Gideon, a Symbol of Pentecostal Life

With the Lord’s help, I want to conclude this series of messages on life in the Spirit, life in the power of the Holy Spirit, life filled with divine energy, life lived not in our own strength but in the power of God—how to live that Pentecostal life, how to gain access to the anointing and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, how to tap into that source of power which is the Spirit of God, and how to make believers effective so that they live the Christian life victoriously.

As I conclude this series and bring it to a close, I want to consider a person who, for me, exemplifies many of the themes we have discussed and addressed concerning life filled with the Spirit. And I want to go back to the Old Testament because, as I have told you before, one of the things we have seen in this series is that, in reality, the visitation of the power of God and life filled with the Spirit are not a theme that begins in the Book of Acts or on the day of Pentecost; it is a theme and a process that, I would say, has been present since the very first page of Scripture, because there we see the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of creation hovering over inert, formless matter, creating life and giving it structure, just as the Holy Spirit does with us when He enters our lives.

So we have seen that the Spirit has always been present, and we have seen that the great men and women of God carried out their great exploits because the Spirit of God visited them and filled them with the endowment they needed to carry out the work required of them.

I want to use Gideon as an example of what life filled with the Holy Spirit is, with all its different themes, which we will look at in just a moment. And I hope I have the opportunity, because there are so many, at least to touch on some of them and reinforce them; the idea is to summarize and reinforce some of the things you have already heard.

This morning I spent a moment reading The New York Times—I always like to keep up with the news—and there I found an article about a man named Jack Phillips. Jack Phillips is a maker of cakes—in the Caribbean we call them bizcochos—a baker with a certain degree of skill. He has a very successful bakery, or pastry shop as one might also call it, in Colorado, and some time ago Jack Phillips refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, the wedding of a homosexual couple, because of his sincere Christian religious beliefs. He felt that by making this cake, which for him is a work of love and art, he would implicitly be participating in something that, as a Christian with those convictions, he could not recognize, and he refused. For that reason, this homosexual couple sued him and took him to court, and a lower Colorado court decided that he was violating the rights of this couple. This case has continued making its way through the courts until now it is going to be reviewed and heard by the Supreme Court of the United States.

And his life—the life of this baker—has gained national prominence, and this relatively ordinary person, although very talented, has become a powerful symbol of Christian belief and of the spiritual battles currently being waged in this nation, to the point that The New York Times and many, many news outlets have profiled this case and publicized it. An ordinary human being has become a powerful symbol of Christian belief and has served to confront this nation.

You may think whatever you wish about whether he did the right thing by refusing these people so openly, whether he should have approached the problem differently, or anything else. You may think differently in that area, but the important thing is that, in his heart, he felt that he did have to do it, and this has led him to become a spokesman for the faith of many of us who believe as he does.

Gideon is a similar figure, only in Scripture, because Gideon, like Jack Phillips, was an insignificant man in his nation and very timid, as we will see, yet he became a powerful instrument in the hands of God to deliver a nation from the oppression of its enemies. As I have said, the account of Gideon sums up many of the things related to life filled with the Spirit that we have been discussing.

For a moment, I want to go directly to the passage itself, Judges chapter 6, where we are told about the journey of this man Gideon. The passage begins in chapter 6 by saying: “The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian,” Israel’s bitter enemies, for seven years, and the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel. In the days of David, Israel had ruled and held superiority over Midian and the Philistines and other similar groups. But now, because they had abandoned God and practiced idolatry, thereby rejecting the very God who had given them power and had given them the land in which they lived, they had consequently lost their effectiveness and were now dominated by those who, in a sense, ruled them and held military and political superiority over them. And that is the pattern in the life of a nation when it departs from the will of God, when it does not operate with God’s endowment, and when it rejects God: suffering and national inferiority often follow, especially when a nation has distinguished itself—although it is not perfect—as a God-fearing nation, as this nation, the United States, has been.

