Know Your Why

by Ken Costa

  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  Gideon had so withdrawn from the life around him that he had forgotten who he was.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).

  THE CONFIDENCE OF GIDEON

  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 ea
ch one of us to believe that, in his power, we will become the people God intended us to be.

  BEAT YOUR BENCHMARK

  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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK BEARS THE FINGERPRINTS OF MANY CONTRIBUTORS. The leadership team at Holy Trinity Brompton, my home church, has been instrumental in shaping my thoughts about the distinctive calling of Christianity, and they have allowed me to test some of these ideas in my preaching there. Particular thanks must go to the two Nickys—Gumbel and Lee—for their insight and wisdom. We have journeyed together for more than forty years since our faiths came alive at university, and they, together with their wives, Pippa and Sila, have been a formative part of my Christian life.

  Special thanks must go to my team of logothanatists (“word-killers”)—Alice Goodwin-Hudson, Tom Andrew, and Jo Glen. I can only hope that some beauty emerges from the brutality they showed in their enthusiasm to kill off my alliterative excesses! I am also indebted to the many people who read and commented on early drafts of this manuscript, especially R. T. Kendall, Rob McDonald, and David Ingall, whose theological reflections helped iron out some of the theological creases in my writing. Needless to say, any heresies that remain are entirely my own.

  My thanks go to the publishing team at HarperCollins, particularly David Moberg and all the senior executives who met en masse to hear my first thoughts and who have been such a consistent encouragement. Also to Matt Baugher, Joel Kneedler, and Meaghan Porter, who have read the manuscript and helped turn it into a better book than it would otherwise have been.

  It goes without saying that I owe a great debt of thanks to my family—my wife, Fi, and our children—for their support, encouragement, and endless patience. Similar thanks go to those who have suffered the perjury of endorsing this book—many of whom have played a key role in my own journey with God.

  Finally, I want to say a huge thank-you to all those who have contributed to this book unwittingly: those pressing inquirers with searching questions about their life-callings; those late-night gatherers on the roof garden of our house, talking into the early hours about life and its purposes; those new Christians starting out in the life of faith and wondering whether the world can really be enough. It is their questions that I have grappled with in the preceding pages, and it is for them that this book was written.

  I wish I could style myself an expert on Christian calling. But as often happens when dealing with the affairs of God, I have perhaps been left with more questions at the end of writing than I started out with at the beginning. The journey of discovering a life-calling is one filled with questions, with wrestling, and with a search for truth. It doesn’t come in a neat, systematic package to be carefully unwrapped and assembled like some existential flat-pack bookcase. It is a journey of faith, to be experienced in the day-to-day questioning of a life lived to the full.

  Nevertheless, what I have tried to do in these pages is to distill some of my own forty years of experience in business and finance into something practical and applicable in the everyday of our rapidly changing world. I hope that it has given you just a glimpse of the excitement of being loved, known, and called by Jesus Christ.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: CALLED TO PASSION

  1. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 17.

  2. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 95.

  3. Barney Calman, “Fibbing on Facebook Can Trick Your Memory: People Start Believing Their Own Social Media Exaggerations,” Daily Mail, December 27, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2888454/Youngsters-airbrushing-reality-social-media-make-lives-interesting-suffer-paranoia-sadness-shame-fail-live-online-image.html.

  CHAPTER
2: CALLED TO ENGAGE

  1. Immanuel Kant, “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht,” Berlinische Monatsschrift, November 1784, S. 385–411.

  2. LeBron James’s Facebook page, September 23, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/LeBron/videos/10153669500753944/.

  3. Larry Page, “Where’s Google Going Next?” filmed March 19, 2014, TED video and transcript, 23:30, https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_page_where_s_google_going_next/transcript?language=en. (The relevant quote is at 22:00.)

  4. Peter Taylor, “Nelson Mandela: Everyone Can Make an ‘Imprint’ on the World,” One (blog), July 21, 2009, http://www.one.org/international/blog/nelson-mandela-everyone-can-make-an-imprint-on-the-world/; “Mandela’s Birthday Message,” BBC, July 18, 2009, Adobe Flash video, 0:57, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8157470.stm. (The relevant quote is at 0:35.)

  5. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, repr. ed. (Garden City, NJ: Image Books, 1986), 231.

  CHAPTER 3: CALLED TO FLOURISH

  1. “Warren Buffett Invites Joey Prusak, Good Samaritan Dairy Queen Employee, to Shareholders Meeting,” HuffPost Good News, September 24, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/23/joey-prusak-warren-buffet-_n_3977043.html.

  CHAPTER 4: CALLED TO WAIT

  1. Tom Callahan, “The Greatest of Them All: Jackson and Jordan Might Be the Two Best Athletes in America. But Who’s Better?” Newsweek, December 4, 1989, 92.

  2. Gary Mack and David Casstevens, Mind Gym: An Athlete’s Guide to Inner Excellence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 15–16.

  3. R. Judson Carlberg, “Translating A. J. Gordon’s Global Vision into Globalization: A Look Ahead,” Stillpoint, Fall 2005, 15, http://www.gordon.edu/download/galleries/2005%20Fall%20Stillpoint1.pdf. Italics are the author’s emphasis.