Saturday, June 2, 2007

Samson

I was reading Judges 13-16. This passage is about Samson, but the Lord showed me three things that spoke to my heart as a woman.

1. The Lord sent an angel to Manoah's wife to tell her she was to conceive a son. Up to this point she was barren. After this appearance and promise she prayed that the Lord would send the angel again and tell her what to do with this child she would have. And He did. Her husband saw him this time also!

Wow! What a powerful prayer from this mom-to-be! As a praying mom, I was so encouraged by this passage.

2. Samson was born and grew into a man. He saw a woman he wanted as wife among the Philistines. Now his parents weren't too pleased with this for they wanted him to marry a girl among their people. Here's the part that struck me,

"But his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord -- that He was seeking an occasion to move agains the Philistines. For at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel." Judges 14:4

Wow! again! The marriage of a child doesn't always occur the way the parents desire. We may sometimes be short sighted. ;-) This is why we must pray and pray again for our children's future spouse. It's never too soon to start!

3. In this marriage to Samson we see his wife pestering with tears to reveal the riddle he had challenged the village with. Her constant tears worked. He felt guilty. He told her the riddle and she then told the men in the village. They won the challenge so Samson was angry and killed 30 men. Skip over to the next marriage to Delilah. She also "pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death," Judges 16:16 This ended in many deaths, including Samson's.

Wow! I see that the words and wiles of women are very powerful positively or negatively. In the first instance the prayer of a mother was answered by God (positive) , in the marriages of Samson we see that his strength may have been in his hair, but his weakness was definitely women (negative). We must check our words and motives as women. We must pray, pray, pray for pure speech. We can certainly persuade for good or bad with our tears, our "pesterings" and our words.

Lord, help me to apply this lesson daily in my home.

1 comment:

Leigha said...

Wow..that's very interesting insight into this passage. This reminds me of when James talks about taming our tongues and how our tongue is such a small part of our body, but it can do alot of damage in relationships with others, including our marriage.