Many other nations may never have had the anointing or the spiritual profile that this nation has had, but the United States is a nation that, from its very dawn, from its beginnings, was like the Israelites. That is how the Pilgrim Puritans who came from Europe to found this nation saw themselves: that they should love—well, perhaps they understood to some extent that God had something special for them in coming to the United States, to what was simply the New World, as they called it.

But like the Israelites, this nation too has turned away from God. That is not my concern right now, but it is interesting that this nation of Israel, which had been powerful in God, now finds itself under pressure after abandoning God for other gods and living a rather defensive life, because it says here that the Israelites “made dens in the mountains and caves,” verse 2, “and strongholds. For whenever Israel had sown, the Midianites and Amalekites and the people of the East came up against them and attacked them,” and they left nothing behind; like a plague of locusts, they carried everything away. Israel is now living on the defensive instead of the offensive, and they cry out to the Lord.

And this is a pattern that repeats itself again and again in Israel’s history: God’s blessing, prosperity in the land, national prosperity; then comfort comes, carelessness comes, and the thought comes that, ah.

This week I was speaking with a young woman from the ministry—well, a young woman from Lion of Judah—and God used a conference I had with her, an interview. She came with a great need, and God has blessed her in a very special way professionally. We met briefly this week to catch up, and she told me about—and she says to me: “When I am in a tight spot, I seek God, and now that God has blessed me in this way, I feel that I have neglected Him somewhat, that I am no longer as faithful about coming to church and doing these things.” So I took advantage of that moment to speak with her about that, because she is in the process of coming to know more of God in her life and changing her mind—a very accomplished mind in secular terms—but the point is that this is the human pattern.

Many times, when God blesses us, we begin to think: “Ah, that is natural; it was—I achieved it through my skill and preparation,” and we forget. When we are up to our necks in trouble, then we become spiritual giants. Israel had that pattern because it is human nature itself, this sense of self-sufficiency when everything is going well. And brothers and sisters, we must never cease to recognize that everything we have comes from God. Let us not seek the Lord only when we are in a tight spot, but also when everything is going well and we are enjoying prosperity. That is when we must bless the Lord, serve Him, give to Him, and honor Him all the more.

Israel seeks God, cries out to God, repents, and asks forgiveness, and the pattern repeats itself: God listens and prepares their deliverance. But before deliverance comes confrontation, and God sends a prophet who speaks to them, reads them the riot act, and tells them: “I have blessed you, and yet you have abandoned Me. ‘I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians,’” verse 9, “‘and out of the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, “I am the LORD your God; do not fear the gods of the Amorites,”’” and so on.

What do we have here? Before deliverance, there must be confession and acknowledgment. If God is going to bless this nation and bless your life, the first thing we must do is acknowledge our sins and prepare the ground. God must first proceed like a doctor who cleans a wound before applying the medicine, because if he puts medicine on an infected wound, it will be of no use at all. And we must understand this.

It is important for us to warn people when they are seeking God and seeking deliverance in a beautiful, powerful way that we must also confess our sins. If we want God to bless us, we must express repentance and clean house; we must purify ourselves. God wants to do something great and powerful in this congregation, and He is telling us: “Sanctify yourselves,” just as He told Joshua before entering Canaan: “Sanctify the people for Me; let every man be circumcised; let every woman prepare herself, because I am going to do great things among you.” And thus says the Lord to this congregation: God wants to do great things, but we must purify ourselves. And I address that word to all of us who are here, brothers and sisters: the newcomers, those who have been here a long time, those who are more advanced in the things of the Lord, and those who are just beginning. God wants us to sanctify ourselves, amen? God wants to send His prophetic Word into our lives, and He says to us: “People, prepare yourselves; cleanse your lives, because I want to do great things within you.”

Then God sends this prophet, who speaks to the people, and then He begins His process of deliverance. He finds a young man who was exemplifying precisely what the Hebrews were experiencing. Gideon is inside a cave, hidden from the enemies so that they will not see him, threshing wheat so that he can keep what he has prepared and his family can eat, because this is how far the people of Israel have been reduced. He embodies the sufferings of his own nation. And there an angel of the LORD appears to him. They call it a theophany; it is a powerful manifestation that God uses at very select moments. The angel approaches Gideon and speaks to him about the purposes He has.

