Tag Archives: samson

April 29, 2025 · 5:57 AM

Confession And Restoration

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was in my teens. I remember vividly seeing prominent people in the faith succumb to sin and have to admit it publicly. There were famous ministers, TV preachers and even Christian’s singers who failed. I remember that Christians, for the most part, joined the world in tearing them down and shunning them. As is appropriate, they were removed from their ministry, but beyond that, they were shunned. Some went to prison, some to therapy and at least one became homeless. Watching their stories and how they were treated made me wonder if restoration was possible or if God could ever use them again. Then I wondered, “If I failed, could God still use me after I repented?”

In Judges 13-16, we read the story of Samson. He was called of God and set apart from before he was born to lead and deliver Israel. When he became a man, he was used by God to destroy Philistine towns and kill thousands of their people. However, fell in love with a Philistine woman named Delilah, which was against God’s rules on marrying pagan wives. She convinced him to give up the secret to his anointing and removed his hair. Chapter 16 verse 20 says, “He didn’t realize the Lord had left him” (NLT). He was publicly defeated, shamed and punished. Then at the end of the chapter, he prayed and asked God to use him again. His last act killed more of their enemies than at any other time in his life.

David was another prominent person who sinned and was called out. I love Psalm 51, which is his prayer for repentance. He asks God for mercy, to wash him clean of his guilt and to have a clean heart and a right spirit. Then verse 12 says, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.” After he faced his consequences, God not only restored that joy, but continued to use him. Stories like Samson and David show us that when we repent, God can still use us. We will face consequences for our actions, but God doesn’t give us a life sentence. If you’ve failed God, you must come clean, confess and repent. That’s the first step to having your joy restored and being used by God again.

Note: Every person mentioned here could have prevented their fall by being accountable to someone. Accountability is something we all need in our lives to help us walk upright with the Lord, whether we’re ministers or not. Find someone who you can trust to tell everything to so they can help you in your areas of weakness and temptation.

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June 4, 2024 · 5:42 AM

Minimizing Distractions

Stephen Covey developed and taught his four quadrants model to show how we spend our time. Quadrant one is on things that are urgent and important. It includes pressing problems, crisis and things with deadlines approaching. Quadrant two is on things are important but not urgent. It includes things like personal growth, long term planning and relationship building. Three is on things that are not urgent but important. It includes interruptions, handling other people’s issues and emails. Finally four is on things that are not important and are not urgent. This includes watching TV, social media and down time activities. These are all things we spend time on, but three quadrants are full of distractions while one invests in your future. Quadrant two gives us the greatest impact to our lives, but we spend most of our time in the other three because we’re easily distracted.

We all heard of Samson and how strong he was. From a child, God gave him a set of rules to live by that would set him apart and give him supernatural strength. Over time, he quit living in the area God told him to and started getting distracted. In Judges 14, a woman from an enemy country caught his eye and he wanted to marry her against his parent’s wishes. The Lord used it though. Then he killed a lion which later he ate honey out of going against God’s Laws. In chapter 16 he met Delilah who distracted him and cut off his hair removing his strength. In the end, he prayed and killed more of his enemies on his last day than on all his other days. He was a man whom God could have done so much more with, but he lived a distracted life that minimized the impact he could have had.

In Psalm 119:37 David prayed, “Turn my eyes away from vanity [all those worldly, meaningless things that distract—let Your priorities be mine], And restore me [with renewed energy] in Your ways” (AMP). This is a prayer we all need to pray. Our lives are filled with distractions (some necessary and some unnecessary) that keep us from our purpose. Our eyes and hearts are like Samson’s at times drawing us away from the things God has called us to. We can spend all day doing things, but are simply spinning our tires going nowhere with no impact. We must take time each day to focus on God’s priorities for our life and ask Him for renewed energy like Samson did so we can accomplish all He’s created us to do. Take some time to think about your distractions and then find a way to create some space where you minimize them or remove them from your life so you can spend energy and time on God’s priorities for your future.

