Samson’s Victory
By Matt Watson
Before Dale was a beloved father and grandfather, a doting husband, and an enthusiastic servant of the church, he was a philanderer and a deadbeat. He gave his wife herpes from sleeping with prostitutes while in the Navy and often neglected his family. His frequent absences led one of his sons toward gang involvement, and his children didn’t always have proper meals (true story: as an adult one was caught eating a banana with the peel on because he didn’t know to peel it first). Dale's life could only be categorized as a miserable mess and failure.
But one day, his son—the one who didn’t know how to eat a banana—started following the Lord. He became a pastor and, with his family and church family, led Dale to the Lord in the last few years of his life. I had the joy of celebrating God when Dale emerged from the baptismal waters in the Dan River of North Carolina. Two years later, I had the solemn joy of helping Dale hobble to the bathroom when he was dying of cancer. When he died, a friend and I led worship at his funeral. One song Dale had requested was "Jesus Take All of Me (Just As I Am)," which says in the second verse:
“Just as I am, though tossed about
With all my conflict, all my doubt,
Fightings and fears, within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
Dale is a living example of what little faith can do. God did not have to save Dale, but he did. God did not have to answer the prayers of his wife and children, but he did. Despite what seemed like an impossibly hopeless prayer, as the object of our faith, God has all the power to make it so.
Fighting for Faith
The verse from the song above applied to Samson as it did to Dale. Samson royally messed up his life. Though he was raised in a godly home, he rejected God and did a fantastic job of showing us the consequences of "living your truth." In the end, it led to his eyes being gouged out and his being forced to work as a slave. That should have been the end, but it wasn't.
“Then Samson called to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.’”
He was taunted and mocked, paraded before the Philistines in the temple of their false God. God gave Samson his strength back, and he tore down the temple, toppling it onto himself in the process.
The Christian life is a fight for faith and a fight for repentance. Samson’s prayer, while blinded and enslaved, is a prayer of faith—little and imperfect though it was. We can say that because of the object of Samson’s faith: God.
God is so good and so faithful that if he has declared we are his, then we are his.
“But now thus says the Lord,
He who created you, O Jacob,
He who formed you, O Israel:
’Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.’”
God will always remember his covenant with his people (Hebrews 6:13-20). There was a vow between Samson and God and, even though Samson did not remember it, in the end, God did. Samson had nothing to offer. His strength wasn’t even his; it was the Lord’s. In all his conflict and doubt, fightings and fears, he called out to the sovereign God, King of all the universe, and God answered, showing us that while we are alive it is never too late to repent and keep fighting for faith.
Samson’s victory isn’t that he killed the Philistines like a suicide bomber. His victory was on a personal level, one that came to grips with who he was in light of who God is. His victory was on a strategic level that he took more Philistines in one fell swoop than he had in the previous 20 years as a judge.
However, on a cosmic level, Samson’s victory was that his God was faithful. God defeated the Philistines. God honors our weak faith because it has nothing to do with us anyway. It has everything to do with the object of our faith.
Who or What is the Object of Your Faith?
Is it your spouse? What will happen if they let you down, cheat on you, or neglect you? When they don’t do the chore they agreed to do or don’t manage the home in the way you want?
Is it your children? What happens when they misbehave or rebel, or don’t make the team, or don’t come home with straight A’s, or they sleep with their girlfriend in the back of their Honda Civic?
Is your faith in your job? What will happen if you get laid off? What happens when your boss is an idiot and doesn’t see your potential, and you get slighted for that promotion?
The strength of your faith doesn’t matter; it's the object. Samson’s strength was a gift from the Lord, not a result of training in Hebrew Strongman competitions. You can’t muster up the will to run the race with endurance if you don’t have your faith firmly rooted in our Lord King.
Paul says,
“Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Samson’s end is a grace from God. It was hardly ideal for Samson’s desires, but God was good anyway. Samson’s story is a story of tragedy and unfaithfulness that ultimately points us to God's faithfulness.
We have an imperfect faith, but Jesus perfects it. His perfect faith is accounted to us while our faithlessness is accounted to Him. Place your faith in the One who never changes. Samson did, as did Dale, and they are part of the cloud of witnesses cheering us on to endure.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
This article was originally published by Matthew Watson with Awake! Put on strength!, and is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.