“I’m not sure I could do that…”

“Does God have a place for ordinary me?”

“But if we don’t do this, the church will just look so weak…”

Over the summer at our church we took some time to look at some of the so-called ‘heroes of faith’ listed in Hebrews chapter 11. And, hey, one of the preaching cards I got dealt was Gideon. You know, the dude with the fleece? Perhaps not your first thought when it comes to heroes of Scripture. I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as Bible Top Trumps, but I’m pretty sure Gideon wouldn’t be a particularly highly-prized card if there was.

And yet the more you dig into Gideon’s life the more you see he’s a fantastic lens to understand the way God works. In fact, his life is a pretty surprising insight into what faith actually is all about.

When we first meet Gideon in Judges chapter 6, he’s basically threshing wheat in a wine-press (6 v11). Now, because most of us don’t do much wheat-threshing on an average day, there’s a chance we miss what’s being implied here. The Dummies Guide to Wheat-Threshing would be quick to point out that you don’t tend to thresh wheat in a wine-press. That’s because a wine-press is basically a hole in the ground. When you want to thresh wheat you get out into the open space where the breeze can blow the chaff away. The point is Gideon is hiding in a pit. That’s how scared of his enemies Gideon is.

Then, just a few verses later, after Gideon’s given his first mini-mission from God, he basically chickens out of confronting his own family, despite getting a full-on Gandalf-esque sign from God in advance. He ends up doing the mission by night so no one spots him (6 v25-27). He’s weak.

And so we quickly build up a picture of Gideon as a bit of scaredy-cat. That’s to put it mildly. In fact, his own self-assessment is that his family are the biggest pile of losers going and he’s the weakest of the lot (6 v15). He is, as Jonty Allcock puts it in his brilliant little book, a self-confessed loser.

Later, his infamous bartering with God over the whole damp/dry fleece debacle (6v 36-40) is described – not as some model for how to approach divine guidance (as it’s sometimes taught), but rather to demonstrate loud and clear just how weak Gideon was. Despite God’s word being clear (“as you have said,” v36 & v37), it was still a complete struggle for Gideon to trust God and his promises.

So if there’s a strapline for Gideon’s life in the book of Judges it could be something like this: God chooses a self-confessed loser to show that it’s all about Him. It’s all about God.

The account has its crescendo in the battle between Gideon’s army and the Midianites, the enemies of God’s people. And the bizarre series of events through chapter 7 is all about God whittling down Gideon’s prospective army from some 32,000 to just 300 blokes. And it’s completely arbitrary how God makes the final cut: like how you drink your water! Since when did you get asked to do that at Sandhurst? The point is that God wants it to be really clear that he is the one who is responsible for the victory.

The key verse comes in 7 v2:

The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. In order that Israel may not boast against me that her own strength has saved her…”

And there you have it. Spot it? Weakness is God’s calling card because it’s in our weakness that it becomes clear to us that the power belongs to God.

Is it just me, or does that change everything?

You sometimes hear phrases that go like this: “Any great work of God begins with…” – and we fill in the blank with whatever it is we’re championing at the moment. But maybe we’d do well to remember that any ‘great work of God’ might not actually feel so great to us. It’ll probably feel pretty weak, in order for God to show us that he’s the one we need to be behind it. Weakness is God’s calling card.

So how does this relate to Hebrews chapter 11? Why do we have this self-acknowledged loser given a star-studded space in this apparent faith ‘hall of fame’?

Faith in Hebrews is always future-focused. That’s Hebrews 11 v1 right there: faith trusts God’s promise about the future, despite the reality of the present. And Gideon as a case-study gives us a particular flavour of this. Faith is all about acknowledging present weakness and resting in God’s power and strength.

In other words, faith stops looking at ourselves and starts looking at how great God is.

That’s the Christian gospel: I have nothing but Jesus gives me everything.

And thousands of years after Gideon we read of another man trusting God enough to become weak and going to a Roman cross, dying a gruesome and humiliating death. Though it seemed the definitive weak moment, the first Christians understood it as the moment of God’s power and wisdom in action.

The legendary Christian writer Jim Packer recently published a collection of personal reflections looking back at his life in light of 2 Corinthians. Tellingly he calls them, ‘Weakness Is the Way’. And I think that absolutely nails it. Weakness is the Way.

Weakness is the way when it comes to faith. And so it’s the way when it comes to what the Christian life will look like. When it comes to what church-planting will feel like. When it comes to how the Church will be perceived in the culture.

Because as we feel our own weakness, we recognise we’re completely dependent on God’s strength. The spotlight is on him, not us.

But sometimes I wonder if the way we respond to our weakness suggests we’ve forgotten that’s how God works. We hide weakness. We try and get away from it. 

And yet weakness isn’t the problem. We don’t need to get away from weakness.

