Fleeces, Faith and Hope

I have thought a great deal on the topic of hope this year.

I entered this year knowing I had no hope, life as far as I was aware was over for me and cursed with a bum leg would never be able to take that walk to Argentina to even escape myself much less this environment.  But, even dying on the road in Oregon is far better than the continued abuse I am taking (especially if I count in being completely ignored as even a human being!).

No hope, as I said ...

Except, for the hope that God fills me with - that I will be avenged, I will be justified, I will be used by Him, for His purposes.  And no, I do not understand the connection between His purpose and what all goes on around me.  It is one of those wait and see kind of things.  I do know my solution to all, but I have to be assured of His solution, if His perfection is to be attained.

Then my friend lost their hope.  Life had turned on them.  It was over.  And I understood all too well.  And I have thought months on this, the question of hope, faith and miracle quietly clicking away behind my regular stream of thought ...

I have to turn the clock back to 1974 and the birth of my first understanding of hope and faith.  I was reading in Judges 6 and 7, about Gideon and how he pared down his army from 32,000 to only 300 - to stand against the Midianites.  Of course, like any thinking man, he turned to God and set a "fleece" before the Lord to confirm that what God told him was true, real, and not a bad pizza the night before.  Judges 6:36 begins the tale of the fleece.

Gideon set two fleeces and both were miraculously answered.

And I thought on this.  I tried it, fleeces worked.  I shared this my College Study group and they were amazed someone had done this!  (I mean really, do people just read the Bible and not think, "Hmmm, I ought to try that ..." ?)

Dutchman and Swede were having a bitter fight over Sister Becka.  Each wanted her for themselves, and I only incurred both their wrath's because I told them she was not a piece of meat up for ownership!  Yeah even as a teen I was a feminist supporter, it was how I was raised in European schools and by my ancient great-uncle ...  So, one Sunday, Swede is driving from Tacoma, where I went to school, to church up in Kent.  He gets to telling me that he can hardly wait to get to church because he had laid a fleece that Becka was to be his unless Dutchman wore an orange shirt, green pants and a green dotted tie to Sunday  School!

I burst out laughing.

I had to explain to him that Dutchman did not own any clothing like that at all!  So, the fleece never could occur.  Swede commented that he believed in miracles and God could make it happen.  So, I had to ask him if he thought that God allows for free will or not?  Of course He does and that was what was wrong with this fleece, it made no allowance for Dutchman to be anything other than a robot before God, in order for Swede to have an answer to his fleece.

Swede slammed on the brakes and ordered me out of his car.  I was still about six miles from the church and would now miss Sunday School.  Swede stomped on the gas and was gone in a haze of blue smoke.

So, I am walking along the freeway to reach the next exit and a car immediately pulls up and stops behind me - it was one of the women in the college group!  She gave me a ride all the time howling at the story I told her.  We even passed the slow moving Swede!  And I learned an important lesson from her that morning:

Fleeces do not allow for faith in our walk before the Lord, they allow for superstition ...

Yeah, made more than just a little sense.  I could see how even I had become a little superstitious across the year and I had a girlfriend to prove it.  She made no sense in my life, but I asked God for ten - four leaf clovers to confirm that her advances on me were of Him, and I did find them, but I had no real peace.  Yeah, I kept the girlfriend just in case.  And like most women, they find out what a nerd I really am and poof!, they are gone.

Of course, Dutchman wore his usual brown tweed suit, as he ALWAYS did to church.  Swede jumped up and bolted from the room!  I never told anyone why other than the lady whom gave me a ride.

Yeah, occasionally I still use a fleece, small ones when I am struggling and I can not depend upon my mind to interpret what is going on around me.  More on that later.

So, just shy of forty years ago, I walked away from fleeces and trying to observe faith - that whole faith unto faith leading.  Where you start out with just the faith you have at conversion and God gives you a little more to meet the issue at hand and your faith grows.  God continues to feed your faith until one day, hopefully, you know that you will be able to move mountains!  Yeah, well that is sort of the goal I guess - the hope in what can not be seen or can be logically known.

Hope?  How hard to understand!  Faith, without no emotion, I could slightly get.  God promises a bunch of stuff.  I used fleeces as my crutch to know what was of Him or in the plans for me - until I hit the Becka fight and a verse about there being "a wicked and vile generation which seeks after signs".  Oh, the self condemnation over that one!

And I struggled with hope.  I had no hope, other than my only hope is in Jesus to cover my sin from God's eyes, I honestly today believe that hope is not even possible without emotion.  I could hope for a bunch of things but logically I knew that statistically they were impossibilities.

Then today, it dawned on me, faith and hope are interconnected!  I can Hope for say something unattainable and if it is in God's Will, it will come to pass and I have to be able to stay the course in Faith!  God's will, will be accomplished with or without my faith - it is His will not mine.  But, if I knew, if I had reason to suspect, then I would need hope and faith to make it to the goal - to His prize, whatever it might be.

So, this is just an introduction to the idea.  Tomorrow the entire idea of helping others to have hope ...