April 2

Samson and Micah, two lives that give us great lessons.

If we do not realize our utter dependency on God, the total depravity of our humanity, the veritable spiritual lack of us all, we will pray little. Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 in giving us the famous beatitudes spoke to this very revelation when He declared, "... blessed are the poor in spirit because the kingdom of heaven is theirs." What is the correlation between being poor in spirit and possessing the kingdom of heaven? Prayer. When we see how poor we are within, we put the full weight of our lives on Jesus, living in a place of constant petition.

We read the account of Samson and wonder how he could have been so naive. Delilah had demonstrated her deceitfulness on three prior occasions, was Samson naive? No, he was arrogant, he had lost is proper self-perception, he had lost his sense of utter dependence on God, he had come to believe that his strength was his own. He told his secret because he was convinced he himself possessed his own strength. A hard lesson to learn. We see his strength returning because we see him returning to a place of prayer, a place of total dependence upon God in the last moments of his life. Judges 16:28, "Sovereign Lord, remember me again. O God, please strengthen me just one more time." If ever we loose our sense of spiritual poverty, God loves us enough to bring us to our knees, for the sake of our eternity.

Micah is the same story. There he is at the end of Judges 18, running down a road, chasing after a band of warriors who have stolen his idols, stolen his priest, stolen the sacred objects of his temple, exclaiming, "I have nothing left." God loves us enough to take from us everything that we have embraced that displaces Him. Here, Micah eschews his depravity, but what he has yet to see is that in that moment, he was rich beyond measure. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven."

It is intriguing to find in Revelation when the tribes of Israel are listed in chapter 7 that Dan is no where to be found. Why? We find our answer in Judges 18. What had formerly been the sin of one family became the sin of an entire Israelite tribe for generations upon generation upon generation, never again to regain their revelation of God dependence, never again to re-discover their spiritual poverty, never again to live in a place of constant petition, never again to put the full weight of their lives on Him... losing the kingdom of heaven.

If you feel like God has taken much from you, don't frown, smile, even in your darkest hour. He only takes that He might give what lasts forever, eternal life.

Pastor Fred