So, feeling weak?

Feeling like this Church-in-the-21st-century thing all just feels so fragile?

Feeling like you just can’t do this?

Weakness is God’s calling card, so welcome to the Gideon Club.

If, as the author of Destiny argues, Ecclesiastes “is a meditation on what it means to be alive in a world that God has made and called good, yet which has also gone so very wrong, often in catastrophic ways,” then I’d suggest it’s a book of the Bible that should become a lot more precious to us than it probably is.

After all, you don’t have to go far in life before things don’t go to plan. And if we’re feeling like life has lost any sense of rhyme or reason, or if we’re feeling like the sandcastles of our existence are becoming engulfed before our very eyes, then David Gibson wants to encourage us to see Ecclesiastes as God’s gift to us.

That might sound a bit odd at first. But give it a read and I think you’ll be persuaded. And if Ecclesiastes is God’s gift to us for those seasons, then reading Gibson’s book Destiny is kind of like having someone sit us down to unwrap the gift, in order to help us appreciate it in all its fullness. (And by the way, even if you’re not feeling those things right now, then Destiny is still for you, because you can bet that experience will come.)

Destiny actually feels like an increasingly rare type of Christian book. That’s because Gibson doesn’t take on a particular topic or a doctrine. He isn’t trying to answer a certain question or provide advice into a specific situation. And it isn’t a memoir or a biography. Rather Gibson simply walks us through the book of Ecclesiastes. And although he’s recently preached through Ecclesiastes with his church in Aberdeen, Destiny doesn’t read as one of those book manuscripts where the sermon transcripts have been hastily copied and pasted to churn out a paperback. In other words it reads well. Each of the chapters begins with an excerpt from the Bible and then Gibson just warmly unpacks the text before applying it and showing its often-piercing relevance. 

A couple of weeks ago I shared my thoughts on pastors always having a Bible book we’re ‘wading deep’ in (click here to read them). At the moment for me it’s Ecclesiastes. And so when I heard about Destiny I was eager to get my hands on it. I’d come across Gibson’s writings before and had found his writing both engaging and insightful. I’m encouraged that I’m not the only one, as the back-cover of Destiny has commendations from Old Testament devotees and legends like Dale Ralph Davis and Alec Motyer – no small indicator of the measure of the work David has produced in Destiny!

Now you might well be thinking, “hang on, just back up a minute: a whole book – just on Ecclesiastes?!’ And, ok, you have a point my friend. Because I think it’s fair to say that Ecclesiastes generally tends to carry a bit of a bad rep. Sometimes it’s made out to be depressing and overly-negative. Other times it’s treated as if it’s only use is as evangelistic talk fodder: “look, isn’t life meaningless without God?” (That or funeral addresses!) And perhaps the rest of the time Ecclesiastes is just seen as down-right confusing. If nothing else, how on earth does this relate to Jesus!?

And so right there you have three reasons why getting hold of Destiny is a good move, because allowing David Gibson to walk you through Ecclesiastes is a huge deal more refreshing than one might first expect:

1. For a start, Gibson is convinced that Ecclesiastes’ message should lead us to joy, not to despair. I’ll admit, that initially made me raise an eyebrow. But after journeying with him through Eccleasistes I was persuaded. And then the more I let Gibson walk me through Ecclesiastes, the more that was my actual experience as I spent time in Destiny.
2. He also points out that the main narrator of the book, ‘The Teacher’ seems to be fully aware of God and yet still wants to highlight that life has an inescapable ‘mistiness’ about it (perhaps a better translation than the NIV’s meaningless). This is a far cry from either the ‘believer-posing-as-a-sceptic’ reading or the full-on ‘atheist manual’ angle, and I think our Bible is all the richer for it.
3. Lastly, Gibson’s gentle and persuasive commentary is a practical guide to a book that’s sometimes seen as slightly impassable ground. That said, it never feels like he’s trying to force the text into his own packaging. In particular, his appreciation for the intentionally-elusive feel of the book is to be commended.

Sometimes someone might open up a part of the Bible with us that will completely change how we read it from that point on. Be it a sermon series, or a particular talk, or even a book – it might seem like we now grasp the book with a new clarity – often because we sense its significance more tangibly in our life. And although it’s early days, I’m tempted to put Destiny into that category already. Maybe that’s partly because – at least in my experience, anyway – Ecclesiastes hasn’t been a portion of the Bible I’ve often encountered from start to finish. But I think it’s mostly because Destiny is really, really good at capturing Ecclesiastes’ heartbeat. And God’s word unleashed is a powerful thing. 

Lastly, quality book covers should always be appreciated, so credit to IVP for this one – strong and simple.

You can pick up Destiny here.

Disclaimer: The publisher has sent me a free copy of this book, but I hope this is still a fair and honest review.

