Disappointment and Foxes - Samson : Part 2

So continuing with part 2 of the Session: Disappointment and Foxes - Samson
We ended that we should come back to the foxes about now.

And this is a lesson that should be reminded for all!

Living for vengance is exhausting.

Continuing with Judges 15: In verse 4 we see that Samson went out and caught 300 foxes and then tied them up. Did we see, as we have before, that the spirit came upon him in power? No. Samson was just a man, an angry man, how many of you have caught one fox, let alone 300? This would not have been easy. He then had to tie them together AND set them on fire. How much hard work?? Doesn't being angry take a lot of work and energy! This really rung through with me, I find it so difficult to let go of my anger and hurt and then to find forgiveness, I find myself exhausted going over and over the worst bits of my life, and what's worse, I find it so easy to get hurt and angry to begin with! I am constantly tired, and all I need is to forgive and I could be at rest-not just in my conscience, but physically and mentally. What about you?

We continue to see it get worse for Samson:

"13 "Agreed," they answered. "We will only tie you up and hand you over to them. We will not kill you." So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock. 14 As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon him. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. 15 Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.

16 Then Samson said,
"With a donkey’s jawbone
I have made donkeys of them
With a donkey’s jawbone
I have killed a thousand men."
17 When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi."

As we can see in the above verses how Samsons original anger escalates; he has already killed his wife, his father in-law and now a 1000 men. Why? Because of anger and vengance, which is all now part of the entangled marriage between those and disappointment. The feeling of isolation has now set in .

When Nelson Mandela came out of prison he went and visited the widow of Hendrick Verwoerd, the man who had sent him there. Mandela, whilst there, stated that "the whole of the country is moving in the direction of reconciliation and nation building."

Wow! When I heard this, I thought this was amazing! How angry would you have been, how easy would you have found it to go and visit the widow of the man that sent you to prison for life, for believing in the right thing?

How about this story of the mother forgiving the murderer of her son:

"Staring into the eyes of the young man who stabbed her son to death, Dawn Eckert fought back what she described as unimaginable pain and anger.
"I forgive you for what you did," Eckert said, her hands trembling, tears rolling down her face and onto the paper as she read an impact statement in court on Tuesday. "I pray for you.

"But I would like you to know that the night you stabbed my son in the heart, you stabbed me in the heart, too.""

In either position would you be the same?

Forgiveness is not and should not be a quick thing, but it is an action that you can control. How you respond IS in your control. It is not justifying the the actions of hurt, it is not forgetting why you were hurt and it is not in anyway making the hurtful action right. But how much do you think it would help?

You hear so many people say they felt " a weight of the world lifted from their shoulders" when they have spoken to someone about what they have done wrong. Imagine what happens if you speak to God! Even if you talk to God with the mildest desire for forgiveness.

This is not something the Samson does. We saw that right at the very beginning. Remember I said that it would make the long introduction worthwhile. Samson does not talk to God, not about his hurt; he thinks he is better than that, and even more with his arrogance, that God will still help him.

Lets finish by looking at the end of the Chapter:

18 Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the LORD, "You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?" 19 Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hakkore, and it is still there in Lehi.
20 Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

Wow, what an amazing ending: he gets to rule over the Philistines! Now, what a turn around, what a flip for good. Why? Well we need to see few final points here.
Pride comes before a fall.

We mostly all know what is about to happening in the next part of Samson's life, the famous part. So we know the fall is coming. So we need to see in this final part: his pride. He continues to be proud and arrogant. He cries out to the Lord in prayer, after he has killed so many, and been so angry and hurt, not seeking forgivness and asks the Lord, who has already blessed him with strength and power, to again help him. He calls himself a "servant" of the Lord, he spoke to the Lord like he was like Moses. He saw himself blessed by God and equal to Moses. So how does God respond? He treated him like Moses. Just as Moses commanded water from a rock under the wishes of God's instructions, he does it again for Samson. He restored his strength, now knowing our "hero" we can only guess what happened next, but his reputation was already big, remembering that he had already killed thousands of men on both sides, he was already known to be boastful to the world about what God does for him. And in the last verse we see that God, as always, flips his life to good and treats him as He treated Moses and grants him leadership of His people.

Luckily this shows, that whatever we do, as the post before shows, God will show us grace in all that we do. But I ask from this that we take a few points in the lesson.

1: As the last post states; Love each other with the heart of Christ, without internal church disappointment.

2: When you are upset of angry ask the Lord for forgiveness, even in the mildest terms, God WILL help.

3: Finally, be grateful for what you have been given by the Lord, but remeber to say thanks for all the times that He flips your situation round in your life.