Gideon 3 - Judges 6:36-40

Gideon has already asked for a sign from the angel of God that he was real and chosen, and even though he didn’t ask for anything specifically, just that the messenger wait until he got back with some food, but still a sign that everything was legit. When Gideon came back with the food, the angel touched it with his staff and it burned up, that Gideon took for a sign. Now an army has gathered and Gideon is supposed to lead them and he comes to God again asking for a sign, but this time he’s specific. Gideon asks “If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said.” It seems that at night before going to sleep, Gideon put a fleece of wool on the ground and asked God for the sign to be that the morning dew would only accumulate on the wool fleece and all the rest of the ground would be dry. So he wakes up in the morning and the fleece was so wet that he wringed out a “bowl full of water.” And it is implied that the ground around the fleece was dry. TB makes an interesting statement that often when we seek a sign from God, receiving that sign sometimes opens more questions than it answers, and that’s what happens here. Gideon starts to think within himself that maybe this was a naturally occurring phenomenon, and not actually a sign from God. TB says, “There’s another problem with laying fleeces, and the story of Gideon demonstrates it. When men come up with a means to test God, maybe the results aren’t all that conclusive or convincing.

So Gideon approaches God again and prefaces with “Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee,” and asks for the next morning for the fleece to be completely dry and the ground around the fleece wet with morning dew.” Pretty clever switching it up like that, and the next morning when Gideon woke up, the fleece was completely dry and “there was dew on all the ground.” The implication here is that Gideon was finally satisfied with that sign and accepted his calling. Apparently, this fleece business is a pretty popular concept among Christians, which is funny because this is the first time I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard the saying “putting my fleece before the Lord” twice today and I was like “wait what? How is this a thing now?” and I guess it means to ask God for a sign for whatever validation you’re looking for. It was interesting.

Asking God for these blatant of confirmation signs is so interesting because on the one hand, God granted Gideon these signs so that could imply that asking for signs isn’t wrong or a lack of faith and that God is happy to act in that fashion, but we know that’s not true because in the New Testament Jesus says repeatedly not to tempt the Lord your God, especially in regard to seeking signs. So where is the balance. I think the conclusion that I’ve come to, for me personally, and I could be wrong is that signs are granted to affirm faith when God deems it the appropriate time and asking for signs is not a way to build strong, operative faith, because then it become transactional. “I’ll act a certain way or do a certain thing once God’s sends me a sign,” that’s not different than believing that God rewards righteousness with wealth, therefore being poor is a sign that you aren’t righteous, same concept. So I’m personally not going to ask God’s for signs, nor have I ever and rely on the signs that He HAS given me when I didn’t ask for them. For instance, I just this morning had a prayer answered that couldn’t have been answered any other way except for God’s divine intervention. It was a very specific prayer, and I didn’t ask for that as a sign, but God granted it to me anyway as a sign that He really wants to answer my prayers as much as possible when He can, when it is in line with His will. And I can use that answer to look back on as a sign from God to m in the future.

In an interesting bout of timing, I saw a video on IG from this army chaplain who spoke to this very issue. He quoted Hebrews 11:1 which says “now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” He continues, “the evidence you have is your faith, not a sign, not someone saying a certain thing to you, not a dream, that’s not the evidence. The evidence of God is your faith. Peter’s evidence to walk on water is Jesus saying ‘come’ and him placing his faith in that. The woman who had an issue of blood, her evidence was faith in the prophecy that the Messiah is going to have healing in his wings… Faith is supposed to be your evidence. If you believe, all things are possible.” Faith is the evidence of things hoped for but not seen. Faith as a belief, as a trust in God. The signs we seek are an increase in faith, if our faith increases, then that is our sign. And the concept of faith is so difficult because it’s so abstract, it’s not quantifiable, it’s not something you can measure, is it getting better or worse. And it’s also not something you can build up yourself. I saw a thing that I really liked talking about how to increase your faith and it basically said that you can’t increase your faith, it’s something that God works in you. It’s not like you can say “I need more faith” and there’s a dial that you can turn up, you can’t just decide to have more faith, it’s something that God has to increase within you. Just like God is the only one who can convert, God is the only one who can increase your faith. We can certainly do things to help that build up, to show God that we are ready for more faith, we can keep the commandments, we can endeavor for a relationship with Him, we can make conscious decisions to act, think, and believe in more Christ-like ways, and as we do these things, our faith increases through the gift of God. In fact, I was listening to the Book of Mormon last night and Moroni was talking about gifts of the Spirit and one of the ones he mentioned was “great faith”, therefore faith is a gift of the Spirit. In fact, I think I’m going to re-listen to Joseph Smith’s “Lectures on Faith” because it is excellent and addresses this topic and I haven’t listened to it in a long time.

As far as seeking for signs from God, TB makes an excellent point saying, “I can’t tell you the number of people who tell me they ‘lay a fleece’ when they’re not sure about things. Can I tell you a little secret; that is not a good indication of our spiritual maturity so we probably shouldn’t be in a hurry to let others in on it. People say to me, I’m seeking God’s will with a fleece. Ok; but that’s not what Gideon is doing. Gideon already KNOWS God’s will; he’s only seeking assurance to bolster his courage. That’s no better, but if one is going to choose a way to discover God’s will, my opinion is that ‘laying a fleece’ isn’t the way.” Again, it goes back to requesting a specific sign versus being open to the signs that God sends us. And it’s easy to see why Gideon sought a sign in this manner. Again, TB makes an excellent point, saying, “I must say that I fight this urge myself quite regularly. I think I hear the Lord telling me to do something a certain way, but I’m also aware of my ability to conjure up my own thoughts and assign them to God. My fear is that I’m imagining things or even worse my pride or ego is working overtime and I’m not sure how to discern it. My usual answer is to ask God to show me the answer plainly in some way I can identify with; something that offers sufficient proof to me that I’m hearing from Him and that I’m not involved in self-deception. I think I can believe that this is more or less what was happening with Gideon; but is’ nothing to be proud about or satisfied with.”

This is exactly what my problem is so much of the time, and I’ve talked about it before, especially with my constant thoughts of “is my belief in God a mental illness that I created in order to justify a horrific life with no purpose or meaning?” But to be honest, and maybe a demonstration of how God increases faith, I haven’t had that thought very often since I decided that I’m just going to choose to believe. Like I talked about before, God will give enough evidence so that it’s still a choice, that’s what builds faith. So I’m choosing to believe, and I haven’t had that thought very much at all since then, because I’m choosing to believe. I know the pursuit of faith is a lifetime endeavor and that it’s not a straight forward route or understanding. But maybe it is and I’m just overthinking everything. But I guess it is pretty clear as far as what we need to do, we need to do the basics, keep the commandments, try to be Christ-like, prayer, ready the scriptures, etc and then the faith will build and our understandings deepen over time, as we are ready.