S2 Episode 12 | The Fallen Strongman

S2 Episode 12 | The Fallen Strongman, In this episode Leon discusses the life of Samson. He points out keys to think about and how we can use this Bible account to help us in our life today. Please comment where you're watching/Listening from!

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Unqualified Podcast with Leon Wilson. That's me. Thanks uh for stopping by and on this Sunday morning or whenever you're watching it, just taking the time to um give a guy a chance to to give some hope. Pardon while I get comfortable here. The uh that's the whole point of this podcast is to be the voice of the common person. And and just, I mean, I'm a nobody preacher from nowhere, South Carolina, and and just small town and uh small church, and and today uh you know we we had an incredible service. It was just wonderful, started out with praise, ended with you know praying and praise and and just folks just dealing with things and and giving it to the Lord, and that to me is amazing. Um, family joined the church. Um maybe a third or or a quarter of a church was children today, and and when uh when they got up to go out to children's church, um we call it Mercy Kids, um, when they went out and I mean they just had fun and you could hear them. I mean, and to me that's that's not a bad thing. Let me tell you what a bad thing sounds like silence in your church. If if you do not have children and or you you're trying to suppress the children where they're you know they can't use their energy for anything, then you're basically your church is dying. And uh today we had, I don't know, like a bunch, like 13 kids or something like that. Um, and it was just amazing. Like, you know, hearing them have fun. And they were playing games and doing their, you know, doing their thing. They went outside and was playing outside, and you can hear them outside. That to me, that's like amazing. A church without kids is a church that is on its last legs. You're you're you're on the way down, and uh and we've got more and more coming. And um, you know, family, I mean we had over 10 visitors today, and um it was just incredible. It was just a great day. Um, I preached on Samson today, and uh with this, you know, with with the conversation of Samson, you know, you you hear about a lot about you know him with Delilah and and all that, but you know, I I got to talking about um I got to talking about how Samson's walk, how we mirror a lot of the other aspects of his walk, and and how we can we can glean lessons and and um and and look at how Samson's personality and and the way that that Samson's life was basically a a shadow of of the commonality. It's the mortality of man. And uh and there's some there's some mirrors there, and and let me let me share one of the mirrors since we brought it up. Um Samson had a secret that he wasn't supposed to tell anybody about. Um you know, and and that secret was that his his power weren't part of the power was in his hair, and you know, like the the fact that he never cut his hair, that was part of the obedience in um you know in his walk. And and so he was a he was a Nazarene, and and so um he wasn't supposed to supposed to cut his hair. And uh when the woman pressed him about it, Delilah, when she pressed him about it, you know, the Bible says that it vexed him. He was he was so stressed out about it that he he just wanted to die and ended up telling her the truth about his hair. And we have things that we don't talk about that we're supposed to. He had things he wasn't supposed to talk about. He shouldn't have divulged his, you know, the secret to his strength, and but we should be divulging the gospel of our strength. And uh and where quiet, you know, quietness for the Christian is disobedience. And we should be ready and willing to make a defense of the gospel, but we should also be presenting the gospel along with our testimony, because God has been so good to us. And how do we sit on this and how do we uh justify not saying anything about the our walk and the way the Lord has has done in our life, where he found us, and and then you know what he has done since, where he's brought us from. And and that was an aspect of the of the whole walk of Samson that I feel like is important that the Christian community talk about. There's not a lot of preachers that'll preach about that side of thing. They, you know, they just want you to bring people to church. My concern is that it doesn't even get that far because why should you why should they even listen to you to come to church? What about your life makes them think they need what you have? Because if you're not talking about the testimony of how God's been good to you, they're good to you, good for you, good through you, good around you, and effective, you know, affected your life, how what do they have to look at to think, man, I want what they got? Because if you're not living a testimony, you got nothing they need. Paul said, When I was a child, I spake as a child, but when I became a man, I put away all my childish things. And here's here's the deal. Are you still walking in the way you walked before you got saved? And you know, that's that's not just that's not just easy to preach on. That's you know, that's part of the whole everyday life. We should be thinking about that. What am I doing today that's bringing glory to God? What am I doing today? How am I acting today that is going to affect positive change in other people's life? What about my life says, hey, you know, this is what God will do for you? That's the question we have to ask ourselves. So where Samson should have kept quiet about his strength, we should be shouting the reason for our strength from the rooftop. And that reason for the strength is God, in and of himself, who is so good that he imparts grace, imparts mercy, shares the strength, gives the strength to us, and and and says, I'm not gonna let you do it alone. I'm gonna give you all the strength you need. And not only the strength, I'm gonna give you so much other um we'll we'll call it, I'm gonna give you everything else you need. I'm gonna facilitate your growth. I'm gonna facilitate your life. I'm gonna facilitate you not just surviving, but thriving. And and I think that's worth talking about. One of the other things that is easy to bring up about Samson is is his fall. Sin costs more than you want to pay, takes you further than you want to go, and keeps you longer than you want to stay. And there's a million different ways that you could say that. But there's always a cost the struggle of life dealing with sin in your life. There is a the easiest part that we all like, I you know, I feel bad about doing that. I'll just pray, seek forgiveness, and move on. And don't