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Transformation: Gideon · Sandra Elizabeth - The Leadership Collective

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sandra Elizabeth and this is the Leadership Collective.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Today we start a new series, a Christian series called Transformation.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: In every session, we will look at someone in the Bible whose life changed when God interrupted an old way of thinking and introduced a new way of seeing.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: These were not perfect people living perfect lives.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: They were ordinary people who experienced loss, fear, rejection, delay, failure, opposition, and even uncertainty.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yet their story shows that God can meet a person in an imperfect place and begin a work that changes both the person and the direction of that person's life.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation begins before anybody else can see it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It begins in the hidden places of the mind and the heart, where old beliefs are confronted, familiar patterns are questioned, and a person becomes willing to see life through the truth of God rather than through fear, pain, or limitation.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The word transformation speaks of a deep and genuine change.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is more than improving appearances, it is more than learning how to sound confident, presenting a polished image or temporarily changing behavior.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation reaches beneath what people see.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It changes the beliefs beneath our decisions.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: It changes the attitudes beneath our reactions and the values beneath our habits.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible to alter an image without changing a heart.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible to look successful and remain inwardly bound by insecurity, bitterness, fear, or the need for approval.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Biblical transformation moves beyond appearances and works from inside outward.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 12 2 tells us not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: The Amplified Bible expands this whole idea by connecting transformation with a new attitude and new ideals.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: The mind is renewed when we stop allowing the loudest voice or the oldest wound or even the strongest pressure around us to decide what is true.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: We bring our thinking into the presence of God and allow his truth to correct the conclusions we have formed.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Many of those conclusions were formed during difficult situations, difficult seasons.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: A person who has been repeatedly rejected may conclude, I am not wanted.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who has failed may conclude, I will always fail.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: A person who has been controlled may begin to believe that having a voice is dangerous.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who's lived through betrayal may decide that nobody can be trusted.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: These conclusions can remain long after the original event has passed.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: The situation ends, but its message continues speaking.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So transformation begins when that message is examined instead of automatically obeyed.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: This does not mean denying reality.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Faith is not pretending that nothing painful happened.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Renewal does not require us to rename abuse as love, betrayal as loyalty, or injustice as something acceptable.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: God's truth allows us to be honest about what happened without giving what happened permanent authority over who we become.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: The past may explain some of our fears, but it does not have to control every future decision.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation involves a process.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: We often want one powerful moment to remove every struggle immediately, but God can bring sudden change.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Much of spiritual growth is worked into us through repeated obedience.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: A truth is heard and then tested, a new boundary is established, then challenged, a courageous decision is made, then must be made again.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, what once felt unfamiliar will begin to become part of our character.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: That is why transformation should not be confused with inspiration.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Inspiration can move us emotionally for a moment.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation, on the other hand, changes what we do when the emotion has passed.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Inspiration may make us say, I want a different life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation asks whether we will make different decisions.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It can be seen in the conversation we finally have, the habit we stop defending, the forgiveness we begin to work through, the responsibility we accept, and the step of obedience we take even when we still feel uncertain.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 3.18 describes believers as being transformed into the image of the Lord from one degree of glory to another.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: That phrase from one degree to another reminds us that God's work is progressive.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are being changed.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are areas in which we are strong and areas in which God is still correcting, healing, and developing us.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation is not proof that we have never struggled.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: It is evidence that the struggle no longer has the unquestioned right to lead us.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: God does not call us to remain imprisoned by an identity that no longer agrees with his purpose.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: He may challenge the names we have accepted: forgotten, unqualified, powerless, too old, damaged, too young, too late.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: He may speak to the potential in us before we can recognize it ourselves.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: He may call us courageous while we're still afraid, capable while we're still inadequate, and chosen while we are still standing in an ordinary place.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: This series will follow those moments in scripture where people had to release an old way of seeing.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Ruth had to believe that loss was not the end of her purpose.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Esther had to move from silence into courageous speech.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph had to refuse to let betrayal become his permanent identity.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Moses had to stop allowing excuses to speak louder than the call of God.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Peter had to discover that failure did not have to be final.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Each life reveals a different aspect of transformation, but the pattern is clear.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: God speaks, the person responds, and a new direction begins.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Today I begin with Gideon because his transformation started in a place of fear.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: When God found him, he was not standing before an army looking like a confident leader.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was hiding.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: His circumstances were difficult, his view of himself was small, and his questions were honest.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yet God addressed him according to what divine purpose could produce, not merely according to what fear had made visible in that moment.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon's story is found in Judges 6 through 8.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Israel had turned away from God and their Midianites oppressed the nation for seven years.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever the Israelites planted crops, their enemies invaded, destroyed the produce, and took their livestock.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The people hid in caves and mountain strongholds.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: After years of repeated loss, fear had become more than a reaction.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It became the atmosphere in which they lived.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Look around your own environment, look around your atmosphere.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Are you living in fear?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Judges 6 introduces Gideon while he is threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Wheat was normally threshed in an open place where the wind could separate the grain from the chaff.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: A wine press was confined and sunken.