Prayer Fleece

“I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor.”

Judges 6:37

Anna is a twenty-three-year-old professional dancer from England whose life was turned upside down after reading Wild Goose Chase three years ago. Anna now runs a dance studio in Serbia that ministers to the poorest of the poor, but let me tell you how she got there.

Psalm 37:4 states that when you take delight in the Lord, God will give you the desires of your heart. The word give means “to conceive.” As you press into God’s presence, old sinful desires die, and new holy desires are birthed in your spirit. These single-cell desires ultimately become lifelong dreams if we nurture them in prayer.

Anna was living her dream, making a living by doing the very thing she loved most. Then she got a distinct impression one day that she needed to use her dancing for God. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she couldn’t shake it. It kept her company during the day and kept her awake at night. Her friends assured Anna that she was making a difference right where she was, but she knew there was something else, something more. Then one day she read about a ministry project in Serbia, and something came alive in her spirit. She felt she needed to go visit, but she didn’t know the first thing about Serbia. In fact, she had never met a Serbian. That’s when Anna put a prayer fleece before the Lord: Lord, if You want me to visit this ministry in Serbia, then let me meet a Serbian this week.

Anna shared her prayer fleece with her friends, and even though they thought it was a crazy prayer, they agreed to circle it with her. Two days later, a tall, dark-haired gentleman walked into the dance studio where Anna was practicing. Anna was sure he was Italian, but she went ahead and asked him where he was from. When he told her he was from Serbia, she said, “You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.”

Six months later, Anna packed a suitcase and her guitar, bought a one-way ticket, and moved to Serbia. She works with the lowest-income Serbians, teaching English, the Bible, and dance to the children. Anna has gone from performing on stage for the Who’s Who of Great Britain to choreographing dance performances for children with disabilities. And she’s loving every second of it. But it started with a prayer fleece.

Her next God-idea? To open an Ebenezer’s-styled coffeehouse in Serbia. That’s why she sent me a letter. Actually, she called it a prayer letter. I think it was another fleece of sorts. I was so impacted by Anna’s prayer letter that I shared her story, and Anna’s dream made its way into the hearts of others. A handful of people stepped up and said they wanted to be shareholders in that ministry. And with the exchange rate, a few American dollars can turn into quite a few Serbian dinar.

Caution

There are moments when we need to turn our desires, ideas, and dreams into prayer fleeces. Now, we have to be very careful when it comes to putting fleeces before the Lord. Generally speaking, signs don’t precede our steps of faith; signs follow. But there are occasions when it’s OK to ask God for confirmation because of our uncertainty. I don’t think we should do it often, and we shouldn’t approach it in a haphazard manner that amounts to nothing more than picking petals off a daisy, saying, “She loves me; she loves me not.”

So here are a few cautions when it comes to fleeces. First, if God has already answered your question in Scripture, then you don’t need to even ask it. Don’t seek revelation when God has already given it. Second, check your motives to make sure they aren’t selfish. The fleece must come out of a genuine desire to honor God and do His will. Third, you have to be willing to accept whatever answer you receive without second-guessing it.

When God called Gideon to become a judge in Israel, he was filled with insecurity. When the angel addressed^a him as “mighty warrior,” I bet Gideon looked over his own shoulder to see who he was talking to because there was no way it could be him! He thought God was making a mistake. “How can I rescue Israel?^b My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”

But I love God’s answer: “I will be with you.”

That’s all we need to know, isn’t it? If we could come to grips with two fundamental truths, they would transform our lives: God is with us, and God is for us. That is all you ever need to know. God is with you, and God is for you. Let it sink into your spirit. And as Romans 8:31 states, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

The angelic encounter wasn’t enough for Gideon. He needed more confirmation, so he devised a test. He put a fleece before the Lord not once but twice. And God patiently reassured Gideon because Gideon asked out of genuine humility.

In 2003, when National Community Church was preparing to become a multisite church and launch our second location, I was filled with uncertainties and insecurities. We were venturing into uncharted territory without a map. During an all-day prayer and planning meeting, we concluded we wanted to launch in the movie theaters at Ballston Common Mall in Arlington, Virginia. We closed our daylong meeting asking God for favor and a sign, a prayer similar to the one that Gideon prayed. We had been negotiating with Regal Cinema for three months but had kept hitting a wall. They only wanted to give us early morning access, and the additional time was cost prohibitive. After months of getting nowhere in negotiations, and the day after we put a prayer fleece before the Lord, Regal changed its corporate pricing structure. It’s safe to say that in the world of leasing, if you want more time, you pay more money. And if you mysteriously get more time for less money, it has to be a sign from the Lord. It was just the sign we needed, and it catapulted us into one church with two locations.

Ask God

One of my prayer heroes is George Müller. Along with pasturing one church for sixty-six years, he established the Ashley Down orphanage. Müller cared for 10,024 orphans while establishing 117 schools for their education throughout England. In today’s dollars, George Müller raised somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million dollars. That is an amazing feat, but what makes it even more amazing is that he never asked anyone for a penny. He felt compelled to only ask God when he had a need. He trusted that God knew exactly what he needed, so he turned every need into a prayer. When he needed a pipe fixed, he prayed for a plumber. When he needed food or money or books, he prayed that God would provide. It is estimated that more than 30,000 specific prayers recorded in his journals were answered. And just for the record, the most impressive and most important statistic may be this one: Müller read the Bible cover to cover more than 200 times!

Müller prayed like it depended on God, but he also worked like it depended on him. Müller wrote, “This … is one of the great secrets^d in connection with successful service for the Lord; to work, as if everything depended upon our diligence, and yet not to rest in the least upon our exertions, but upon the blessing of the Lord.” The key to kingdom productivity is this: work really hard at what God has called you to do, but do not trust in your work; trust in God.

Oswald Chambers once wrote, “Let God be as original^e with other people as He is with you.” This piece of advice has become a personal mantra. Be yourself. So I’m not prescribing George Müller’s approach to prayer for everyone. It was a personal covenant he felt led to make with God. But we can learn from his example. Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong person — a boss, spouse, friend, or colleague. Maybe we need to ask God.

Don’t seek answers; seek God. And the answers will seek you.

When God gives a vision, He always makes provision.