get me wrong, the Lord hears you, and a repentant heart is important to have um the conviction knowing you stepped out of the boundaries that you should have been walking within, you know, is one thing. But you know, is your repentance real? And that's question number one. In Samson's life, you know, we see where his his fall, you know, Samson had an issue, and his issue was along the lines of, I see it, I want it, I see it, I want it. But that's all of us. That's me. That's you. If you're honest with it with yourself, it's you too. We spend our lives stimulated and going from stimulation to stimulation, just looking for the next thing, the next stimulation that's gonna get our get our attention and and ooh, and all, and I want that and I need that. And um, you know, why don't I have this in my life? Where's it at? I need it now. I need it now, I want it now. I've got this fast food mentality that we go through. And and you know, Samson was the same way. But it's easy to look back thousands of years and say, Oh, that you know, you should have done better, Samson. Well, how about looking in the mirror? You should have done better, Leon. You should have done better, you, whoever your name is. Because that's what we do. I said it this morning. We all look in the mirror and and primp ourselves before we go places, but we're just seeing the image that we're creating. We're not seeing into the mirror, we're not looking into ourselves. We're not we're not uh reflecting on ourselves, we're looking at our reflection, but that's what we're trying to improve in the mirror. I want to do my hair, I want to put my makeup on, whatever y'all do, lashes and all that other stuff, and and whatever. And I'm I'm creating an image of myself for yourself, which I think there's a commandment against something like that, but we won't talk about that on this episode. We'll talk about that on another episode. But in in Samson's case, you know, how much reflection did he have? But when he fell, he paid the price to that, the cost to that, and that was to have his eyes gored out or bored out, and then his hair was cut off, his eyes were gored out or bored out, and then he had he was stuck in in get in um Gaza in a mill grinding grain. And so he's in there grinding grain until the day that the uh the Philistines, Palestinians had decided they wanted to have him over there so that they could make a sport of him, so that they could make a mockery of him. He could entertain them. So he tells the the lad, the Bible says, to help him, guide him over to the pillars so that he could have he could he could put his hands on the pillars. So this kid takes him over there, puts his hand right hand on this pillar, right hand on the other pillar, and he bows down, the Bible says. And with all his strength, pulled the place down on top of him. The Bible says he took out more in his death than he ever did during his life. But his fall wasn't in his death. His fall happened when he was free. Pride, vanity, those things rooted in all sin is rooted in those things. Caused him a a destructive fall from grace. He would have never had gotten to the point where he didn't have eyes. He would have never got to the point where he didn't have strength, it would have never gotten to the point where he was behind enemy lines as a prisoner of war. Had he not allowed vanity and pride to make him fall victim to Delilah. You can't blame her. She was doing what Delilah's do. You could make her the villain if you want to, but the villain ain't Delilah. And I bet Samson realized that when he was turning that wheel, grinding that grain. I would wager that he was reflecting and he was mad at the world, sure. Mad at the Philistines, absolutely. Mad at Delilah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever. But as he dug to the root of his problem, I can wager for certain, and we'll ask him in heaven one day. Were you more mad at yourself? Or were you more mad at her? And we have to decide. Are we? Are we gonna allow a chain of vanity to be wrapped around our legs, around our mind? Or are we going to push forward and say, you know what, it's not even about me. It's never been about me. It's always been about God. It's it's always going to be about God. It's always been the gospel and how God loved this world so much that he sent Jesus. It's always been about Jesus. It's the beginning. It's his word. It's the Bible says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. So Jesus was the word made flesh. So Jesus, ipso facto, is the word of God. And that voice, let there be light, was the physical manifestation of God. He knew you would fall. That the conviction would set in, and there'd be a time that the Holy Ghost would draw you to God. And it's up to you to put your pride to the side and choose sanctification over sin. Redemption over sin. You can stay right where you're at. That's up to you. I would love if you would put in the comments whether you're saved or not saved, if you made it to this point, leave a comment. That just says I am redeemed. That would mean so much to me. You have decisions. Every single day, a myriad of them. You'd be surprised if you were to start counting your decisions first thing in the morning throughout the entire day, uh, how many decisions you actually have we make every single day. And I bet there'd be like thousands upon thousands. You'd you'd probably have a hundred pages of decisions that you made and no time to do anything because all you've been doing all day is writing. But among all those decisions, we have the decisions to make conscious efforts to share our testimonies, share this gospel, and to share moments with God. And not allow ourselves to get to a point where, like Samson, we realize how far from God's will we've gotten, and we have to say, Lord, would you please use me one more time? I need my strength back. But here's the thing just like Samson, if that's you, it's never too late. If you're under the sound of my voice right now, you can pray and you can you can ask the Lord to please change your life that you've gone astray, you've drifted a little far, and and you're not where you should be. You know that. And and the Holy Ghost was will show you just how far off the path you've gotten. And you can ask the Lord to put you back on the right track to help you. And he will. I believe that because he's helped me. That's true. That you just repent. Which means seek forgiveness, understand that you've messed up, and understand that it's going to take God's help for you to go anywhere, do anything different. His strength can help you, and commit to pushing forward the best way you possibly can for the Lord. You'd be surprised how medicinal that is. This has been the Unqualified Podcast with Leon Wilson.