Verse 11 says: “The angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite; and his son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, ‘The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor.’” The angel declares to Gideon: “Gideon, the power of God dwells in your life.”

And what does Gideon do? Instead of saying, “Oh, thank You, Lord; glory to God! What do You want me to do?” Gideon gives him a rather complaining answer and says: “Ah, my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us?” It is more of an accusation than an acknowledgment that the fault lies not with God but with the Hebrew people.

When the power of God is not manifested in our lives or in a church, it is not because God has failed in His promises; it is because, generally speaking, we have not been able to obtain the full benefit of God’s promises and have not done everything that is our part to do.

Here begins one of the themes of Pentecostal life. Gideon is a very unlikely hero; Gideon is a very unsuitable hero for what is required. And this is placed there so that we will remember: one of the great themes of Pentecostal life is that it is not by sword nor by army, as the Word says, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.

Why does God choose a man like Gideon? Because it makes perfectly clear that this is not the man who could do it by his own strength. And God always chooses in this way; we see it throughout Scripture.

God chooses David when David does not even figure in his father’s plans as one of his sons who might possibly amount to something—“he’s not likely to succeed,” as they say in high school. He chooses Gideon for that very reason. He sends Jesus, who, it says, had no attractiveness that anyone should desire Him or glory in Him. He chooses a pagan Ruth who is not a member of any tribe of Israel. God always chooses unlikely heroes, and that should encourage us, because if you feel like an unlikely hero, you are the best candidate for the power of God to be manifested through your life.

If you have never gone to school and have not earned a university degree, God can use you. Now, if you do have one, glory to God, but you must know that it is not because of that degree, but because of the power of God in your life, which can take your knowledge, set it on fire, and do great things through it.

But one of the great themes of Pentecostal life is this: that we can do nothing in our own strength. If you look at Gideon from the standpoint of his emotions, he is a timid, complaining man who continually doubts; God continually gives him signs of His favor and support, and it is as though he never learns. And that is typical of the scriptural Pentecostal theme of the visitation of the Power of God.

Moses is a man whom we initially see full of life, full of strength—so much so that he kills an Egyptian, believing that a revolution will take place through him and that the Hebrew people will catch the revolutionary fire. And then he—he flees, spending forty years in the desert as a failure, and when God finds him and visits him with His Power, with a miraculous manifestation of His Presence, Moses responds: No, I cannot; I do not know how; I cannot speak in public; I have no experience; and what if the Jews to whom I am going to speak reject me? And what if Pharaoh gets angry with me and has my head cut off? And God gets angry with him.

Because it is a recurring theme, and here we see that when God sends the angel, he says to him: The Lord is with you, mighty man. Gideon cannot believe that he is referring to him. He says: I am the least in my family, my family is the smallest in my tribe, and my tribe is the smallest in Israel. How are You going to use me?

My brothers and sisters, I encourage you in the Name of the Lord always to know this: no matter what situation you find yourself in, you and God are a majority; you and God are more than enough. No matter what you are going through in your life right now, God tells you: You can move forward, because with My Power in your life you can do the work. We have to believe that, brothers and sisters; we have to believe that.

I tell you that this is the only thing that sustains me in my spiritual life and ministry: believing that the Power of God is with me and that it is not by my strength, not by anything I can do, not even by my emotional fortitude, because many times I do not have it, but by the Power of God within me. And that is the key to Pentecostal life.

It is a life that you live almost as though you were watching yourself live it, because many times your emotions will not be with you, your sense of self-confidence will not be with you, and you will think: How dare I do this? But you do it in the Name of the Lord; you launch out, and God is there to meet you along the way.

Do not fear what lies ahead of you. No matter how vast the sea before you may be, if God told you, Cross over, then cross over in the Name of the Lord, and the sea will open before you. That is the great theme of Pentecostal life. God calls us to do impossible things that lie beyond our résumé, but with Christ within us, we can accomplish them.

