Really looking forward to the first worship concert that I will attend in September at the Ultra. After singing more than a dozen Citipointe Live songs in church on Sundays, I guess it’s time that I get to see the band in person.
Tree roots for a hammock and splashing waves for music. It doesn’t get any better than this!
Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued. Judges 16: 6
The story of Samson and Delilah is one of the most interesting stories of the Bible because for the most part, it reads like fiction about how a very strong man was subdued into submission by a beautiful woman. When I was a kid, I thought it was one of those fairy tale stories that were meant to teach us moral lessons in the end. Little did I know that the story was actually taken from the Bible and it contained richer spiritual lessons for our lives today.
One such lesson that struck me today when I chanced upon the passage was how Samson didn’t protect the source of his strength. On many occasions, we read of his loose morals. Like so many young people today, he was one who sowed wild oats wherever he went. He was young, he wanted to enjoy life and he wanted to explore the wonders of his sexuality. Whenever he saw a girl he liked, he’d do everything he can to get her even if it meant stirring up trouble. His extraordinary strength afforded him everything he ever wanted. It was probably the coolest thing in the world for a guy.
But the day of reckoning came faster than he expected. He met the beautiful Delilah and in a short period of time, his world crumbled down.
In his preoccupation with pleasure, Samson forgot to protect the source of his strength. He forgot that God gave him power to accomplish something greater than his escapades. His gifts were meant to deliver Israel, not create a harem of girls who swoon when they see him. He forgot that to maintain his power, he needed to keep his commitment and integrity as a Nazirite.
The tragedy of Samson’s life speaks loud and clear to us today. It teaches us to cover and protect the very things that make us strong. That includes our time of communion with God when we read our Bibles and pray; our fellowship with other believers when we attend church and discipleship groups; our commitment to our calling; our personal time of worship and a hundred other things that keep us spiritually strong and refreshed.
How are you protecting the things that keep you strong?
Most of us are familiar with the parable of the banquet in Luke 14: 16- 24.
A wealthy man threw a party and sent out invitations. When everything was ready, he sent out his servants to collect the RSVP cards but was disheartened to know that his esteemed guests were not coming. The reasons they were not coming make for an interesting study of the excuses we often make when we want to wriggle ourselves out of God’s call. One just bought a field, another was going to try out a newly bought oxen while the other one just got married.
Let’s break the story down using our own terminologies and see if we find ourselves in it. One guy bought real estate. This sounds big to me. He must have been a rising entrepreneur or a really dedicated career person and this was his first real possession. All his years of hard work finally paid off and he meant to enjoy it before he goes around rejoicing at other people’s parties.
The second one was tied down by the burdens of work. His oxen (a new-fangled farming technology at that time) represent how he must be on top of things at work. Maybe he just got promoted, he’s got responsibilities to attend to and partying was the last thing on his mind.
The third guy’s concern was his family. I know how we often hear people say that they will never sacrifice their families on the altar of success in the ministry or work or business or anything else. That sounds very reasonable and admirable at the same time. Family comes first, we get that. But this guy has lost all his manners when he got married. Attending a banquet and staying married are NOT conflicting things.
Now we are all aware that this story is a parable of God’s invitation for us to join his banquet in heaven. What’s very interesting about this is the fact that all their alibis were not sinful things. Never. I mean look at them again. There is nothing wrong with buying a piece of land, nothing sinful with being excellent at your job and definitely nothing unholy about keeping your marriage solid. For the record, these are good things, in fact, these are the very things we strongly pray about! Properties, a high paying job and a good marriage- who doesn’t pray for these?
So if that’s the case, what is wrong with this picture then? I guess the answer lies in the fact that they could have all gone to the banquet and still managed to attend to their individual businesses. I mean, whoever told them that obeying God is mutually exclusive with having a good life? Looking closely, you’ll find that their problem is the indifference behind their reasons. They didn’t care about the invitation and by extension, the didn’t care about the person behind the invitation.
You know what’s the most regrettable and heartbreaking part of this whole thing? They got excluded from the glorious banquet of God not because of some grave, despicable sins they did but because they were blessed with answered prayers. For some reasons, they got too caught up with enjoying God’s blessings that they forgot to maintain a right relationship with the blessor.
