Warren W. Wiersbe - Be Available. Accepting the Challenge to Confront the Enemy

BE AVAILABLE

Published by David C. Cook

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All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

without written permission from the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.) Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved; NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission; and NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

LCCN 2010930482

ISBN 978-1-4347-0048-3

eISBN 978-0-7814-0509-6

1994 Warren W. Wiersbe

First edition of Be Available published by Victor Books in 1994 Warren W. Wiersbe, ISBN 1-56476-319-6

The Team: Karen Lee-Thorp, Amy Kiechlin, Sarah Schultz, Jack Campbell, and Karen Athen

Series Cover Design: John Hamilton Design

Cover Photo: iStockphoto

Second Edition 2010

Contents

: An Introduction to Be Available by Ken Baugh

1. (Judges 12)

2. (Judges 3)

3.
(Judges 45)

4. (Judges 6)

5. (Judges 7)

6. (Judges 8)

7. (Judges 9)

8. (Judges 1012)

9. (Judges 1314)

10. (Judges 1516)

11. (Judges 1718)

12. (Judges 1921)

13.
(Drawing Some Lessons from the Book of Judges)

The Big Idea

An Introduction to Be Available

by Ken Baugh

Back in the early 1990s, I made myself available to God to use my life in whatever way He saw fit. At the time, I was the college pastor at a large church in Southern California where God had impressed on my heart the desire to reach my generation, known as Generation X, for Christ. The day I made myself available to God, I prayed something like this: Lord, I know You want to reach the young adults in my generation, and I surrender myself to You toward that endI will be the janitor for my generation if You choose, Lord; just please use me. Little did I know of the life-altering changes that would occur as a result of that simple prayer. Not long after this commitment, I was laid off from my position at the church because of financial difficulties, and I was devastated. I loved the church where I was serving, and I believed that this church provided the necessary national platform that I needed to fulfill my God-given desire to reach my generationbut God had the same plan for me, just a different place.

For the next eight months, I struggled to make enough money to take care of my young family by working odd jobs until finally God opened a door at McLean Bible Church in northern Virginia. Now I have to be honest with you, my wife and I are native Southern Californians who love all that California has to offer: sun, sand, surf, and fun! So Virginia was not a place we desired to move to. But as I wrestled with God, He made it clear through a variety of circumstances that He was calling us to Virginia, where I would have the opportunity to live out my availability to reach my generation for Christ.

The early years at McLean Bible Church were difficult. I struggled to adjust to Washington D.C. culture and to figure out how to work out Gods vision in a church of 1,200 people that included a very small percentage of young adults. But God knew what He was doing. I began a young-adult ministry in partnership with the senior pastor, Lon Solomon, in October of 1994. The ministry was called Frontline, and the vision was to reach unchurched young adults throughout the Washington D.C. area for Christ. In the early days we had some rough patches, but God was faithful, and after eighteen months things began to grow and never stopped. God allowed me to pioneer what is today one of the largest and most effective young-adult ministries in the country. At the time of my departure in 2004, Frontline had grown to over 2,500 people with 23 staff, and McLean Bible Church had grown as well to over 10,000. Today the church continues to thrive, and Frontline has grown under its current leadership to three locations and a number of universities in the area with thousands of young adults involved.

Frontline is not my story; it is Gods story, a testimony to His grace and faithfulness to use broken people like me to influence a new generation for Christ. And throughout the years that I lived in Virginia, one of the things that most intrigued me was how willing God was to use regular people to do His work. As I reflect on the book of Judges, I believe this is the Big Idea that runs through each amazing story: God uses ordinary people who make themselves available to Him.

Take Gideon, for example. Gideon is just your normal, run-of-the-mill guy. The angel of the Lord finds him threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites (Judg. 6:11 NIV ). Why is Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress? Thats not the way a farmer separates the wheat from the chaff. Normally, a farmer stands on top of a hill with his grain in a flat basket, and as he tosses the grain up in the air, the wind blows away the light chaff and leaves the heavier grain to fall back into the basket. As this process is repeated over and over again, the grain remains, free from the chaff and ready to grind into flower to make bread. But instead of finding Gideon on a hill, the angel of the Lord finds him hiding in a winepress out of fear. No doubt he doesnt want to draw the attention of a Midianite patrol that might be passing by. But theres no wind inside a winepress, so threshing there is a pathetic endeavor.

Here we see Gideon, a simple farmer hiding out in a winepress, and yet the Lord calls him into service. Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midians hand. Am I not sending you? (Judg. 6:14 NIV ). God calls Gideon into service to deliver His people from oppression even though Gideon is afraid and reluctant. Do you know what that means? It means that if God can use Gideon, then God can use you. In fact, throughout the book of Judges you will see the same variation on this theme. There are fourteen judges that God raised up over a period of 350 years to do His work: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Samson, Eli, and Samuel. Each one had issues, each one had weaknesses, but God used them in spite of themselves simply because they made themselves available. How about you? Do you want God to use you to accomplish His purposes? He will; all you have to do is surrender yourself to Him.

I really do believe that God uses ordinary people to do His work. Why does He do this? Because then He gets the glory. Think about it. When people see God doing things through regular people like you and me, no doubt they think: T here must be a God if they can do that. I know those people, and I know they couldnt do that on their own. The apostle Paul says something very similar:

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised thingsand the things that are notto nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:2629 NIV )