You remember the story in the Book of Acts when the Lord, ready to ascend in His ascension, tells the disciples: Go and make disciples of the nations, but do not leave Jerusalem until you have received power from on high.

The Christian life, brothers and sisters—the effective life—must be lived this way, because God continually calls us to do things beyond our capacity; but that life must be lived not in our personal strength, but in the strength God gives us. And in the same way, the Lord tells the disciples, does He not? You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth.

So Gideon does not believe that God can use him, given his limited abilities, and a dialogue unfolds. This dialogue also reminds us that it is with the Power of God, and that we have to accept it, receive it, declare it, confess it, and move by faith in it.

In verse 14, when Gideon responds negatively to the angel, verse 14 says: “And the Lord looked upon him and said, Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.” I see a moment of impartation here; I have always seen it that way. There are two moments when power is imparted in Gideon’s life, and this is one of them.

I believe that in that look from the angel—“and the angel looked upon him and said”—when Gideon’s eyes met the angel’s, it was as though the life of God penetrated Gideon’s life, and that divine look commissioned him with the Power of the Holy Spirit. That is why the writer gives that detail, “and the angel looked upon him and said.” That was the moment of transfer, I believe; and in that other moment, when the angel says to him, “Am I not sending you?” there is an impartation there.

When God sends us, God equips us. Always remember that. If God has given you a task, He is committed to you. If you are a mother or father, God has given you children so that you may raise them in the fear of the Lord, and God gives you the ability to be a good father, a good mother. Your part is to feed on the Word of the Lord, give your time to discipling your children, live a life that is as exemplary as possible before them, and make your home a place where the Word of God can prosper, good soil. And every day you have to say: Father, I receive from You my portion to be the best Father You want me to be.

If you are a teacher in a school in the city of Boston and you do not feel that you have the strength to do what you need to do, you need to clothe yourself with the Power of God every day, and you need to say: Lord, today I arise, and I believe that You give me everything I need for this day. And you have to launch out believing that, because the angel of God is over your life; the Power of God is within you.

The angel says to Gideon: The Lord is with you, mighty man of valor. Gideon did not know that he was a mighty man of valor. Perhaps he looked around and said: Where is the man they are talking to? But the Lord saw him that way, and we have to see ourselves as God sees us, not as the world sees us. In fact, we do not have to see ourselves as we see ourselves.

Many times God gives a Word. The Bible says that God calls things that are not as though they were, amen? And we have to believe that. You are pregnant with the life of God, my brother, my sister, even if you do not know it. There are women who become pregnant and do not know it until, they say, months later. I do not know how that happens, but supposedly there have been many such cases.

There are many Christians who have been inseminated with the Power of God, yet they walk around looking like disheveled messes, completely careless. Brother, remember that you walk with the Kingdom of God upon you and within you; the Lord dwells in your life. The Spirit God has given us is a Spirit of power, victory, and great effectiveness for living life. The problem is that many of us do not feel it, cultivate it, or believe it.

Do you know that there is a great deal of controversy about what constitutes the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? I have researched and read a great deal of theology about this, and over the years I have observed what I would say are literally thousands of people. And I would say that fullness and effectiveness in the Christian life do not depend on the trappings and—what do you call this?—the accessories. That is why this sister here, my wife, is always there helping me, backing me up. Accessories, thank you, the accessories; as a woman, she knows what accessories are, does she not? The accessories of life in the Spirit.

Do you know what, brothers and sisters? The accessories—we sometimes get stuck on this matter of tongues and this and that. At the end of the day, brother, I have seen people filled with the Power of the Holy Spirit. I tell you frankly: we can all speak in tongues, and in one sense, as Paul says, I speak in tongues more than all of you; but it is not about your dancing at the front during the service until your bun falls out, or throwing yourself onto the floor. All of that is very nice, very beautiful, but ultimately an effective life in the Power of the Holy Spirit depends on that individual believing that he has it, living as though he has it, using it, affirming it, confessing it, and practicing it. That is where the key lies.

