This talk was presented on the Wednesday; now for me, the Wednesday was the hardest day of the week, mainly because what I was listening to was hard for me to hear.
The previous talks by Jeff had almost varified a few things for me. Monday (the first blog post "As sweet as Honey") really showed me that certain lifestyles of becoming a Christian and staying a Christian can leave you vulnerable, and due to that, you (me) can make mistakes (and big ones) but God can flip any situation to good and continue to use you (me). Tuesday (the second of the Detling blog posts "Disappointment and foxes") really highlighted how my life had escalated to a negative because of the previous lesson learnt on the Monday. Wednesday, and this post for me, was God highlighting how I was attacked and what my weakness was, as you can imagine it wasn't easy for me to listen or swallow!
How often do you feel stupid because you were tempted? Are we not all better than being tempted by the easy, little things? Is that not why we all pray to God to protect us with His Armor? So how stupid are we?!
Well we're not are we: We all have a chink in our armour that makes us vulnerable, what is yours? Spiritual warfare is not a phrase and saying that you just expect to hear in church, or the fact that you have broken down that day in the car. How many times do you hear people say "My car just didn't start when I tried to go to work this morning, and then when I did get it started, I had a flat tyre - I am clearly being attacked by the enemy and trying to be broken" in reality what the person isn't telling you is that they havn't put any petrol in their car and had to top it up, and had been driving to closely to curbs when trying to park and have warn down the tyre that is now flat. In reality it isn't nice to have these things happen to you, but not necessarily due to you being "attacked" but often we jump to that conclusion, and in truth this is usually because we have been tired and forgot to fill the car up and drive more sensibily. Remember there can be at time a difference between spiritual warfare and our own mistakes - or to put it roughly "down to our stupidity". Spiritual warfare is exactly what it says on the tin! It is War! And as we have and do see war destroy peoples lives.
So, then the question you need to ask is: as part of this war, which side are you on? and who do you have on your side to help you? Church often becomes a place where you expect to have allies and people on your side to help you fight the war, but sadly they often don't stand on your side. You often hear and see church talking about the outside community and with it how we are going to spread the good word outside of the church and stretch the boundaries that the"church" has to fight the war. Now the sad truth is that we have a pastoral team in most churches to help us to fight such battles that can occur inside church, but we often don't share the truth of our battles because of fear of judgement and critisim. But the enemy, Satan, is everywhere, often looking for your/our weakness, and this includes when you feel safest, as Mondays talk showed us, Church can be just as much a vulnerable place as anywhere else.
1 One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. 2 The people of Gaza were told, "Samson is here!" So they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They made no move during the night, saying, "At dawn we’ll kill him."
3 But Samson lay there only until the middle of the night. Then he got up and took hold of the doors of the city gate, together with the two posts, and tore them loose, bar and all. He lifted them to his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
4 Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. 5 The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, "See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver."
6 So Delilah said to Samson, "Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued." As we can see in verse 2 that the trap for Samson was set, they laid and waited for him. Satan, the enemy and your enemy will do this, your fall, which ever one you are on or will have, you need to be aware, you are probable already on it! Now in this case Samson was being attacked in several ways:
1. There was already a pre-exsisting plan of attack worked on for Samson - this would imply that they knew him, and knew him well enough to know what would help in the capture of him.
(How often do we feel blindsided when we are attacked in our spiritual warfare? This is because the enemy knows you and your weakness more than you do.)
2. The enemy also knew what Delilah's weakness was too. Hers was clearly money, and in equivalance to todays worth around 8 million pounds. So again, she was being attacked, to assist with the attack of Samson.
3. We see the weakness from the on set of the chapter, if not in the chapters before. We see his love of woman, his loneliness with the people who support him and his pride and strength. These are clearly things that will be ultimately used in his downfall.
So we need to remember that God wants us to prepare ourselves for the fight that we are or will be having!
We should also consider the mistakes that we have made before, which is often easier said than done. For Samson, it was not to live by what you see.
Standing Strong and Pushing your boundaries:
In Verse 1 we read that Samson went to Gaza and saw a harlot there. He hasn't learnt by his mistakes at all. His lustful ways have only got him in trouble, but he is overly confident, and is now just living by what he sees rather than living in the spirit. Not living in the spirit, and therfore not living in God, only allows you leave your faith aside, the one thing that should really help you in the spiritual battle.
Stand strong in faith and what you know is right. Doubt is a valuable weapon, one that is often used by the enemy against you and if usually the thing that is used first.
We need to also realise that sometimes pushing the boundaries isn't a good thing. Again, we see an example of this in verse 3 where Samson actually shows his strength and pride by actually extanding the city posts and gate. God gives us limits and boundaries to live and learn by. We mentioned earlier about the Christians who are always discussing the outreach into the community and not focusing on stengthening the "soliders" on the inside. This means that you only end up stretching you boundaries, your walls out, leaving more gaping holes, available for more of an attack.
Please don't get me wrong though, i am not saying that you shouldn't go out into the community, I am not saying that people shouldn't push themselves in their personal boundaries to allow growth in the Lord. That I believe is very important. What I an talking about is spreading yourself too thinly. We often hear Christians using the Phillipians 4:13 verse "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" This is true, when we discuss Gods strength and power, and the power of prayer. But we need to remember our limits and boundaries. I can still climb to the top of my house and jump off - Yes God has allowed me to do that, He, although powerful enough to, won't allow me to grow wings and fly around the sky to then have a safe landing!
So think about your boundaries, are you pushing the right ones? And in accordance with God?
I think this is a good place to break it for a part 2 again.
So Who Knows you?
Temptation and Spiritual warfare:
So what is your weakness? We need to be aware of it, because this is what is going to be used for us, and a trap to be set! People don't usually fall, we slide. We see this in the continuation of the Samson story. There is a general wearing down and a systematic erosion that leads us to our fall.
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