Story has it that in the middle of working on another masterpiece, Leonardo da Vinci laid down his brushes to answer a knock on his door. Outside was an elderly man who needed help with his water line. Da Vinci dropped what he was doing, picked up his tools and went out the door to help the old man. We don’t know if he made for a good plumber or if he was even able to finish the job. What we know is that the work of art that he started that day remained unfinished till the day he died.
Interruption. Everyone knows what it’s like. You start a personal project that’s very important to you and just out of the blue, some other things scream for attention and before you know it, you’re reduced to responding to the urgent needs around you. Some years later you realized your project remains unfinished. Where have all the hours gone?
Or maybe you set aside a time to read your Bible at a very convenient time but just when you were about to receive a very important revelation from God, your cellular phone started ringing. You dropped your Bible to check the message and realized it was just a funny Facebook update. You check your computer and before you know it, you’ve been surfing the internet for hours. Meanwhile, your Bible sat on the empty table, unread; and the revelation that would have changed your life vanished into thin air.
But not all interruptions are bad. When Jesus was on His way to Jairus’ house to pray for his sick daughter, a woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years interrupted Him. She crawled through the crowd to touch Jesus’ robes and when she did, she was instantly healed. Jesus stopped in His tracks to investigate the power that He felt came out of Him. We know how the story unfolded but what we often forget is that while this exchange was going on, Jairus was anxiously waiting for Jesus to wrap up His investigation and proceed to his house so his daughter can be healed.
I have a feeling that Jairus wished the woman didn’t interrupt them at all. His daughter was on the verge of death and the woman who interrupted them looked like she could survive a few more hours of not getting her miracle. Why Jesus lingered was simply beyond him. Then the news came and shattered his last hope for miracle. His daughter’s dead, he need not bother the Master! I could just imagine the look of accusation in his eyes. If only the woman didn’t interrupt them… If only Jesus hurried a little…
Few verses later, we learned that his daughter was resurrected from the dead, a far more glorious miracle than rising up from the sick bed. The interruption was intentional in the plan of God. Partly, it was meant to teach us that there are times when we have to give in to divine interruptions just so we can allow God to work out something.
But how do we know which interruption is from God and which one is not? Now that’s something that needs a lot of practice and fine tuning in our part. Learning to listen to the voice of God is not something we can learn from a blog or a book. We’ve got to do it, live it, and learn it ourselves.
Disclosure: This post is inspired by Joe McKeever’s “Interruptions: Blessings and Burdens,” posted on October 28, 2003
Hagar had a good life. God promised her that her son Ishmael would have descendants that will be too numerous to count. Then a quick turn of events caused her and her son to be kicked out of Abraham’s household, sending them blundering in the wilderness without enough food and water to sustain them. With their supplies running out and the boy getting very weak of the journey, Hagar laid Ishmael under a shrub to die while she went a little farther to give in to her despair.
Who’s gonna hear her there? No one. They were alone in the wilderness, her son was dying and she has resigned herself to the same fate. All she could do was cry. No, it wasn’t a prayer, just plain, hopeless bleating. She was weak, too weak to even see her son draw his last breath. She was waiting for grief and despair to claim her. But she forgot one thing: God’s promise that Ishmael would be great.
In his dying state, Ishmael did something he learned from his father- he prayed to the God of the Hebrews. He prayed hard, in fact, the Bible says he lifted up his voice and cried. I know most translations would say it was Hagar who prayed but in the original Hebrew, the voice that was lifted up was masculine, indicating that it was Ishmael who prayed. Gen. 21: 27 confirms it, it says that the Lord heard the voice of the lad.
Hagar’s deliverance came from an unexpected place. It was brought about by a genuine prayer of a dying boy and the faithfulness of the God who never forgets any of His promises. Just when her last strand of hope was about to snap, God stepped in and by miraculous providence, a spring of water appeared near them and sustained them in the dessert. They were not going to die after all. Even if Ishmael’s posterity would grow to be the fiercest enemy of Isaac’s children for generations, God simply doesn’t abandon those whom a promised is made to.
You might sometimes find yourself in a situation where you are too discouraged to even get up and breath. Don’t despair. Even the castaways are never forsaken. They live on and they find hope in God. They find help even in unexpected places. Yes, even a dying boy’s prayer can be your ticket to deliverance. Just hang on and say a prayer.
Jojo Agot 