Given that transgenderism is such an important, unavoidable, and sensitive matter, I am grateful that Vaughan Roberts has taken the time and thought to write a helpful starting piece on the topic. Transgender is the first in The Good Book Company’s new Talking Points series, a collection of short reads designed to help Christians think, talk and relate to others with compassion, conviction and wisdom about today’s big issues. Vaughan is Rector of St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford, and he generously took the time to answer a few questions about the book and why he’s written it:

Vaughan, you’ve written many books over the last decade. Tell us what led you to choose this particular subject and to invest time and energy in writing Transgender?

It seems like transgender has become a huge issue in no time at all. There have always been people who struggle with gender identity—but now it’s become not simply private concern, but a massive public issue. We were finding lots of people at our church were grappling with it—how to relate to friends who are transitioning, how to talk to kids who are getting confusing messages at school. They just didn’t quite know what to think or how to respond. I saw a need to help people think biblically from a perspective of clear conviction but also biblical compassion and love.

It’s especially important for church leaders to be proactive on this issue. With any pastoral issue, if someone says, “Look, please could you help me on this?” You can’t really reply, “Actually, can you give me six months because I haven’t really thought about this issue before?” One of the reasons I wrote this book is to help people at least get a basic foundation of the Bible’s perspective. The book’s very simple, so there’s a long way to go beyond what’s in it—but I hope it might be a starting point. Then as leadership teams we can begin to discuss how we would respond if this situation occurred or that question was asked.

Of course this isn’t just a ‘topic’. This is about real people. As a pastor, how have you had to work through your own response to those experiencing gender dysphoria? And what might you begin to say to someone for whom this is a reality?

As you say, the first thing to remember is that this is a human being—so we’re not relating to someone with an issue, we’re relating to someone. So as I interact with them, most of the time we won’t be talking about gender. I’d try to relate to someone as normally as possible and just love them! That’s the starting point.

Beyond that, it would very much depend on my relationship with a person. If I hardly know them then it would be strange to talk about something so personal as their feelings about gender. If the relationship is much closer then it may well be something we talked about—and then again what I say will depend whether I’m talking with a Christian or a non-Christian.

If they’re not a Christian, their first need is to hear the gospel. I’d want to say that there is a God who made us and who loves us very, very much. But he takes seriously the fact that the world isn’t as it should be. The Bible is not saying there’s one group of people who’ve got issues—we’ve all turned away from God and the result is we’re all messed up. But God loves us so much that he sent his son to rescue us and put us back in relationship with him—and he’s promising a world in the future when everything is going to be put right. If we put our trust in Jesus and his death on the cross, the Holy Spirit will come into our lives and begin to change us. More and more we can know what it means to be truly human—alive in relationship with God.

I guess some people might say that transgenderism is something that the Bible writers didn’t really know anything about – and so the implication is that the Bible is out-of-date on this matter and has nothing relevant to say. What would your response to that be?

A lot of it comes down to identity. Identity is one of the huge issues in our culture at the moment: Who am I? Increasingly our culture has defined identity by what I feel and think about myself. But that leads to real identity confusion and anxiety, because if I am who I feel myself to be, that’s pretty fragile! And I’ll always be worried about whether that fits with what you think I should be. Transgender comes down to the question, Who’s the real me? What my body says I am, or what I feel myself to be?

But the Bible has got hugely significant things to say about identity. Identity is not something I’ve got to find for myself. It’s given by God—who made me and loves me. I’m created in his image. The Bible says I’m a bodily human being—our bodies matter, because God made the material world. And if we are Christians, our identity is as men and women in Christ. The Bible offers a wonderfully solid identity—but it’s one that we need to communicate with sensitivity.

Vaughan, thank you for your time. Finally, what are your hopes and concerns for the wider church as we minister amidst our culture in the years and decades to come?

I think that when we see huge cultural changes and what’s going on in the media, there’s a danger we respond to the issue—and forget that behind the issue are people, created by God, and who are often hurting very much.

The other danger is that we respond emotionally. I think the old traditional response was an instinctive “Yuck!” response—“we can’t cope with this, we don’t like what’s going on”—without really thinking it through. Our world has gone completely the other way and is instinctively saying, “Yes! Whatever people want or feel, we’ve got to affirm that.”

I’d like to see the church avoid both. We need to respond with clear conviction. The Bible says that biological sex is not a thin veneer that’s just being painted over us—we are human beings who are male or female. But equally we need to show real compassion to people created by God—our first response to transgender people should be one of warm, loving welcome.

Transgender is not intending to be a comprehensive perspective, but it is an excellent starting point. Given the paperback is currently retailing for £2.54, don’t let me stop you from picking it up from the publisher here right away! You can also download a free discussion guide, as well as watch the promo below: