asked my friend how he had found it, he was buzzing with excitement about what he had just heard! I pushed him to find out why he had liked the speaker so much: “Because he spoke my language,” my friend replied.
As Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). This is a great work of the Spirit—to help us engage across cultural and linguistic borders. But it also requires some effort on our part to meet people where they are and not simply where we would like them to be.
This new paradigm of the Spirit also brings with it a new proprietary regime. The old borders of property, ownership, and competition have been broken. In Acts 4, we learn that the early Christians held their property in common (v. 32). In their very nature, proprietary rights are restrictive, personal, and for the benefit of the owner. And it is right that this should be so. But the Spirit broke these borders in order to allow radical common sharing to the point that “there was not a needy person among them” (v. 34 ESV). I am always inspired by those many Christians who open the doors of their homes and share their time with the lost, the needy, and the poor. As Christians, we should always be open to sharing our food, our shelters, or our financial resources with others.
I remember the wife of a pastor telling me that, growing up, she always used to have tea after school with her close friend, whose family was Christian. Their door was always open to her; they made her so welcome in their home. She never heard them once preach the gospel, but she recognizes her gradual conversion to Christ during that season of spending time in her friend’s home.
A wise Christian told me that the best test to shift a mind-set from owning to sharing was “use it or lose it.” If you have an asset, share it, or the blessing will simply become a burden.
A certain kind of freedom comes from sharing. The early followers of Jesus did not enforce a communist regime whereby everything was owned and controlled centrally. The Spirit’s call is not dictatorial but discretionary. He leaves it to us how we deal with our assets, but we will always be called to share what we have.
The Spirit of God does not only break down the human barriers of culture and language, however. In his power, the Spirit of God is also able to break the borders between the normal and the supernatural, traversing the physical laws of nature. At Pentecost, the physical laws were broken. There was a “mighty rushing wind” (Acts 2:2 ESV) and “tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them” (v. 3). The Holy Spirit, who heralds the empowering presence of the Father, can do so without physical constraint. If nothing else, this event is a reminder that God is supernatural and sovereign and can act as he will, not just within the limitations of our own worldviews and expectations.
So when Peter stooped to talk to a beggar in Acts 3, he knew that physical restrictions no longer limited the work of the Spirit. With a new authority, Peter said, “‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk” (vv. 6–8). Today, the same Holy Spirit still empowers us to see the proclamation of the word accompanied by signs and wonders.
God’s Spirit also breaks down the borders that lie within us. Our life callings are not confined to preset outcomes. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Freedom comes from breaking down the barriers within our own lives: our personal histories, our childhood traumas, our lack of forgiveness, our self-limitations and misunderstandings. I think of the phrase from the Nigerian poet Ben Okri, who spoke of “the bullies that our pasts have become.”2 Many of us know that sense of being trapped in a distressing pattern of shame we seem unable to break. The tragedy is that these memories become real barriers to fulfilling our true callings. But by his grace, the Spirit of God breaks these patterns and enables us to live lives that are filled with the love of Jesus Christ—and so we are empowered and set free to live out our callings more effectively.
God longs for us to live in wide-open spaces unshackled by inhibitions from the past.
We remember again Paul’s words: “Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way.” We remember his invitation: “Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!” (2 Corinthians 6:11–13 THE MESSAGE). This is what we aspire to.
The problem for so many of us is how to break out of a pattern of conformity. I recall a colleague who had grown up with the expectations from his parents that he would be a banker; his life had been predicated on the fact that banking would be his calling. We worked together for some time before it became clear that he would not make it. And yet he could hardly face family and friends, as the assumption was that he was meant for finance. Sadly, those who had these views of him never actually asked him what his real passion in life was. If they had, they would have known that he was devoted to wildlife conservation. Others’ words and expectations can be damaging, but the Spirit of God has the power to enter the darkest shadows of our souls, where these words lurk, and shine his light onto them, defusing their power.