And one day, at a given moment, you must say: This is mine; I receive it; I have it; and now I move in that Power of God that dwells within me, because the Power of Christ is within me. And if the Power of Christ is within me, I have all the Power of the Kingdom of God. So move in that power. Even if you do not feel it, move in the Power of God; live that Pentecostal life. Frighten yourself by undertaking things that, when you find yourself in the midst of them, make you say: How did I get myself into this mess? And God will always bring you through.

I believe that the Christian life should be lived at a deficit, always undertaking more than you believe you have the resources for, and then you will discover that the Power of God simply increases. I always say that the Power of God is x + 1, with x being what you need for the stretch that lies ahead of you. We can live either a life of scarcity or a life of sufficiency; it all depends on us.

The two spies—all of them had the same initial anointing, but ten of them chose to look at the circumstances, to see the giants around them, to see the land that devoured its inhabitants, to see the enemies who were much bigger than they were, and to see how little military experience they had. But two of them, Joshua and Caleb, said: If God is with us, we are going to eat them like bread. And they must have said: With a little butter on top too, you know? They were confident that God was with them, and that is why the others died and only two of them entered the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb. That entire fainthearted generation remained buried in the desert.

My brothers and sisters, it is a matter of your believing and confessing; settle that issue now. I believe there must indeed be a moment of crisis in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, just as there must be a moment of crisis when receiving Christ as Lord and Savior. I have always said that many people do not know. You ask them: Did you receive Christ? Yes, but that is something general; it came to them by osmosis, because they attend an evangelical church and one simply assumes that one is evangelical, and their mother was Pentecostal, so they assume the same thing too. But there has never been a moment when the question was: Yes, but did you invite Jesus to enter your life as Lord and Savior? Did you receive Him? Did you confess Him?

As He says, does He not? I stand at the door; if anyone hears and opens the door. We have to open the door to the fullness of the Holy Spirit; there has to be that moment. And I tell people: Look, it may happen in church, it may happen at a retreat, it may happen during a moment of worship, it may happen when someone lays a hand on you, or it may happen while you are sitting alone on the toilet—forgive me for being so frank. Wherever it may be, at that moment God can come and fill you with His Spirit, because God does not dwell in the physical world; God dwells in the spiritual world. Human circumstances are the least important thing; what matters is what happens within your spirit.

In that virtual room of the spirit, that is where God does the work, and there, when you believe and settle that issue and that controversy, is where the Lord will say: Okay, this is what I was waiting for—for you to press the accelerator, get going, and move. That is what God wants for you. I ask Him in the Name of the Lord that every member of this Congregation may feel that the moment has come in his or her life to say: Holy Spirit, today I receive You; today I am filled with You; today I will stop asking You, and now I will move in Your Power.

Gideon already had what he needed. By God’s endowment and God’s choosing, he was already a mighty and courageous soldier of the Kingdom of God—a general, rather—but now he needed to believe it and move in that endowment of power.

It does not tell us that he did this or that, and we have seen that on several occasions. In Saul’s case, God touches him, and notice how interesting this is. In Saul’s case, Samuel anoints him and then says to him: You are going to walk, and when you reach a certain place, you will meet men of God; then God will change your heart at a given moment. After that, Saul does enter into the gifts and prophesies and praises the Lord. We do not know what it means that he prophesied. It may be that he simply began to declare the greatness of God, began to speak like one of those prophets about what God does, and began to glorify the Name of the Lord. That is what the Word means when it speaks of prophesying in that way; prophecy is many things.

Prophecy is an exact, precise word given at the right moment for a person or a special situation, but it can also be the declaration of God’s active Will. There were prophets who never entered into the predictive aspect, but they too prophesied in the Name of the Lord.

The point is that there can be different ways. In David’s case, Samuel anoints him, and we are told nothing more. In fact, I believe he simply poured oil over his head, and David went right on with his life, perfectly calm, perfectly fine; but the Spirit of the Lord was already upon him—he was already pregnant. He did not know it, but he had a special anointing. And at the appointed moment, when David hears this giant, that Power of God within him awakens and rises up, and then the Power of God goes into action when he brings down the giant.

