Judges 16:20 …And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.
Man’s True Strength
What if Samson and Delilah had gotten married? Imagine they are driving away from the chapel to their honeymoon when they get into a terrible fight. Who would you expect to win that fight? Truthfully, I think Delilah would have a better chance of winning! Though Samson was the strongest man ever, you could make the argument that he was also the weakest man ever.
When Samson disregarded God’s authority and toyed with sin, he fell into trouble. The Bible says that Samson “wist not that the LORD was departed from him.” Samson is a paradox. On the one hand, the Bible often references how God’s Spirit empowered him, and on the other hand, we find out that Samson was a man dominated by his own flesh. He often sought revenge and was easy prey for a woman like Delilah.
Samson was a man who was dominated by his weakness because he never learned to yield his strength to God. A man’s true strength is measured by his ability to say “no” to self. Sometimes we think a person is powerful because he can control other people or rule some kind of empire. Yet the truth is that the weakest man is the man that can’t control himself. Further, a man that can’t control himself is a man that is not giving control of himself to the Spirit of God.
Remember that there will be moments when your strength will not be measured by what you know or how much you can do, but by Whom it is that you have yielded yourself to.
I don’t know what God will accomplish through your life, but I do know that a man’s true strength is measured by his ability to say “no” to self, and that means saying “yes” to God.