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March 1, 2023 · 5:51 AM

Receiving Nutrients

When my son was little, he did what most kids do. He would see flowers in the yard and pick them for his mom. Then he would come to me to get a cup of water to put them in. He would say, “I want them to live forever and be beautiful.” I would always reply, “if you wanted them to live you should have left them in the ground. The moment you took them out, they began to die.” He would want to know why. After explaining it, he would insist that they would keep living because we had them in water. Plants and flowers need more than water though. They need the nutrients that come from the soil in order to continue to bloom and grow. It was a hard concept for him. It’s also a biblical concept that we must remember as well.

In the book of Judges 13, we read the story of Samson. Before he was born, the Lord told his parents that he should be raised as a Nazarite. He could never drink alcohol, eat unclean food or cut his hair. God also said that he would begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. His parents obeyed and so did he for a while. He was given super strength as a result. However, instead of delivering the Israelites from the Philistines, he decided to make one of their women his wife. He separated himself from God’s plan for him. Being away from where he was supposed to be, he succumbed to her constant questioning and told her the source of his strength. He did kill many Philistines in his final act, but how much more could he have done if he had followed God’s plan for his life?

In John 15.5, Jesus said, “I am the Vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him bears much fruit, for [otherwise] apart from Me [that is, cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing” (AMP). We must choose to remain in Christ if we want to fulfill our purpose. The moment we quit living the way He called us to, we begin to lose our vital nutrients for life. We remain in Him through prayer and reading the Bible as well. The Bible is often referred to as water. There was also a time when the disciples offered Jesus food and He told them that He had food they didn’t know about. That food was found in prayer and doing the will of the Father. We will find spiritual nutrients for our soul by doing the same thing. The good news is that if you haven’t remained in Him, you can be grafted back in to receive all He has for you.

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November 30, 2022 · 5:40 AM

Sowing Wisely

I used to have my son plant a small garden each spring to teach him about sowing and reaping. When the plants would come up, I would point out that only what we planted came out of the ground. The same is true in life with what we plant with our money, our time and effort. Sometimes we sow into an idea, a ministry, a company, a person or ourselves. Where we sow matters as much as what we sow. It’s important to work the soil, to feed the soil and maintain it. We also experimented with planting one seed in each place verses multiple seeds. There are so many things to consider when you’re sowing and reaping, but when it comes to our lives, we rarely take that much interest unfortunately.

Samson was a person in the Bible most known for his strength. He was a miracle baby brown to an infertile woman who showed a lot of tears and prayers (Judges 13). From his conception, God ordained that he would be a Nazarite meaning he had special rules to live by. However, he began sowing into the wrong things. He sowed seeds into his fleshly desires rather than into the things of God. He decided to marry a Philistine rather than an Israelite. While he still had his strength and he was still used by God, his life was in shambles because of where and what he was sowing. It eventually became his undoing. Seeds eventually grow up and produce a harvest in our lives, and that’s what happened to him.

Galatians 6:8 says, “If you plant in the field of your natural desires, from it you will gather the harvest of death; if you plant in the field of the Spirit, from the Spirit you will gather the harvest of eternal life” (GNT). Where have you been planting in your life? Have you been giving in to your flesh or God’s Spirit in you? Think about the harvest you want to reap in your life. It’s not too late to change what and where you sow. God always gives us a choice, so it’s important to be intentional about the seeds. You may not be given physical strength like Samson, but your spiritual strength will increase as a result. The field you plant in is where you will harvest. Look at your life today to see where you have been planting. Ask God for wisdom going forward and don’t plant sparingly with your seed if you want a greater harvest.

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October 26, 2022 · 6:04 AM

A Disciplined Life

Around the turn of the millennium, most Americans were following a sport we knew very little about or even cared about until that time. Lance Armstrong was dominating the Tour de France like no one else. All of a sudden people were wearing yellow “Live Strong” bracelets and watching cycling. His story was compelling since he had overcome cancer and found a way to dominate a sport we cared nothing about. People accused him of cheating, but that’s what losers do…we thought. When it came out he was, it was hard to take. We’re familiar with how strict athletes are with their diet, their exercise and discipline. We chalked his success up to that instead of him doing the unthinkable.