God has things for you; God has a special endowment that is within you. The problem with many people in our congregation and in so many other congregations is that they do not understand how easy it is—and, in another way, how difficult it is—but everything depends on the individual believing that what God has promised and declared in His Word is true, and then beginning to move in that endowment.

Your church says, for example: We are going to evangelize; we are going to go out into the streets. Do not think so much about the fear within you. Do not think about how threatening your mind may find the prospect of your going up to someone and saying, “Look, I have a Word to share with you about Jesus Christ,” and being rejected. Instead, look at God’s promise that “none who trust in Him will be put to shame,” and launch out in the Name of the Lord.

If there is a call from your congregation saying, “We need teachers to work with the children and the young people,” do you know how great the need is right now in the I Wanna ministry? It needs many people because they are growing, and God is using that ministry in very powerful, very special ways. There are dozens of young men and women who are eager and hungry for the Word of the Lord. What ministry could be more strategic than something like that?

But there are people in the congregation whom God needs. Perhaps you are thinking, “No, I am not good with young people; I do not know the Bible well.” You have to dare to try. And there are others here who are teachers in schools and do all kinds of things; they want to be used mightily by the Lord, but instead we think, “I do not have time. I do not have the energy. I get tired and arrive home late. I work with kids during the day, so why get involved with kids at night too?” You can come up with twenty thousand excuses.

And what happens then? What God has said you are—perhaps God has said, “You are a teacher; you are a discipler of young people. I want to do something special for you and in you”—but if you do not confess that Power of God with your mouth and move in it by faith, like taking two aspirins—you simply take them because you know they will have an effect, and you do what you have to do—the effect will remain inside you; it will remain stagnant.

Gideon needed to believe God, and God told him, “Go in this strength that you have.” I tell you the very same thing, my brother, my sister: Go in the strength that you have. Whatever situation you are facing—whether you are a mother, a father, a truck driver, an office worker, a schoolteacher, a businesswoman, whatever you may be—God wants to use you there, in the place where you are, and He says: “I will go with you wherever you go. Do not fear or be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. I have given you every land on which the sole of your foot treads. Now go in that strength that you have.”

“As I was with Moses, so I will also be with you. As I was with Paul, as I was with David, as I was with Moses, so I am with you today. Go in that power.” The world needs a congregation like this one, filled with the Power of the Holy Spirit, in a city as unbelieving as this one—people who are willing to die for God, who surrender themselves to the Lord, who give their lives to the Lord, who believe that there is no failure in God.

God recycles everything—everything. God even uses the failures in your life for something. God even uses times of crisis to strengthen us and thus shape men and women who are not intimidated by anything in the Word of the Lord. Everything works for good. God works for the good of those who love Him. Everything results in blessing for our lives, brothers and sisters.

There is no loss. God always places a safety net beneath us, and like great trapeze artists, we can do somersaults in the air, knowing that if we fall, we are over God’s net. Dare to act in the Name of the Lord—that is the Word of God. Move in God’s Pentecostal Power. Do not look at yourself, He tells Gideon. Do not look at yourself in terms of what you are at this moment. Look at yourself in terms of what God says you have within you, and live in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Live by faith; live by obedience; do not live by feelings, and you will see that the power is already within you.

Paul tells Timothy—and we have spoken about this before in one of the sermons—“I advise you to fan into flame the gift of God that is in you through the laying on of my hands.” I advise you to fan the fire into flame. There are two things here: the Power of God is already within us, and now we have to fan it into flame. Fan it into flames—fan it so that it bursts into flame.

