by Wesley Blackburn
One of the things that I think indicates how real, authentic, and true that the Bible is is the people we discover that God uses throughout it. Yesterday, we looked at the life of a skeptic, doubter, nearly paranoid man named Gideon. Today, we see God's story in an angry, impulsive, womanizing man named Samson.
There's no question that God used Samson to do something good in his time. The Philistines were lording over the people of Israel, and Samson was used to help win back some freedom for the Israelites against the Philistine Empire. But I only wonder reading this story how much more good Samson could have done if he would have actually dedicated himself to the Lord, serving the Lord, and living in the way God would want him to live.
Just look at his life. From the very first time we meet Samson, he's in Philistine territory and is wooed by one of the beautiful Philistine women (as we continue reading the Old Testament, we'll discover Israelite men marrying women is a sure fire recipe for people falling away from God). When his parents start to express some concerns over this, what is Samson's response? "Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes." In other words, I want this girl. I don't care what you say. What God says. I want her and now. What's ironic is that later, when Samson got angry, he would march away heated, and end up putting into sequence a series of events that would lead to his wife (and father-in-law) being killed.
Later on, the Bible tells us that Samson had sex with a prostitute (Judges 16:1). Again, not a very smart decision on Samson's part. It could have led to his being killed in an ambush. But as if that wasn't enough, Samson decided to get tied up with another woman: the infamous Delilah. It would be Delilah who would discover the secret to Samson's incredible strength (his hair) and then betray him and turn him over to the Philistines. Things would be dire, but at the end of his life, Samson would in one final display of strength kill 3,000 Philistines.
But I have no doubt that God wanted to do so much more with Samson's life. But Samson would have none of it. He kept making bad choice after bad choice, rash decision after rash decision, and he never put himself in situations where God could really do a whole lot of anything with his life. Surely, Samson could have been a mighty leader like Moses, Joshua, Gideon, or any of the other leaders before him and could have been used to gain the Israelites their freedom. But (as his life shows us), Samson just wasn't really willing to align himself with God's will.
I think that's a lesson for all of us. If we aren't willing to align ourselves with God's will, we shouldn't really expect Him to do a whole lot with our lives or to work a things in our favor. Sure, there will be moments... there were in Samson's life just as there were in the lives of other ungodly men and women in the Bible (like King Saul) or even today in the lives of people who really just don't care about God. But if we really want to be used to do great things, that means we must have the humility of a servant, submitting ourselves to the perfect will of God as revealed to us in Scripture. We may not like it, but that's the way God works. After all, why should He put His hand with someone who won't use any of God's blessing to in any way help or bless others?
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