God will make Himself known and will exercise His authority.  This is His nature.  We are privileged to learn about His nature by seeing how He acts in lives of the people in the Bible.

Last week in our church’s reading the Bible in a year program, we read about Samson (Judges 13-Judges16).  Samson was a Nazirite, this means that he was set apart to God from birth. His parents made that vow for him.  A similar vow was made by the parents of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-17) when the angel of the LORD visited his father.  Like Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, Samson’s mother had been childless, and was visited by the Angel of the LORD:

And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:3-5).

As a Nazirite, Samson was supposed to maintain a higher standard of holiness than most Israelites were required by the Law to maintain. Unfortunately, he did not keep the Nazirite vow.  In fact, he did not even keep the Law as it was required of ordinary Israelites.  He was unfaithful to God over and over again.

Samson went after foreign women, which was strictly forbidden.  He slaughtered countless people simply for offending his pride.  He consorted with prostitutes.  He touched and ate unclean things, including the incident where he ate the honey from the carcass of a lion he had killed days before.  He did an even greater wrong when he gave some of the honey to his parents without telling them they were eating something unclean.  To me this is worse than serving roadkill to your dinner guests and not telling them!  Can’t you just hear, “it tastes like chicken…”?  Ewww!

From the beginning, Samson’s parents started out with really good intentions.  They actually had quite an earnest discussion with the Angel of the LORD, in an effort to make sure that they knew how to keep the Nazirite vow faithfully (Judges 13:12).  But, in the end, they were pushovers!  They did right by counseling their son against marrying from among the Philistines (Judges 14:3); but they caved and “got” his foreign wife for him (Judges 14:5, 10).

When parents don’t hold to God’s standard, they are giving up on their children, and giving them over to sin.  Samson’s weak-willed parents participated in his disobedience of the law.  These days we would call parents like that “enablers”…and they might get their own reality TV show for that kind of behavior.

Here is the crux of the problem for Samson and the other Israelites during the days of the Judges: In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6; 21:25).  So Samson and his dysfunctional family were kind of a spiritual train wreck.  He lived as a law unto himself. Obviously he had not been taught to respect earthly authority, much less Yahweh.  There is a lesson for modern parents in this story.  If we truly love our children, then we will discipline them, we will tell them no, and we will teach them how to obey in both small and big things.

Samson’s story started out as such a wonderful promise: for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines (Judges 13:50).  But the account of his life ended in disappointment, despair and death: And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life (Judges 16:30).

What me and the kids saw in the story of Samson was that, in spite of all the evil that he did, God used him to accomplish His plan for Israel. Samson did indeed “begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5).  God’s plan was accomplished in spite of Samson’s sin.

God had gifted Samson with amazing physical strength.  But he lived life badly due to his spiritual weakness.  Samson did not put God first and, instead constantly sought to satisfy his Flesh.  What an wonderful hero he would have been if he had lived his life unto the glory of God!

I see an important lesson here for myself, maybe you can see it too?  We cannot be ruled by our own desires and actively participate in the glorification of God.  God will be glorified through us, or in spite of us.  So His plan is not dependent upon us, in particular; and it is only His generosity that allows us to take part in it at all.

I love seeing God at work in my life and in the lives of my family.  Sometimes God works in our lives through our triumphs and sometimes He works through our tragedies.  Either way, we have a choice about working alongside Him.  Jesus said it this way: Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters (Matt 12:30).

I leave you with this thought, hoping that it might comfort you, like it comforts me…as I’ve said, the lesson from the story of Samson is that God works out His plans, regardless of the mistakes we make.  The flip side of this coin is that we cannot destroy His work.  Our mistakes do not wreck His plan.  And thankfully, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (John 1:9).

Tell me, how is God working in your life now – through triumph or tragedy?  Are you able to see His Hand in all that is happening?  He is there…He is here. 🙂

Hugs,

Britta ~ I am justAgirl…just like you!