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon was doing necessary work in an unsuitable place because fear had changed what was normal.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was still working, but he was working in hiding.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: The angel of the Lord appeared and called him a brave or even a mighty man.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: The greeting seems almost disconnected from that scene.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon did not look courageous, yet God was not defining him by the place where fear had put him.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: People often turn a present condition into a permanent identity.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: If they are hiding, they call themselves cowards.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: If they are struggling, they call themselves failure.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: God recognized Gideon's favor, but he did not make fear Gideon's name.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon responded honestly, if the Lord was with Israel, why had all this happened?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where were the wonders their ancestors had described?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: God did not reject him for asking.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, God told him to go in the strength he had and deliver Israel.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon was looking for evidence that God still worked through people.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: God answered by calling Gideon to become part of that evidence.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon immediately explained why he believed he was unsuitable.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: His family was the least in Manessa, and he was the youngest in his father's house.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: He saw himself through family status and social position.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: God saw him through an assignment.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord's answer was not flattery, it was presence.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Surely I will be with you.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon would not fulfill the call through personality, influence, or even human strength alone.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before God confronted Midian publicly, he had to confront compromise close to home.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: God instructed him to tear down his father's altar to Baal.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon obeyed at night because he was afraid of his family and the men of the city.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture includes that detail because courage is not always a feeling that arrives before action.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon was afraid and still obeyed.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: His transformation was real, but it was developing one decision at a time.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon and he blew a trumpet to gather men for battle.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: The man introduced in hiding was now calling others to follow.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: The enemy had not disappeared, but fear was no longer making every decision for Gideon.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon still needed assurance, and God patiently strengthened him.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: His uncertainty did not cancel the call, but he was not permitted to remain in uncertainty forever.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Reassurance was followed by responsibility.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: When Gideon gathered an army, 32,000 men came.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: God reduced the army until only 300 remained, so that Israel could not claim that its own strength had produced victory.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: You see, from a human perspective, the reduction looked like movement in the wrong direction.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon had to learn that numbers were not the source of victory.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation changes not only what we see in ourselves, but also what we trust around us.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: On the night of the battle, God allowed Gideon to overhear a Midianite describing a dream that predicted victory for Israel.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon worshipped, returned to his men, and declared that the Lord had given Midian into their hands.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Earlier he had asked God where God was.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now he spoke with assurance about what God would do.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: You see, the circumstances had not yet changed, but Gideon had changed, he had transformed.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: The three hundred men carried their trumpets, their empty jars and torches.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: At Gideon's signal they broke the jars, revealed the light, sounded the trumpets, and shouted.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Confusion spread through the Midianite camp, and the enemy turned against itself.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: That outcome could not be credited to conventional military power.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: God used a man who had once hidden in a wine press to lead a nation into freedom.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when your enemies come to attack you, ask God to create chaos, to create confusion in their little kingdoms.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon's story is not about a naturally confident man discovering that he was stronger than he thought.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was about a fearful man learning that the presence and instruction of God were greater than the identity fear had built around him.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: He did not become courageous in one dramatic instant.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Before the battlefield came the altar at home, before the trumpet came the willingness to learn, before the public victory came a private change in identity.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: The wine press was Gideon's location, but it was not his identity.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hiding described what he had been doing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It did not describe who he would always be.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: God began with the strength Gideon had, met him in the fear he felt, and led him through the decisions that developed courage.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you see, transformation did not mean that Gideon never felt afraid again.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It meant that fear no longer received the final word.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is the first lesson of the series.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: God meets us where we are, but he does not leave us bound to the thinking that has kept us there.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: He renews our mind, he reshapes our identity, and he redirects our lives.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gideon entered the story trying to protect a small amount of wheat.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: He became the leader through whom God delivered a nation.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: You see, God saw beyond the hiding place and God spoke to what a transformed Gideon could become.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so as I come to the end of this podcast, I want you to ask yourself, what label have I accepted that contradicts what God is developing in me?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: What alter or unhealthy pattern must I confront privately?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: What is one act of obedience I can complete despite fear?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You see, insecurity often sounds humble, but it can become an excuse for disobedience.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: We list our age, our history, our education, our family background, or even previous failures as reasons God should choose somebody else.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: God already knows your limitations.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: His calling is not based on missing information.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do not wait to feel like a mighty leader before taking a courageous step.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Make the call, start the class, address the issue, volunteer, apologize, apply.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Courage becomes stronger through use.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to repeat this today.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: God is renewing my mind and directing my steps.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I will not allow fear, shame, loss, or the opinions of others to make every decision for me.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I receive wisdom for this season.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: I will act with faith.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I will act with truth and integrity.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like Gideon, I can respond differently, and a different response can lead me in a new direction.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Allow transformation to take place in your life.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me on this leadership collective today.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep becoming.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, one change in the way you think can change the direction of your life.