Hey Carpool Crew! I'm Pastor Justin, and today we're starting a brand-new five-episode journey with someone you've definitely heard of: Gideon. For the next five episodes, we are following one real person through one real story, from the book of Judges. And Gideon might be the most relatable hero we have ever done, because he does not start out brave. He starts out hiding-in-a-hole scared. Today we meet him right where he was before God moved: small, afraid, and sure he was the wrong guy. Picture Israel about three thousand years ago. For seven long years, a people called the Midianites had been making life miserable. Every year, right when the crops were ready, they came sweeping in off the desert like a swarm of locusts, too many to count, with their camels and their tents. They trampled the fields and grabbed the sheep and the goats and left nothing to eat. So the Israelites hid. They dug caves in the mountainsides and hideouts in the rocks and just tried to survive, always listening for hooves on the hill. That was every day, for seven years. Now meet a young man named Gideon. On this day he is trying to thresh wheat. Normally you thresh wheat up on a breezy hilltop, out in the open. But Gideon is not on a hilltop. He is down in a winepress, a pit dug into the ground where people usually stomped grapes. It is cramped, it is hidden, and there is no breeze, which makes the job ten times harder. So why is he down there? One reason. He is hiding. He is terrified the Midianites will spot his little bit of wheat and take it. So he is crouched in a hole, sweating, glancing over his shoulder, trying not to be seen by anybody. And that is the exact moment God shows up. An angel of the Lord sits down under a nearby oak and speaks. Listen to Judges 6:12. It says, "Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, 'The Lord is with you, valiant warrior.'" Valiant warrior. That means brave, strong, mighty in a fight. A hero. Now look at who God is talking to: a guy hiding in a hole, so scared of losing a little wheat he will not even stand up in the open. And God calls him valiant warrior. That seems backwards. It should. Because God is not describing what Gideon looks like right now. He is describing who Gideon is going to become. And here is the part that makes Gideon so real. He does not puff up and say, "You're right, I'm amazing." He argues. He basically says, if the Lord is really with us, why has all this bad stuff happened, and where are the miracles our grandparents told us about? Gideon is discouraged and confused. And God does not zap him for the questions. He does not go find someone braver. He just keeps calling Gideon forward. Because God was never waiting for Gideon to feel brave. He was planning to make him brave. See, the name God gives you is not based on your worst, most scared day. Gideon's neighbors would have said, "Gideon? Nobody special. Youngest kid in the weakest family. The one hiding in the winepress." That was his label, and honestly the one he had put on himself. But God does not read the label other people stick on you, and He does not read the one you stick on yourself. He looked at a scared kid in a pit and called him valiant warrior, because He could see the whole story, all the way to the end. So let's bring this into your world. Maybe you are starting a new school year and you feel a lot more like the kid in the winepress than a valiant warrior. Maybe you feel small, or you are the youngest, or the quietest, or sure everybody else has it figured out. Here is what Gideon's story says on day one: the way you feel about yourself is not the same as the way God sees you. You might feel like nobody special. God might already be calling you brave, not because of what you have done, but because of who He knows He can grow you into. Think of a coach looking at a kid who has never played. A good coach does not just see day one. She sees the player you could become after a whole season. That is a tiny picture of how God sees you, except God is never guessing. He knows exactly who He made you to be. So He is not surprised by your scared days. He comes right down into the pit and calls you by your future instead of your fear. Gideon had no idea, crouched in that winepress, that his story was about to get wild. An army. A test with a piece of wool. Three hundred men against an enemy too big to count. We will walk through all of it. But it starts here, with one truth: God sees who you can become, even when you feel small and scared. That is your one thing today. Say it in the car, say it walking into school. God sees who I can become, even when I feel small and scared. Thanks for riding along today on Carpooling with Heroes of the Bible! Next time, we'll find out what God actually asks this scared young man to do, and the surprising thing God says when Gideon lists every reason he is the wrong guy. That is episode two, Gideon: Go in the Strength You Have. You will not want to miss it. ================================================