Finally, my colleague broke through the wall and went to spend three years working with rhinos in Tanzania, where he was blissfully happy. Since then, he has never looked back, and the barriers that held him back, once broken, released him to a career in wildlife management, where his financial skills have actually been put to good use.
I think of the hesitant entrepreneur, Will, who came to see me wanting to start a new business. The comfort of his regularly paid job was assuring, but he aspired to more. It was hard to break through the psychological and practical barriers that held him back: the monthly income, the regular hours, the familiar faces, the established working environment. These obstacles were not without their merit, but they were borders the Spirit wanted him to break.
We prayed and we talked and, above all, we tried to imagine the advantages of breaking out of conformity to a certain pattern—the pattern of life in a large, structured company. Will started to wonder if it was in fact more “him” to be entrepreneurial, to break out of corporate life. But he still had nagging questions. So I told him a story from my own life about a rhino named Tsholompe.
Tsholompe was a young calf that lived in a large, fenced wilderness area in South Africa. From a young age, he was a difficult and naughty calf who always tried to break through the fences. After every attempt, a helicopter had to be dispatched, at serious expense, with a trained vet who would dart Tsholompe with a tranquilizer and bring him back to his own area. The fence had to be repaired and the ever-patient neighbor assuaged with a libation of one sort or another. There was much discussion at the broken fence on how to deal with the nonconforming rhino.
Tsholompe’s name in the African dialect is translated as “one who causes grief to his parents”—he certainly did to his mother! White rhino calves run behind their mothers, as opposed to black rhino calves, who run in front. His mother clocked him and was constantly giving a backward look at the ever-playful but somewhat uncontrollable Tsholompe.
Tsholompe was born wild. He wanted to roam freely, and he did not accept the imposed borders of the land registry. Whenever he tried an escape, it was always greeted with shaking of heads by the African staff muttering, “Tsholompe does not like to be hemmed in.”
Sadly, the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Tsholompe lived many happy years in total disobedience, until one evening he fell over during one of his breakouts. Unable to right himself, he was caught in a freezing vlei, an African swamp. Every effort to revive him with heat and blankets, and even intravenous fluids, failed.
There is a bit of Tsholompe within all of us. Not that we are meant to live lives of lawlessness, riding roughshod over social boundaries as Tsholompe so often did, but that there is something within us that yearns for the freedom God promises. We are not meant to be hemmed in. We are called to roam freely without the borders of social or peer pressure. Jesus kept the law but broke the rules—a good model for us.
Tsholompe’s story seemed to work for Will. He took the risk and started a media business with a friend. The Spirit of God emboldened them and has led them in new directions they could not have imagined while they were living within the structures of their previous jobs.
In many ways, the story of Tsholompe is a parable for all of us. So often we try to conform to patterns that were never intended to be ours. There are times when we just want to break loose. Often these are moments inspired by the Spirit, encouraging the breaking down of previously inhibiting ways of thinking and acting. The Holy Spirit transforms us by the renewing of our minds and we, like Will, see his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
What does all this mean for our callings?
Everything.
It is the Spirit who makes our callings known, who gives us confidence, and who empowers us to break down the barriers that impede our way. Apart from the Spirit, our lives remain empty.
I have been deeply challenged by the life of Gideon. He grew from a very low point—defensive and lacking in self-esteem—to someone who recognized God’s empowering call on his life, broke out of his defensive mentality, and overcame the seemingly impregnable barriers that he faced.
We find the story of Gideon in Judges 6. The setting is a familiar one. The Israelites had turned from the Lord and from his protection only to find themselves confronted by enemies far greater and stronger than they were. This time the nomadic tribes of Midian were their oppressors. For years, the Midianites had terrorized the people of Israel to such an extent that they had retreated to caves, clefts, and gated communities. The Israelites tried to carry on with their lives—they tilled fields, planted crops, and watered green shoots—but whenever the harvest came, the Midianites descended like a swarm of locusts to attack and steal the fruit of the Israelites’ labors.