The Bible tells the stories of everyday people, their choices and the results. Samson was a man who had taken a Nazarite vow from birth. It was a very disciplined life. He couldn’t cut his hair, drink wine or be near a dead body. It was a life of abstinence from indulgence in order to honor God. Samson followed the vow, but found ways to indulge himself in other areas that cost him his life and reputation. However, he wasn’t the only one to be a Nazarite. Samuel was given the same vow as a kid. The difference was that he honored the commitment in all areas of his life. God honored him and the people respected him. His commitment to his vow resulted in a life that was distinguished. He had seen from his predecessor Eli what happens when people indulge in their fleshly desires over their commitment to God.

1 Corinthians 9:25 says, “A true athlete will be disciplined in every respect, practicing constant self-control in order to win a laurel wreath that quickly withers. But we run our race to win a victor’s crown that will last forever” (TPT). Paul compares us to an athlete here who is disciplined in all areas of their life. We all have the choice to honor God in all aspects of our lives or to honor Him in some areas and to indulge in others. It’s human nature to follow in the steps of Lance Armstrong and Samson. They’re examples of what happens when we give into our flesh. Samuel is an example of someone who is Spirit led. That’s the life we’ve been called to and the one we committed to when we accepted Christ. It’s not about being perfect or even trying to use our behavior to honor God. It’s understanding we’re called to a life of discipline with our eyes on eternity. We shouldn’t be trying to see what we can get away with and still get to Heaven. Instead, we should seek God and try to honor Him in all areas of our life.

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May 20, 2015 · 7:35 AM

False Assumptions

One of the most frightening verses in the Bible to me is Judges 16:20. Samson was a judge of Israel and probably the strongest man who ever lived. He was given supernatural strength at times in his life and was used by God to fight the Philistines. We all know how Delilah tricked him into telling the secret of his strength. When she had his hair cut off while he was sleeping, she let Philistines in the house to capture him. Verse 20 says, “Then she shouted, ‘Samson! The Philistines are coming!’ He woke up, thought, ‘I’ll get loose and go free, as always.’ He did not know (realize) that the Lord had left him.”

The first thing that stood out to me is that the enemy is coming. There’s not a time as a believer that the enemy is not coming for us. He is always behind the scenes trying to get to the source of our strength. He knows that if he can get to our source, he can cause us to fall. Like Samson, he wants to bind us up and blind us spiritually. The enemy desires to make each one of us as ineffective as possible. We must stand guard against him. I Peter 5:8 says, “Stay alert! Watch out for your enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

The next thing I saw is that Samson became complacent with the gifts God had given him. He assumed that what had always worked in the past would work in the future. He felt like he was above sin. He thought he could play with fire and not get burned because he had always gotten away with it. Numbers 32:23 says, “You may be sure that your sin will find you out.” Just because you’ve sinned and haven’t had major consequences in the past doesn’t mean you won’t get them in the future. Don’t become so complacent with sin that you think God will always overlook it.

The last thing that frightens me is that he didn’t even realize that God had left him. Since he was a young boy, the Lord’s spirit had been with him. It had become normal for him to experience it. For some reason, he forgot that his strength was supernatural and thought it was his own. He relied less on God’s presence and more on his own wisdom. When we do that, we push God’s presence out if our lives. God expects us to get our spiritual strength from him and to not rely on our works to save us. In II Corinthians 12:9, God reminded Paul that it wasn’t about him. He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.”

Samson’s biggest problem was assumption. He assumed that he would always be able to defeat the enemy and that it was his strength and not God’s. His assumptions caused him to lose the power of God in his life. When he repented, God was able to use him one more time to defeat the Philistines. He finally learned that it wasn’t about his ability, but God’s. He remembered that his strength came from God and not from within. When we do that, we can be prepared for any attack the enemy brings and defeat him in the strength of the Lord. 

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