(From our church-wide devotion book at Pinedale Christian Church, "You 2.0”)

I will never forget the day Jesus called me a “mighty hero.” It was the most humbling, ironic, paradigm- shifting moment of my whole life. That’s the day I began to learn what real strength is all about.

You have to know, things were hard for my people. That’s important, right off the bat. The Midianites were cruel and terrifying and controlling. They would time their “visits” to Canaan in accordance with the growing season. When harvest time arrived, so did the Midianites, and with an appetite for everything that we possessed. They took all our crops, and they stole our cattle, leaving us in a bad place!

So when “The Angel Of the Lord” showed up – (an OT term for Jesus!) – I’m embarrassed to admit, He found me hiding. Threshing wheat in a winepress, because I knew if the Midianites found me, they would take everything I had.

Jesus found me there – hiding, cowering – but I guess He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself, because He greeted me as a “man of valor,” and He called me to that life. In fact, I’ll never forget how He said this: “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand.” And then He added, “Am I not sending you?”

Have you ever had a moment like that – a crisis that forces you to confront your beliefs, maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth time, and see where your trust really lies? During those moments when your faith is under heavy fire, have you ever found doubt creeping into your mind, whispering in your ear, weakening what you had previously thought was a rock-solid belief in all of God’s promises?

I’m not proud to admit it, but my story is a story of doubt as much as it is a story of courage and faith. I NEEDED God to prove that He was truly with me. I NEEDED reassurance, and then after He gave it, I needed it again! Yet every step of the way, He called take another, harder step of faith and depend on Him even more.

I bet you have been there. You’ve seen a news report about another group of people suffering so immensely or received a phone call about a loved one who got a bad report at the doctor, or you’ve seen the budget at work and realized that jobs are about to be lost. In those frightening moments, maybe ALL of us struggle with doubt, at least to some degree.
Well, I have good news. God uses doubters! Of course, there is a difference between honest doubt and cynicism. Doubt is normal. Cynicism is spiritually dangerous.

So what’s the difference between honest doubts and cynicism? Cynicism questions but never attempts to resolve the questions. Cynicism questions merely to question. It questions to mock and jest. There is always a smirk on its lips. The cynic is pleased with doubt, looks for ways to doubt, delights in things which can be questioned. The cynic holds up experiences of being hurt by Christians and uses them as an excuse to abandon the faith. They point to the failure of believers. They look for inconsistencies and find contradictions. In other words, cynicism is dishonest doubt.
In my experience, the only way to attack cynicism is to take your doubts to God. Doubt is like a wall. If we try to look through it, we will never see anything (and then be trapped). Instead, we need to look over it. Look up to Christ, who is above everything. And seek Him.

I am convinced that some of my biggest growth spurts in faith came after times of questioning and doubt. Doubts can motivate us to search and explore, pray, read, and sometimes we even have to exercise trust when we can’t see the answer or when it doesn’t make sense. And as a result, we come away with even greater faith. But we have to start by taking our questions to the right place.

In my situation, God used me in a more powerful way than I ever could have dreamed, and he did it in a way that would ensure that I knew exactly who had done it.

He ordered me to thin my army from 32,000 all the way down to 300. Did you hear that? 300 people against the entire Midianite army. And then God said, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands.” And that night, he did just that. He sent us into battle without so much as a single weapon, and HE threw the Midianite army into confusion so that they turned on themselves. They defeated themselves. All we had to do is trust Him.

Here is what I have learned about the “2.0 life” with God: Our faith fails because our God is too small. We sometimes imagine that God is not big enough for our biggest needs. But even when our faith fails, God doesn’t.

God’s strength can do in us and through us what we could NEVER do in and through ourselves. His strength is big enough for even our weakness. He can turn failures into successes. He can turn any of us into heroes.