Into this defensive scene came Gideon, in verse 11, threshing wheat in a winepress. Through the years of oppression, Gideon tried to eke out an existence. That he was threshing in a winepress is deeply significant. Threshing was normally done on a hilltop, where the wind can blow the chaff away from the wheat. A winepress, by contrast, was small and enclosed. Gideon was hiding away indoors, away from the sight of the Midianites, who were bent on stealing whatever they saw. He was doing the right thing but in the wrong place.
While Gideon was at work, hiding away and minding his own business, afraid and alone, the Lord called out to him. (It’s worth remembering that God speaks to us even at work!)
“The LORD is with you, mighty warrior” (v. 12).
The salutation of the angel of the Lord was as ironic as it was brutal. “Mighty warrior” is in fact the English translation of Gideon’s Hebrew name, but at that moment Gideon had probably never felt less like a mighty warrior in all his life. He had been driven back by the relentless pursuit of the Midianites. Years of repressed anger welled up within him. I suspect that he was hurt deeply by the reminder of his name. He probably saw himself as a wimp and not a warrior.
“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” (v. 13).
Gideon was afraid and angry. Like a cornered animal, he lashed out, venting his frustration and anger at the apparent emptiness of God’s promises. But the angel’s words were reassuring. God was with him. God was sending him and would go with him.
To this reassurance, Gideon protested: “How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (v. 15). But the Lord insisted. “I will be with you” (v. 16).
In that short exchange Gideon realized he was loved. God had recognized him, and there can be no greater sign of love than being recognized for who we are. Gideon was known. The Lord called him by name—not only by his given name but by the name of the person that he was going to become. God has great interest not just in who we are now but in who we will become by his Spirit. And Gideon was called. He was given the task of delivering the nation from the ravages of the Midianites.
While studying this passage, I was struck by one of the most important features in our calling as Christians: the source of our confidence. We will never be able to connect with other people if we are not connected to ourselves. And we will never truly connect with ourselves unless we are connected to God. The first lesson that Gideon had to learn was to be connected to himself.
Gideon had so withdrawn from the life around him that he had forgotten who he was. He had forgotten his true identity in God, and he needed to be awakened to his true worth. In all callings, the first task of the Spirit is to prepare us to receive his promises. Often we are so weighed down that we struggle to receive from him. Gideon’s first step was to accept that he was indeed a mighty warrior, however inhibited he must have felt secretly threshing away in the winepress, constantly at the mercy of the Midianites. It was from this moment of connection that Gideon grew into his calling. It was not an instantaneous event but a gradual move into God’s will.
Here is the cornerstone of our callings. When we become secure in our identities, we become less threatened, less defensive, and more open to being the people we are called to be. It is then that we find the inner freedom that gives us confidence to take the initiative, to be bold, to take risks, and to make courageous choices. This is the great work of the Spirit of God. Here we see those internal borders being broken.
The angel of the Lord’s commission to Gideon was this: “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand” (v. 14).
“The strength you have” is the crucial phrase. The angel of the Lord was telling Gideon that what he had was enough. His strength was enough, for, as Paul would remind the Corinthians hundreds of years later, God’s “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
The Spirit of the Lord says the same to us today. Our hopes, our dreams, our passions, and our strengths are enough for God. His Spirit can take what little we have and use it for his purposes. He will show us where we are called, if only we let him.
So it was with Gideon. He recognized in his encounter with the Lord a call to holiness. He had to clear out the stuff that was displeasing to God, and it started at home, as Gideon went to cut down the idols of his father’s house (Judges 6:25–27). When God liberates us into our true identities, our first acts will always be to get rid of the idols—greed, money, selfishness. Before any of our callings can be pursued, we need to have tidied up our own backyards from the idols that have been allowed to grow unchallenged.
