The Name God Uses Before You Earn It

Gideon was hiding in a winepress when he heard that. Not standing on a battlefield. Not leading anyone. He was threshing wheat in a hole in the ground, trying to keep the Midianites from finding his family's food. If you had asked anyone in his village to describe him that morning, "mighty warrior" is not the phrase they would have reached for. Gideon didn't even reach for it himself, a few verses later he protests that his clan is the weakest and he's the least in his family.

But God didn't call him what he was doing. God called him what he was going to be.

This is the last week of August, which means a lot of you are unpacking boxes, sitting in a first lecture, or walking into a dining hall trying to look like you know where you're going. Campus in the fall has a way of making everyone quietly compare résumés. Somebody in your hall already has an internship lined up. Somebody already knows their major, their five-year plan, and the exact name of the company they want. And you may feel like you're threshing wheat in a winepress, doing something small and unimpressive, hoping nobody notices how uncertain you actually feel.

The remarkable thing about Judges 6 is that God's greeting comes before Gideon does anything. There's no probation period. No proving himself first. The identity arrives at the front end, and the courage follows it. That's the order, it has never been the other way around. So if you're waiting to feel like a mighty warrior before you act like one, you'll wait a long time. Gideon still needed signs, still asked for the fleece twice, still tore down the altar at night because he was afraid to do it in daylight. God worked with all of that. What He did not do was take back the name.

You may not feel it walking into this week. Feel it or not, it's what He calls you. Start there and see what follows.