The Strength Inside Our Hands

     The story was once told about a man who served on one of Walt Disney’s original advisory boards.  He related stories of how tough the early days of the Disney Empire were, but how Disney tenaciously refused to give up on his creative visions.  He told how the visionary responded to disagreement, saying Disney would often present to the board some unbelievable, seemingly impossible dream he had been entertaining.  Nearly every time he would present one of these bold ideas, the members of his board would gulp, blink and stare back at him in disbelief, resisting even the thought of such impossible endeavors.  Interestingly, unless every member of his board resisted the idea Disney presented, he would not pursue it.  That’s right, if the challenge wasn’t big enough to appear impossible, Disney thought it wasn’t big enough to warrant his time and creative energy to pursue it.

     Maybe God has a little something in common with Walt Disney when it comes to making big plans and carrying out seemingly impossible dreams.  We could probably consult the Book of Judges and the account of Gideon, the valiant warrior who stood against 135,000 Midianites with an army of 300 men to investigate that possibility.

     Picture Gideon – mighty warrior that he was – beating out wheat in the winepress in an attempt to hide his actions and preserve some of the harvest for Israel – a harvest Midian was determined to steal and destroy.  We are told the angel of the Lord visited him, telling him that the Lord had assigned him the job of delivering Israel from the oppression of the Midianites, and promising Gideon he will defeat this enemy “as one man.”  God certainly does use Gideon for this task.  But He does it His way, sending him against the mighty army of Midian not with 32,000, and not even with 10,000, but with an army of only 300 men.  What was God’s reasoning?  Because, He tells Gideon, if a large army went up against Midian they would “become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has saved me.’  God needed these people to know just Who provided their salvation from their enemies.

      How often do we limit and marginalize the mighty acts God would do though us by believing the task is great and we are not?  When what God wants all along is for us to simply be willing to let Him do the impossible through us.  How much we must limit the work of God in our world when we, thinking we are simply being humble, determine to only tackle those tasks we can do through the framework of our own abilities and resources to get them done.

     We do not need to study the Bible for long to clearly see God’s desire to use the stutterer, the fearful, the doubter, the limited ones – the improbable ones – to accomplish His mighty deeds.  Moses asked God, “Who am I,” when facing the enormous task of delivering His people from bondage.  That was a good question.  Should not the tasks to which God calls us cause us to fall to our knees and wonder at our limitations?  Because His greatest works require that we clearly recognize with the Psalmist, “except the Lord build the house,” the builder works in vain.

     We often find ourselves standing in our pew or chair on Sunday morning, from the safety of the sanctuary – peering outside into the “world out there” and shake our heads in despair, thinking, “Lord, this world is just too far gone for the church to save it,” and we are absolutely right!  That job is too big for the church.  But when the church only tackles those jobs which are already within our own abilities and we choose to depend upon our own resources before moving forward, we will make little impact on the task. 

     Given the fact that the church is faced each day with gargantuan tasks like a world in need of salvation, it should forever push us to our knees, crying out to the Lord about our insufficiency.  Because that is when He steps in and says, “It doesn’t make much difference who you are or what you already possess – because I Am all you need.”  The One Who conquered death, defeated sin and who has been made for us wisdom, righteousness, holiness and all power is also all-sufficient.  Faithful is the One Who has called us.  Our insufficiency is merely the opportunity for Him to work and for us to be reminded that the strength inside our hands is His.