Key points
1Most of us are simply ordinary, not extraordinary, and that's okay
Pastor Linn describes life as roughly ten percent extraordinarily gifted people, ten percent who struggle constantly, and eighty percent of us in the ordinary middle. He challenges the room to ask God to take that ordinary life and make it extraordinary, setting up Gideon as the example of exactly that.
2Gideon was hiding in fear when God called him
Pastor Linn sets up Judges 6, explaining that the Midianites invaded Israel yearly like a plague of locusts, and Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press — a place with no breeze, showing he was hiding in terror rather than working normally. The angel of the Lord, likely Jesus Himself, appears and calls him 'mighty warrior' while he's still hiding.
3Gideon's honest doubt — 'if the Lord is with us, why has this happened' — mirrors our own
Pastor Linn connects Gideon's protest to modern situations: job loss, infertility, cancer diagnoses, singleness past a hoped-for timeline, and marriages falling apart, where it feels like God has abandoned us. God's answer isn't an explanation but a call to go in the strength Gideon already has.
Illustration
A painting class date night: the preacher's competitive attempt at the best painting ends with it in the trash, contrasted with a stunning piece found in Jerome that became the statement piece of his home — used to illustrate the difference the painter makes, not the brush
4Who's holding the brush determines whether your life is ordinary or extraordinary
Using the story of his own amateur painting that ended up in the trash versus a stunning painting he bought in Jerome, Pastor Linn argues God was already painting a masterpiece with each person's life before birth, but we grab the brush back and every stroke we make ourselves is 'less' than what God intended.
5God delights in using ordinary people so the glory is unmistakably His
Pastor Linn explains that if talented people accomplish something, credit goes to their skill, but when an ordinary person does something extraordinary, everyone has to conclude God must be behind it. He illustrates this with his own story of a broken home, an autistic sister, and a mother stretched to the limit, saying no neighbor watching his childhood would have predicted his life today.
It was like a five year old taking a brush from the master
Because if it's you, if it's me, it's less, and I'll always be ordinary
is it possible that your greatest qualification is that you're ordinary, and that God says, can work with that because people will know it was me
A story from life
Linn's childhood: his father left after multiple affairs, leaving his mother to raise four children including a severely autistic sister while working for $2.40 an hour — used to illustrate God using someone with no apparent advantages
6Surrendering the brush makes life harder, not easier — but that's where God's best work happens
Pastor Linn walks through Gideon's army being thinned from 32,000 to 300 men and points to Daniel in the lion's den, Abraham waiting for a child at ninety, and Joseph's path through slavery and prison as proof that God intentionally increases difficulty after surrender, so no one can credit anything but Him.
7Victory came through an unlikely battle plan so God alone got the credit
With torches, clay pots, and trumpets instead of swords, Gideon's 300 routed hundreds of thousands of Midianites as God caused confusion in the enemy camp. Pastor Linn calls this the pattern of Scripture: God's best work happens on the other side of harder.
God always does his best work on the other side of harder
I wonder what God would do with ordinary you if he had the brush
Application
Pastor Linn frames the whole response as one question to carry for thirty days: who's holding your brush?
Ask who's holding your brush
Take a paintbrush and place it by your sink or on your car dashboard for the next thirty days as a daily reminder to ask whether you or God is in control of your life.
Surrender the brush to God
In an honest moment before God, admit if you've been holding onto control of your life and choose to hand it back to Him, even if only part-time surrender has been your pattern so far.
Take the next step, not the whole picture
Rather than needing to understand God's full plan, simply obey what He's asking of you tomorrow morning — say what He'd want said, forgive what He'd want forgiven, treat people the way He'd want them treated.
Take it into your week
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