Gideon was now in touch with his God and with his inner self. He was confident in his identity. The next stage was for him to be empowered. Verse 34 tells us that Gideon was filled with the spirit. A literal translation is that the Holy Spirit clothed himself in Gideon. It is an extraordinary image—the Spirit of the living God actually wrapping himself in the very identity of this newly connected Gideon, a person connected to God and now empowered by the Spirit of God. We will never fulfill any aspect of our callings unless we allow ourselves to be clothed by the Spirit of God.
It was here that Gideon famously laid a fleece before God, asking him to first make the fleece wet and ground dry, and then the ground dry and the fleece wet. We often interpret this passage as Gideon putting God to the test. We think that Gideon was asking God to prove himself, before Gideon would do what he asked. When we look closely at the text, however, we see that this isn’t the order in which events proceed.
At this point in the narrative, the Spirit of the Lord had already clothed Gideon, who called an army together in order to march toward the Midianites. Gideon already knew what he had to do. His fleece was not a condition of his loyalty to God or of his willingness to follow through on God’s commands.
What Gideon wanted from God was not proof on which to base a decision, but proof that God’s promise of support still held true. “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised” (v. 36) is not a condition but a request for confirmation. Gideon knew that without God this attack would fail, but with God at their backs the Israelites had nothing to fear. In humble and faltering words, he simply requested a sign from God that would give him confidence in battle.
“Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (Luke 4:12) is an important lesson of the Scriptures. But there is nothing wrong with asking God to build our confidence. After all, as Jesus said, “how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11).
Gideon’s confidence continued to grow. He had been called, he had been clothed with the Spirit, and he had received confirmation of the Lord’s support. There was one more process to go through before his confidence was fully established. He had to rely on God’s plans rather than his own.
Gideon assembled a large army to march against the Midianites. This was not God’s plan. Gideon’s confidence would lead him to believe that he, rather than God, would have fulfilled his calling. God therefore told Gideon to cull his army. From an army of thirty-two thousand, he sent home ten thousand who were filled with fear.
Then there is a second culling. Gideon was urged to cut the numbers by watching the way in which the remainder drank water. Those who lapped water like dogs were chosen over those who didn’t. Of the thirty-two thousand, only three hundred now remained. He now had less than 1 percent of the original army.
We want to be among that 1 percent. It is not enough simply to be confident in ourselves; we need to be called, clothed, and culled. We need to have all the support structures on which we would rely tested before we can see our callings flourish. Often we are reliant on our own insights, power, skills, and confidence, when God wants to show us a better way of trust in Jesus.
The second culling is often the hardest. To let go of everything on which we rely, believing that God will equip us for life’s challenges better than we could ever equip ourselves—that takes some doing.
We need this preparation. Otherwise we will try to beat whatever opposition we face with the weapons of our enemy. And we won’t prevail. We are called to fight the good fight with the armor of God, not the weapons of the world. To take on the challenges of engaging the world, standing up for what is true, showing compassion for the weak and the marginalized, working toward flourishing employees in our places of work.
Gideon was now ready for battle. He was ready to fulfill his calling. With limited resources and utterly dependent on God, Gideon instructed the three hundred to break into groups of one hundred. He gave them trumpets to carry in one hand and torches covered with clay pots to carry in the other. They were without any offensive weapons, but they encircled the Midianite army. Gideon commanded his men to sound the trumpets and to break the coverings over their torches. In that moment he gave them a war cry: “A sword for the LORD and for Gideon” (Judges 7:20).
I have been overwhelmed by this cry. It sounds right: to him be the glory! But that is not what the text says. Gideon the wimp had now become the warrior, so convinced was he of his identity in God. He was now at the peak of his confidence—identity and destiny fused together. No longer was he filled with self-loathing, ashamed and angry at the sound of his own name. Now he proclaimed it with a Spirit-given confidence that he could never have imagined possible. Gone were his anger and his protestations. Now he accepted himself to the point that his name became the rallying call and not the retreat. He was utterly reliant on God to fulfill his calling. What he would never have been able to achieve in his weakest moments, lacking confidence in himself and in his future, he was now able to achieve. There was no holding back.
