He Asked Twice and God Did Not Scold Him

A man hiding grain in a winepress got called a mighty man of valor, and his first response was a question.

That is the whole shape of that story. An angel shows up and says the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor, and Gideon's answer is essentially: if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us, and where are all His miracles that our fathers told us about.

That is not a polite response. That is a man asking a hard question directly to a messenger from God, in the first thirty seconds.

And God does not correct him. He answers him and gives him a job.

Then Gideon asks for a sign to know it is really Him, and gets one. Then, later, he asks for the fleece to be wet and the ground dry, and it happens. And then he does the thing that makes this passage what it is.

He asks for the opposite. Fleece dry, ground wet. And he opens the request by saying: let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once.

He knew he was pushing it. He said so out loud.

And God did it.

He named his own fear in the request

Read the second fleece, because the preface is the most human line in the chapter.

And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece. (Judges 6:39, King James Version)

Let not thine anger be hot against me.

He is not confident. He is bracing. He fully expected that asking again might cross a line, and he asked anyway, and he told God he was afraid while he did it.

And the very next verse says God did so that night.

No rebuke. No lecture about how he should have been satisfied the first time. No withdrawal of the assignment. God simply answered the second request the same way He answered the first.

You are safe to ask again, and He has never once been offended by a person who needed more. That is not me projecting kindness onto a text. Judges 6:40 has God answer without one word of correction, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a person able to bring a question they have been holding for years.

Where the fear of asking comes from

I want to name where this comes from, because it is rarely from Scripture.

It usually comes from a room. Somebody asked a question once in a church, or at a kitchen table, and the temperature changed. Nobody said anything cruel. There was just a pause, and a look, and the conversation moved on, and a young person learned something in that half second that stayed for thirty years.

That is how it gets taught. Not with a doctrine. With a silence.

And I have to say the fair thing, because I always do on this site. The people who create that silence are often protecting something they believe is fragile. They have watched somebody ask a question and then drift, and they are trying to keep a young person from the same road, and their instinct is love even when it is wrong.

You have not been made to be a person who cannot ask, and God has never once been the source of that silence. Judges 6 has a man question God twice in one chapter and get answered both times, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a room's discomfort from God's actual posture.

Asking is not the same as unbelief

Here is the distinction, and it matters because there is a real thing called unbelief and I am not going to pretend there is not.

Zechariah asked a question in the temple and was struck silent. Gideon asked a question and got a fleece. Mary asked how shall this be, and got an explanation.

So it is not the question itself, and anybody who says otherwise has to explain Gideon and Mary. What differs is what is underneath. Zechariah was a priest standing in front of an angel asking for evidence to move his own conclusion, which he had already reached. Gideon and Mary were people trying to move toward obedience and needing help to get there.

One is a question that wants an answer. The other is a question that wants an exit.

And a person can usually tell which one theirs is if they are honest for about ten seconds.

You are able to ask honestly, and a question aimed at obedience has never once been unbelief. Luke 1:34 has Mary ask how and receive an answer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person examine what is actually underneath their own question.

He was still afraid afterward

There is one more thing in that chapter that I love, and it is a couple of verses later.

After all the signs, when it is time to go down to the enemy camp, God says to him: if thou fear to go down, go with Phurah thy servant.

If thou fear. God says it plainly, without judgment, and then makes an accommodation for it. Take a friend.

So Gideon got two fleeces and then a night trip with a buddy, and the record of that man in Hebrews 11 is that he is one of the heroes of faith.

You are allowed to still be afraid after He answers, and He has never once required courage as a condition. Judges 7:10 has God offer a companion because of fear rather than rebuke the fear, and the Spirit of God is the one who accommodates a person's actual condition instead of an ideal one.