One More Time

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Judges 6:36-40 "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."

Think

You already know what you are supposed to do.

You have known for about three weeks. You have prayed about it, you have brought it up to two different people, and both of them said the same thing. And you are still asking God for a sign, because a sign would let you off the hook for actually deciding.

Gideon does something almost exactly like that, and how God handles it says more about God than it does about Gideon.

By this point God has already spoken to him directly. He has promised, in plain words, that he will be with him and that Israel will be saved. There is no ambiguity left in the situation. Gideon has more confirmation than most people in Scripture ever get.

And he asks for a test anyway. He puts a piece of wool on the ground overnight and asks God to make the wool wet and the ground dry.

God does it. Gideon wakes up and wrings an entire bowl of water out of it.

Then look at verse 39, because this is the part worth stopping on. He asks again. And listen to how he opens it. "Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request."

He knows he is pushing it. He is bracing for God to be irritated with him, which tells you exactly what he expected God to be like.

And God just does it again. Dry fleece, wet ground. No lecture. No sigh. There is no sentence anywhere in the passage where God expresses disappointment in Gideon's faith level.

Hold onto that if you have ever felt like your doubt was going to use up God's patience with you. Doubt does not offend him the way you assume it does. He is not fragile, and he is not running low on grace the fourth time you bring him the same question.

But this passage has to be handled carefully, because people turn it into a system and it hurts them.

Gideon is not giving you a method for making decisions. Nowhere does the Bible teach that you should put out a fleece to figure out who to date or which school to pick. What is happening here is a nervous man being met patiently by a kind God. It is recorded because it is true, not because it is instructions.

And notice something honest about it. The two fleeces did not actually make Gideon braver. A few verses later, right before the battle, he is scared again, and God sends him down to the enemy camp in the middle of the night to overhear something encouraging. Signs are not the same as faith. You can collect evidence forever and stay exactly as afraid as you were.

Which is why God kept giving him something better than proof. He kept giving him himself.

So be honest about your own version of this. Are you actually unsure what God wants from you, or are you sure and stalling?

Those two things feel identical from the inside, and only one of them is a real question.

Apply

Name the stall – Write down one thing you have been asking God about over and over. Then answer one question in writing: do I honestly not know, or do I know and not want to? If you know, pick a day this week to do it and tell somebody that day.

Pray

God, thank you for not being annoyed with me. I ask you the same things over and over and I keep bracing for you to be done with me, and you never are. Give me the honesty to admit when I already know what you want. Help me stop asking and start moving. In Jesus' name. Amen.