The Power of God is like—it is sometimes like this. I do not know, when you barbecue—every now and then during the summer, I like to put a steak on the grill—do you know the first thing you have to do? You put in the charcoal. I am not one of those who use those automatic things; I am old-fashioned (laughs). There is a controversy between the modernists and the traditionalists. You make a pile of charcoal and put it there; you light it, and sometimes it takes a while before you see a little something begin there. But then you see something glowing in the center, and sometimes you take something and blow on it a little, and then you see it begin to catch fire, and catch fire, and catch fire, and then there is a fire. Afterward, those coals are just as the Bible says.

That is where the word glow comes from: “fervent in spirit.” That is what it means. It is the idea of a piece of coal. To glow means that it is lit, phosphorescent, shining. That is how the fire of God is within us: it is there. Each of us has to be like E.T., that character from that science-fiction movie, right? He has something that begins to glow, and people can see something within him. I wish we could all walk through the city of Boston like that, and that we believers could be identified that way, because when people saw us, they would see something shining beneath the fabric, reflecting the Power of God. That is within you. Make it shine; bring it into manifestation; believe that it is within you! Let us live lives that are fervent in the Spirit, hallelujah, and that means we must continually blow on that flame.

One of the things about Pentecostal life is this idea that we are responsible for the anointing of God that is within us. That is something we sometimes fail to understand, in our desire to give so much glory to God, and we forget that God makes us responsible.

Do you know how much God values you? Do you know how important your actions are to God? God is not so great, so powerful, so overwhelming, so sovereign that He crushes your dignity, your free will, your initiative, your power. You have worth, and you are important to what God is going to do in your life. Much of the anointing depends on you. God places the anointing within you, but you have to fan it and bring it to a boil and cause it to manifest in your life. If you do not do it, it will not happen.

That is one of the great principles of Pentecostal life: the manifestation of the Power of God depends to a great extent on what you do with it. It is already within you, and it depends on your reading the Word, eating the Word, getting up half an hour or an hour earlier, and devoting time to fanning once again that anointing within your life, because otherwise it will go out; otherwise it will become stagnant. God is not going to do it for you. A moment comes when God tells you, “You are an adult now. I have already told you what you have to do. Do not ask Me for anything more; move now.” Amen? God has already given you the rod of authority. Move now.

When Moses is standing before the Red Sea, he is there saying, “Oh Jehovah, have mercy on us! The Egyptians are coming to kill and destroy us!” And God tells him, “What are you doing there? Get up, take the rod I have given you, strike the sea, and the sea will open before you. Cross over on dry ground.” God had already given Moses a rod of authority; now Moses needed to use it and believe that the Power of God was with him and that the sea would open. That is how it is in your life. Many things are happening in your life right now, and do you know what? I would say that you no longer have to ask God for anything more. Now use the Power of God that is within you.

God told you a long time ago, “Child, I grant you that request. You have it. Now run with it, and let Me know when you have done what you have to do. You have already won the victory.” The Christian life is lived by faith; it is about using what God has given us. That is why Paul tells Timothy, “I advise you: fan into flame the gift of God that is in you.” It is in you, Gideon; it is in you, Timothy, because God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power, love, and a sound mind—it says, of self-control. I have always said that the original word, sophronismos, means a mind that thinks sanely, scientifically, exactly, precisely—a sober mind, a mind that is very precise in its judgments.

God has given us power, love that tempers that power, and a thinking mind, a sound mind. That is what God has given us, and it is within you. It is not the timidity that many of us carry within us. If the musicians could come up here.

My brother, that is what God tells Gideon: “Gideon, God is with you.” And that is what I would like to tell this congregation, brothers and sisters. This congregation is like Gideon—not because of us, because like Gideon, there is nothing in us that justifies God’s choice. It is because God has wanted to do something special. But like Gideon, we are still in a state of great potential, and God tells us: “You are a mighty and courageous people, and I have something very special for you.” He says it to you personally as well; remember that. God is with you, and God is preparing to do great things with His Power within us. We are living at a time when we stand on the threshold of something wonderful, like the Israelites before the Promised Land. The Jordan lies before us. We must prepare ourselves and circumcise ourselves, because God’s destiny is already moving within us—within your life, within my life, within this community that is Lion of Judah—and God wants to do something extraordinary.

