What If You Don’t Have a Fleece?

How to discern a course correction in life when inquiring of the Lord to show you a new way or to provide the desire of your heart.

When you have no fleece to lay down?

Or you haven’t really heard God?

What are we to lean on?

Gideon knew God; knew of His promises; and even entertained a visit of “the angel of the Lord”.

So why in Judges 6:36 does Gideon say…

36 Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised—

Gideon even HEARD the promise.

And yet goes on to “test the Lord” by “using a fleece”.

Usually I would share some quotes from the research I did about this specific topic.

My goal for us today is to present a way to apply what we may have learned… if we know the story of Gideon and his fleece.

I’m assuming you know it for discussion sake.

For this exercise I will use a personal experience of mine and specific touch points along with some assumptions.

Don’t worry I will explain the assumptions as we go.

Ok… here we go.

I had a small business from 2007 – 2011, it was a vehicle repair shop & used car sales.

In the summer of 2006 I determined after having some success in the motor vehicle industry it was time for me to start my own business… again. [after having 2 service endeavors earlier in life that fizzled out, one after 3 years and the other after 5 years]

I aimed to parlay that success into a new personal business venture.

And at this juncture in my life I believed that I was walking with the Lord and knew Him.

So… as I put my notes together to get the ball rolling I researched a small, one bay, building on Main Street, just a few blocks from my house.

It had been sitting empty for quite a few years.

I researched the last sale price and property taxes.

Now… here is where I leaned on what I thought I knew about the story of Gideon and his fleece.

Here is my discussion with the Lord…

“ Lord, I’ve done my due diligence, I think I’m ready, using what I’ve learned about how to put a price/value on an item… here is “my fleece”… the last sale price was for $6000.00, in the current market I would offer $12,000.00, and counter up to $18,000.00, as it books out/assesses at around $24,000.00. Anything more than that and I have to be ready to walk away.”

So I moved forward, called the buyer, and made my bid.

And as I anticipated… he didn’t take the low ball offer.

So I was going to let him wait for 3 days before contacting him again.

And on the 3rd day I got a call… from another buyer, he was calling me to see if I was “real”.

He wanted the shop for working on boats.

4th day I called to see where we were on the bid cycle.

The other buyer and myself made counter offers, me just shy of $18,000, him at $24,000.

The seller indicated he would take bids in $500.00 increments.

I should have walked… right?, per “my fleece”???

After some internal wrangling, and one “trauma memory”… my mom lost our place in the country when I was 5 years old, for the lack of $500.00 bucks and so I said, “I can make up $500.00 bucks.”

So I offered $24,500.00 even though everything I had learned… everything… said “NO! WALK AWAY!”

Now… I’ll insert this here… God was quiet, He didn’t yell at me, He didn’t grab me and shake me, He was silent. My “internal wrangling” was the only physical or spiritual indication that this was not to be.

I won the bid.

I got the shop.

Then when I went to finalize financing with the Bank I told them I had 3 issues where if met I would not move forward…

1. It can’t affect my house.
2. The old gas tanks need written proof that they are removed.
3. And the property assessment has to qualify to be enough to use as real collateral.

These issues I was staunch on.

They seemed to be cleared up and were met positively by the Bank staff.

I secured the financing and the building and so…

I remodeled it.

I had a large overhead door installed.

I bought a file cabinet… gotta have a file cabinet.

I started doing business.

And even though I had good days and a few really good weeks and each job was profitable… I just couldn’t get enough jobs EVERY WEEK to be long term profitable.

Here I will say, “There were some very stressful times, and God DID show up on more than one occasion to help me.”

And after 4 years… I was broke.

I turned the lights off.

I shut the door.

And went home.

Now HERE is where the real stress amped up.

I didn’t have a business and so I couldn’t make my bank payment.

Then the real punch in the gut.

As I was signing a lot of paperwork at the bank, closing the business out, in the middle of the stack were papers that…

1. My house now had a lien on it;
2. The shop property wasn’t enough to use as sufficient collateral; if and when I sold it it would be considered a short sale;
3. The only good point was I did have a written report from the Fire Dept. Chief that the old gas tanks were indeed removed.

I was just sick.

And here I’ll say, “God was still with me, very evidently.”

Fast forward to 2019… after being unable to pay the bank over the next 7 years what they wanted, I received tax paperwork that indicated the money I owed would now be written off by the bank and had to be considered “income” now.

So we had to amend our 2019 taxes and pay $3500.00 in taxes.

I thought then, “Well, I’m finally out of that mess, I won’t do that again!”

And here I’ll say, “God was very evidently with me as in 2017 I received my Ministers License!”

Fast forward to August 2025, we needed a title search on our house after we applied for a home equity loan to remodel our kitchen.

Guess what was still on there… yep, the old business bank lien.

Apparently the old bank went through a merger at the same time I went out of business and so in 2019 the lien wasn’t released due to paperwork being lost.

It took almost 3 weeks to get that lien figured out with the new bank the old bank merged with.

Almost 20 years from the time I first opened for business.

I think about, “What would God have done with that time in my life had I not plowed forward with my business???”

I had to go through a bit of personal growth and trauma processing over the last 20 years and have seen how plowing forward felt like the thing to do instead of always “waiting for later” and feeling not only had life denied me and created an impoverished heart within me… but if I did follow “my fleece” and God denied me… I don’t think I could recover from that, money I can recover from, feeling impoverished because God “wouldn’t let me” that would crush me.

I’ll put this here,

“Why didn’t God bless me in that endeavor?”

“He never actually said anything, it was a deal I made with myself, and my-self broke that deal immediately.”

So now today I’m in kind of the same situation with my writing asking,

“Which way do I go?;

How do I inquire of the Lord?

Will any endeavor of mine seem like it’s being successful… whether that success is being obedient to God or having some type of earthly success?”

I’m not sure, but I do know, I won’t be shearing any sheep anytime soon.

The Emerging Man writing to ENCOURAGE, EQUIP & ENGAGE!!