Shift Your Story Before the Last Chapter

Samson had the gift, and then he had the drift. Now I want you to see his shift.

In prison, after they put out his eyes, his hair began to grow back. Maybe that's what I need. And there, he finally prays:

Then Samson called to the LORD, saying, "O Lord GOD, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!" (Judges 16:28)

I wish this were him finally getting it, but it's not. He's still selfish. He's praying for strength for revenge, not to fulfill God's purpose. And God still sees fit to give him one more dose of his gift. The temple collapses on the lords of the Philistines.

So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life. (Judges 16:30)

That's not God's approval. It's God fulfilling His purpose through someone totally rebellious.

I think he was scrawny

Here's my take, and we can argue about it sometime: I don't think Samson had big muscles. I think he was scrawny, like a teenage boy. That's why everybody kept trying to find out where his strength came from. If he'd been built like the Hulk, nobody would have asked. "Oh, you go to the gym a lot, huh?" His strength came from God.

Spiritual strength vs. strength of spirit

There's a difference between spiritual strength and strength of spirit. We've all seen people go through a battle or a medical condition and just plow through, and we say, "They've really got strength of spirit." They've got heart. They've got chutzpah.

But that isn't the same as spiritual strength. Spiritual strength comes from the Holy Spirit of God. It's a gift. Strength of spirit may be heart, and our hearts can be deceitful. Samson was intent on revenge. We could admire his inner strength as a blind man, but no.

When we get this right, we have power from on high. It's not our own ideas or our own heart. It's the will of God, the work of God, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God at work in our lives. Then that gives us the heart to run into battle.

Move your shift earlier

God answered a blind man in a pagan temple. In some ways, his story was rescued. It stopped being about how selfish, foolish, and rebellious he was. What was a tragedy became a sad triumph. His story shifted in the postscript.

What if you could move your shift earlier in the storyline? What if, after Timnah, after the foxes, after the gates of Gaza and the jawbone, but before Delilah, he had woken up and said, "What am I doing? I've been blessed with so much. Why am I continuing this?"

Maybe you have all the gifts and privileges of a church kid, but you've been going through your religious routine and doing your own thing. God keeps coming to the rescue, and you've started presuming He always will. What would it look like to shift your story before the last line of the final chapter?

God may want to change your story today, right where you are. You've been presuming on God, but now you're going to pause and pray before you proceed.

Lord, we don't want just physical strength. We want spiritual strength. Fill us this week, use us, and bring us back next week with testimonies of Your greatness, Your goodness, and Your grace.