A kindergarten teacher was observing her students while they were drawing pictures, She occasionally walked around to see each child’s artwork. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” The teacher paused and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”
i am just as quick to say basically the same thing, but then coming to realize that the picture that i have of God is not always who He actually is. In 2006 God told me to forget everything i knew about business, marketing, and church. He went on to say that i was to forget everything i thought i knew about Him as well. What i think God is or is not can be ohhhhhh so wrong.
I was talking about Sampson yesterday and i found myself asking, how he got to where he was. Was he “There?” Samson’s activity takes place during a time when God was punishing the Israelites, by giving them “into the hand of the Philistines”. An angel appears to Manoah, an Israelite and to his wife, who had been unable to conceive. The angel proclaims that the couple will soon have a son who will begin to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines. The wife believed the angel, but her husband wasn’t present, at first, and wanted the heavenly messenger to return, asking that he himself could also receive instruction about the child that was going to be born.
Requirements were set up by the angel (abstain from wine or any fermented drink, do not drink grape juice or eat grapes or raisins, not even the seeds or skins. Next, was not to cut his hair for the length of the vow. Last, he was not to go near a dead body because that would make him ceremonially unclean. Even if a member of his immediate family died, he was not to go near the corpse.) that Manoah’s wife (as well as the child) were to abstain from. He was to be a “Nazirite” from birth. In ancient Israel, those wanting to be especially dedicated to God for a while could take a nazarite vow, which included things like the aforementioned as well as other stipulations. After the angel returned, Manoah soon prepared a sacrifice, but the Messenger would only allow it to be for God, touching his staff to it, miraculously engulfing it in flames. The angel then ascended up into the sky in the fire. This was such dramatic evidence as to the nature of the messenger, that Manoah feared for his life, as it has been said that no-one can live after seeing God; however, his wife soon convinced him that if God planned to slay them, he would never have revealed such things to them to begin with. In due time the son, Samson, is born; he is raised according to the provisions.
When he becomes a young adult, Samson leaves the hills of his people to see the cities of the Philistines. While there, Samson falls in love with a Philistine woman, overcoming the objections of his parents who do not know that “it is of the Lord”, he decides to marry. The intended marriage is actually part of God’s plan to strike at the Philistines. On the way to ask for the woman’s hand in marriage, Samson is attacked by a Lion and simply grabs it and rips it apart, as the spirit of God moves upon him, divinely empowering him. This so profoundly affects Samson that he just keeps it to himself as a secret. He continues on to the Philistine’s house, winning her hand in marriage. On his way to the wedding, Samson notices that bees have nested in the (DEAD) carcass of the lion and have made honey. He eats a handful of the honey and gives some to his parents. At the wedding-feast, Samson proposes that he tell a riddle to his thirty groomsmen (all Philistines); if they can solve it, he will give them thirty pieces of fine linen and garments. The riddle (“Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet”) is a veiled account of his second encounter with the lion (at which only he was present). The Philistines are infuriated by the riddle. The thirty groomsmen tell Samson’s new wife that they will burn her and her father’s household if she does not discover the answer to the riddle and tell it to them. At the urgent and tearful imploring of his bride, Samson tells her the solution, and she tells it to the thirty groomsmen.
Before sunset on the seventh day they said to him, “What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?” Samson said to them, “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle.” He flies into a rage and kills thirty Philistines for their garments, which he gives his thirty groomsmen. Still in a rage, he returns to his father’s house and his bride is given to the best man as his wife. Her father refuses to allow him to see her and wishes to give Samson the younger sister. Samson attached torches to the tails of three hundred foxes, leaving the panicked beasts to run through the fields of the Philistines, burning all in their wake. The Philistines find out why Samson burned their crops and they burn Samson’s wife and father-in-law to death. In revenge, Samson slaughters many more Philistines, smiting them “hip and thigh”.
Samson then takes refuge in a cave. An army of Philistines went up and demanded from 3000 men of Judah to deliver them Samson. With Samson’s consent, they tie him with two new ropes and are about to hand him over to the Philistines when he breaks free. Using the jawbone of a donkey, he slays one thousand Philistines. This is where i picked up yesterday, but what a mess and i understand so much more now knowing the beginning. Seems to me Sampson repeated the same things over and over and it always involved a woman that his flesh was drawn to.
Spiritually, i like Samson lose sight of my calling from God and gave up my greatest gifts, to please my flesh which captures my affections. In the end it cost Sampson his physical sight, his freedom, his dignity, and eventually his life. No doubt, as he sat in prison, eyeless and zapped of strength, Samson felt like a failure.
At the end of his life, blind and humbled, Samson finally realized his utter dependence upon God. Amazing grace! He once was blind, but now could see. No matter how far i’ve fallen away from God, no matter how big i’ve failed, it’s never too late to humble myself and turn to my dependence on God. Ultimately, through his sacrificial death, Samson turned his miserable mistakes into victory. Let Samson’s example persuade me to “Be” different.
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