Putting Out A Fleece

When we fail to trust the indwelling Christ to bring God’s will to pass in our lives, we end up doing other things to try to find God’s will. One of those things is what is widely known as “putting out a fleece.” The idea comes from the Old Testament story of Gideon.

In Judges 6, the story is told of how Gideon sought to know God’s will. The Lord had called Gideon to deliver Israel from her enemies, but he was afraid. Because of his small stature and physical weakness, he doubted what he had heard God say to him. Maybe he had misunderstood. He wanted to be sure beyond all doubt that God wanted him to be Israel’s leader, so he devised a test. Gideon prayed,

If You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken, behold, I will place a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken.” And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said to God, ‘Do not let Your anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground.’ God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground. Judges 6:36-40

By putting out the fleece before the Lord, Gideon saw God’s will affirmed to him. Don’t think, however, that the action of Gideon is intended to be an example for you to follow. The Bible makes it clear that when Gideon laid the fleece before the Lord, it was not an action of faith; it was actually an expression of faithlessness on his part! It was an expression of doubt in God’s word and fear about his circumstances.

Note again what he says in verse thirty-seven: If there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I will know that You will deliver Israel through me, as You have spoken. Gideon wasn’t trying to know God’s will with this fleece. God had already spoken and Gideon admits knowing that by what he said in this verse. His problem wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do. His problem was that he doubted whether or not God really meant what He has said. Gideon’s fleece was an expression of doubt, not faith!

God had already spoken on this issue. He had already made His will clear to Gideon, but he didn’t believe Him. Make no mistake about it. Gideon’s use of the fleece was an act of unbelief, an act of doubt. It was not an expression of faith. God, being the God of grace He is, responded to Gideon’s request. But don’t think for a minute that his actions should be a template for how we behave when it comes to knowing God’s will.

Before we are too hard on him, however, let us remember that, unlike New Testament believers, Gideon did not possess the indwelling Holy Spirit. He may, from our human perspective, have had an understandable excuse. We do not. We live in the New Testament, not the Old. This new covenant, of which you are a beneficiary, puts you in a much, much better place than Gideon.

We have Christ, alive, and living in us, with His presence and power available to us. And yet, many believers today still say they use a “fleece” to determine God’s will. This is not only an expression of unbelief and doubt, but can sometimes be so far removed from biblical faith that is borders on downright superstition.

This may be contrary to what you have believed, or have heard, but Gideon’s story proves my point and I stand by it. We don’t need to use a “fleece” to determine God’s will in the New Testament age. We have the Holy Spirit.

When I taught this at a church retreat one weekend, Sharon made a beeline straight to me after the session had ended. “I’m having a problem with what you said about putting out a fleece,” she said. “I’ve put out fleeces to the Lord many times and He has often made His will clear to me in that way.”

“Good, I believe you,” I reply. “That just shows that God is a merciful and gracious God, and that He worked in spite of your expression of ‘faith,’ as you have understood it in the past. It’s very clear in the passage about Gideon that when it put out a fleece, it wasn’t faith that caused him to do it. It was doubt.”

“So are you saying I shouldn’t do that anymore?” Sharon asked.
“What I’m saying is that you have the Holy Spirit living inside you. It isn’t necessary for you to look for some sort of external sign to know God’s will when, all the while, the eternal Spirit of God is living in you and is ready and able to make God’s will known to you.”

While God is amazingly patient and merciful to us in our weakness and ignorance, we need to move beyond this kindergarten method of trying to determine His will. In Christ, God has lifted us to possibilities unimaginably greater!

We have no valid excuses. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us! So why would we not learn to trust God instead of trusting in a “fleece”? We have an advantage Old Testament believers couldn’t imagine. According to 1 Corinthians 2:16, “we have the mind of Christ”!

As God’s child, you have divine ability to see life through the eyes of faith, allowing Christ to see and live and work and love through you. You are a conduit of His life into this world. The One who controls it all, lives in and through you. Let that be a truth that stirs your faith.

Don’t worry about missing God’s will. Go ahead and act in faith, believing that He wants you to grow in this area. The Apostle Paul once said, “When I was child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). There’s nothing wrong with being a child, but the idea of remaining a child is abnormal. The time has come to act in maturity in regard to discovering and doing God’s will in your life. If you’ll step out in faith, you’ll see that He will faithfully guide you and see to it that you reach the destination He has in mind for you.

Trusting in His indwelling Spirit is much better than putting out shallow fleeces that can often be interpreted in any way you choose to interpret them. You are God’s child. He loves you and wants to speak to you and teach you to follow His leadership in a spiritually mature way. He wants you to enjoy the benefits of the New Covenant, through which He has promised to never leave or forsake you but to lead you into all truth.

It’s time to see yourself as His child and rise above the kindergarten level of Old Testament living. A new day has come. It’s a day when Christ lives inside you and guides you into the Father’s perfect will for your life.

(This article is an excerpt from my new book, Walking In the Will of God, and can be bought at www.gracewalkresources.com)