The enemy was routed and the people of God were freed.
Gideon is an everyman. Like many of us, he doubted everything about himself, thinking that he had come from the smallest family in the smallest tribe from one of the smallest nations. He could not believe his calling until he grew into the confidence that God gives to those who are obedient. There is power in the Spirit of God to transform every individual and to allow each one of us to believe that, in his power, we will become the people God intended us to be.
We all have comfort zones, spaces within which we feel safe to operate. But we know that we will never be able to achieve our callings if we operate only within those structures. We learn from Gideon that however weak we may feel, we are strongest when we draw comfort from our special relationship with God. We are strongest when we confront the borders of our comfort zones in the power of the Spirit of God and push the perimeters in search of the wide-open spaces that God has for our lives.
Let me end with a challenge to beat your benchmark.
The 1968 Olympics were famous for being the first televised games. US athlete Bob Beamon was competing in the long jump. He wanted to attempt to break the record at the time, which stood at 27 feet, 4.75 inches.
There was silence around the stadium as Beamon prepared to jump. For a full twenty minutes afterward, the crowd waited in suspense. The measuring equipment was electronic for the first time, but it was not calibrated to cover a jump of this distance. When the results were finally given, Beamon collapsed on the ground, unable to believe what he had achieved. He had jumped 29 feet, 2.5 inches (just under 9 meters!), nearly two feet farther than the previous record.3 He had not simply set out to improve his previous best by a few inches, but to do the very best that he could. He wanted to make the most of his years of skill as a long-jump athlete. It was one of the greatest moments in Olympic history.
When the Holy Spirit breaks down the borders in our lives, we can achieve extraordinary things. Sometimes, as in the case of Beamon, we don’t instantly know the result. God gives us faith to persevere during the waiting. As with Beamon, all we need to do is use to the best of our abilities what God has given us, and he will take care of the rest.
Several years ago, an enormous financial crisis loomed in Europe. The very survival of the structure of the euro currency, if not the whole of Europe, was at stake.
All eyes were on one man: the head of the European Central Bank.
Financial markets and currencies plunged all through the morning, and the only question on anyone’s lips was, “What will he say?” His words would either cause an implosion or the reversion of the volatility.
On the morning of July 26, 2012, he stood up, and when asked what he would do to protect the euro, he answered in three simple words.
“Whatever it takes.”
At that moment, in human terms, he spoke for the might of the major industrial countries of Europe. As soon as he spoke those words, the markets rallied. The immediate crisis was over. The structure of the currency was secured.
There’s a challenge here for us.
When confronted with a world in need of the gospel of Jesus Christ, with a world crying out in pain, with a world riven by inequality, poverty, and need, how will we respond?
Will we hunker down in our winepresses and ignore the outside world? Will we refuse to listen to the still small voice of God gently beckoning us out of our caves and into the light? Will we keep our lamps hidden in jars of clay?
Or will we be willing to say, “Whatever it takes”?
Whatever it takes to see our communities restored, our workplaces transformed, our world healed?
Whatever it takes to see justice and righteousness roll on like a river?
Whatever it takes to see our friends, colleagues, and neighbors come to realize that they, too, are known, loved, and called by their Father in heaven?
God is not calling someone else. He’s calling you. Calling you to join him in the transforming work of the kingdom of God.
God knows you. He knows who you have been, and he knows who you are becoming. He knows what you have is enough for the plans he has in store for you.
God loves you. He has seen your darkest moments and your greatest triumphs, and he has loved you just the same.
And God calls you. He has called you out of darkness and into the light. And now he calls you to spread that light wherever your feet may carry you.
There is no power on earth equal to the power of forgiven men and women who are known, loved, and called by Jesus Christ.
My prayer, for myself and for you, is that we might have the confidence to step into our callings and journey with God. For I know that if we do, that journey will be the greatest adventure we could ever imagine.