Get your Spirit Back

Oct. 19, 2025

Do you ever compare yourself to others and think, I can’t do some things as well as other people. Maybe you say, “I’m not good at math.” Or “I can’t draw.” or “I can’t eat just one piece of candy.” Or “I’m not good at fixing things.” We can get ourselves down and stop even trying. We might say, “It’s no use! I’ll never be good at that!” The thing is, God made you and loves you, just as you are! And you don’t have to be an expert to be great in God’s eyes. If you believe in and follow God, and He wants you to do something, he will give you extra power, beyond yourself, to do it!

I have had car trouble many times, have you? Many times, I have needed professionals to repair my car. Many years ago, I heard a rattling in my car. I know next to nothing about fixing cars. I didn’t think I could fix whatever was wrong myself. Still, I pulled over. I looked under the hood. Aha! I noticed the cover over the air filter wasn’t fastened! I fixed the problem! May be the only thing under the hood I would know how to fix. But I was glad I gave fixing my car a try!

Today we’re talking about encouragement, from Earl McClellan who wrote the book: “Get your spirit back: Break free of negativity and step into your calling.”  We’re talking about when you’ve been knocked down, and you tell yourself “I’m just not good enough,” how to obey God and trust in Him for a breakthrough. We’re learning about Gideon. He had a lot of reasons to feel like he couldn’t do anything. But we’ll hear God has other thoughts.

Judges 6 Says the Israelites had disobeyed God, so He punished them by allowing a foreign nation to cause them trouble. The nations would ruin the Israelites crops and take their livestock. The Israelites were hiding from them, living in caves and mountain outcrops. They lived in poverty. So, they cried out to God for help.

Gideon was one of the Israelites, and God sent an angel to him. Gideon is threshing wheat, but rather than doing it out in the open, he is doing it in a winepress, hiding so the enemy won’t get him. The angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and says, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!” I want you to tell person next to you, “The Lord is with you, might warrior.” Did that convince you? Do you feel like a mighty warrior? Gideon probably feels like this angel has come to the wrong guy! There’s something else on Gideon’s mind: he says to the angel, “Pardon me, my lord, but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

Gideon feels like he is not a mighty warrior, plus, he feels that God isn’t with them and helping them. The Lord answers, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?” God has a mission for him, but Gideon doesn’t agree that he’s the one for it.

“Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replies “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” It’s like Gideon is saying, “I’m the kid who’s doesn’t do good in sports. And I’m from a big family of people who are weak. Lord, you need to look elsewhere for a mighty warrior.

This sounds a little bit like what happened when God came to Moses, who tried every excuse he could think of! Moses told God, “But I’m just a nobody.” Then he said, “The people will never listen to me.” He also said, “What do I do if they say that you never appeared to me, Lord?” Finally, Moses said, “I’m not good at public speaking. Choose someone else!” What Moses and Gideon both learn is that if God calls you to something, he gives you strength to do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re the last person anyone would expect to lead an army! You CAN do it, because if God calls you to something, he gives you strength!

Next, Gideon and God spend some time getting acquainted: Gideon makes a sacrifice to God. And the Lord has Gideon tear down the altar the people have made to a false god. Then the Lord has Gideon build an altar to him.

Now we’re in chapter 7. It’s time for Gideon to lead an army against the enemy. There are 32,000 men of Israel, prepared to go to battle. God tells Gideon, “I can’t have all these men go to battle. Because all in Israel will say, our own strength has saved us. So, God tells Gideon, say to the army, anyone who trembles with fear can leave. 22,000 men left! Now there are 10,000.

But the Lord says to Gideon, take the men down to the river, so he does. God says take the men who lap the water like dogs do. Out of 10,000 men, 300 lay down next to the water and lap water like a dog! God tells Gideon to tell the 9,700 non-lappers to go home! Which leaves Gideon to lead an army of only 300 men!

These 300 men don’t go to battle with weapons! What?! Instead, they go to battle, in the middle of the night, with trumpets, empty jars, and torches! But remember, if God calls you to something, he gives you strength to do it. Gideon tells the 300 men to surround the camp, and when he blows his trumpet, they should blow theirs and say, “For the Lord and for Gideon!” Next, they should smash their jars! Then, he says, hold up your torch, blow your trumpet and say, “For the Lord and for Gideon!”

The enemy army is surprised to wake up in the dark. They see the torchlights, hear the jars break, the trumpets and the shouts, and they think multitudes of Israelites surround them! The men in the enemy army turn their swords on each other and then run away! Israel wins!

Nobody in Israel could say they won the battle by their own strength, because 300 men, who were greatly outnumbered, fought with trumpets, torches and empty jars, and won! It is God who won the battle! If God calls you to something, he gives you strength to do it.

Earl McClellan, who wrote the book, “Get your spirit back,” says one night when his son was five years old, he was putting him to bed, and his son was scratching his skin. Earl asked him, “What are you doing? “He said, “I’m trying to get the brown off.” Earl asks, “why are you trying to get the brown off?” His son says, “I want it to be peach, like my friends.” And Earl felt a lot of emotion. He told his wife, “We’re going to make sure our son knows he is made in the image of God for the purpose of God, called by God, that he’s exactly how God designed him to be, and that he’s put on this earth for a reason and a purpose.

In our bulletin today in the “Talk it Over” section, you can see some affirmations, some of them from scripture, that Earl and his family would say every night. Let’s read it together:

“I’m blessed. I’m healed. I’m loved by God. I’m called for such a time as this. I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. I love my skin. I love how God made me. I’m honoring, I’m encouraging. I’m Christlike. I’m kind. I was put on this earth for such a time as this.”

And I hope you tell this or something like this to yourself or your family. I hope you remind yourself you are wonderful exactly the way you are.

Sometimes you may look at other people and wish you were like them, or you wish you could be good at the things they are good at. Gideon did that. He thought he was the least person of the weakest family. He thought God had abandoned Israel. But when God called, Gideon learned God was with him, and that if God called him to something, he would give him the strength to do it! God has a purpose for you, he made you exactly as you are, to do things you probably can’t imagine! Get your spirit back, because with God all things are possible! Amen.