He tells us: “Launch out; come out of the cave; move in what I have given you. Look into My eyes, which tell you: ‘You can do it. My endowment is within you.’ Now go and confront the idol of Baal. Tear it down with the Power I give you, and take the trumpet and blow it so that everyone may hear you and come to the meeting place.”

The Bible says that when that moment comes, Israel’s enemies gather together to come against Gideon, and God clothes him with His Power. There is a very beautiful image there that I pointed out this morning in the English service. It is not that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon; rather, it says that it was as though God clothed Gideon. I see it as though, if you can imagine it, a garment, a robe, were descending from above—a glorious robe that takes Gideon and clothes and fills him.

I imagine that this investiture of power—if you look at the word investiture, it is an endowment—was an investiture both outwardly and inwardly. It was an investiture of his nervous system; it was an investiture of his brain; it was an investiture of his bones and muscles, his will, his memories, and his personality. And it clothed all of that with the Power of God and the values of the Kingdom of God.

And when Gideon blows that trumpet in the power God has given him, that trumpet must have sounded as no other trumpet had ever sounded. There was some mysterious quality in the sound of that trumpet, blown by a man clothed with the Power of God. That is why all the Hebrews who heard that trumpet rallied around this young man who, until then, had been unknown, and they joined him. Thousands of men came under God’s leadership. Why? Because he believed God. Gideon came out of his cave, doubts and all.

Because you will always remember this: when I preached about Saul, I told you that Saul continued to be a flawed man because the Baptism of the Holy Spirit does not turn you into a perfect person.

Paradoxically, some of the most anointed people I have known are people who are deeply flawed on a personal level, in their temperament, and in other things. That mixture of strength and weakness is interesting. God takes unlikely people, inadequate people, and clothes them with His Power, but those people remain human beings with all the flaws of a human being; but now they are supposed to, if they would use that power.

Let me tell you in passing, brothers and sisters: use it to grow in the Word and to bring your personality under submission, because this is the point—and I am about to finish. This is something very important, you people anointed by God: Do not become so enamored of the Power of God and the gifts that you forget that the character of a servant of God is as important as his spiritual endowment. There are many of us Pentecostals who become so enamored of the Power of God that we forget the character of Christ and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

That is why many of us have a great anointing, but that anointing is set within and integrated into a very fragile framework. Consequently, we do very little justice to God’s beautiful anointing, and sometimes we damage the manifestation of the Power of God because of structural weaknesses that we have not addressed and strengthened. That is why, throughout history, you see great men and women of God who have made serious mistakes that brought discredit upon the Kingdom of God, because they did not use that Power of God to strengthen other areas of their lives.

The Power of God gives you mastery over many other areas of your life, and when you receive the Power of God, you have to say to Him: Father, now strengthen my personality, the way I treat others, my sexuality, the way I live my life in so many other respects, my character, my human relationships, my marital relationship, the way I treat my children; that is part of the anointing of God too. God gives you power to bring under control everything you need to overcome—to overcome tendencies toward depression, anger, criticism, rebellion. Submit all of that to the Power of God in your life, and then you will have in your hands an instrument perfectly equipped to do what God wants to do through you.

Gideon remains a very, very flawed man, and later in his life he made serious mistakes, but he was able to do something he never would have done without the Power of God: liberate a nation and be used by God for great exploits in his life. So God is calling us, and this is God’s call to this congregation at this moment: Come out of the cave, live with this Power that I give you, and keep growing.

Right now, I want you to stand up; everyone here, stand up. And once again, God is speaking to you. He says: Stop wavering now; stop hesitating between doing this and doing that. Let us bow our heads for a moment. I want to ask whether there is anyone here this afternoon who has not yet taken a step of faith and needs to receive Christ, to settle this step that you have to take, to begin walking with Jesus in your life. You have come this afternoon, or you have come on other Sundays, and God has already been speaking to you, and you need to make a covenant with the Lord, surrender your life to Jesus Christ once and for all, come out of the cave, and begin to walk that life of faith to which God is calling you.