Judges 16: 15-16 MSG
She said, “How can you say ‘I love you’ when you won’t even trust me? Three times now you’ve toyed with me, like a cat with a mouse, refusing to tell me the secret of your great strength.” She kept at it day after day, nagging and tormenting him. Finally, he was fed up- he couldn’t take another minute of it. He spilled it…
Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me. I hope that we build a symbiotic relationship through this blog where we are able to learn together as a community. This is the first of many, I would love to crave your indulgence to participate actively, comment and give feedback when and where necessary… In essence, let’s make this fun.
A certain “Daniel” broke the news while we were growing up. This Daniel claimed to be the modern-day version of the Daniel we read about in the Bible. To emphasize on his “Danielness”, he decided to go into the lion’s den in the University of Ibadan zoological garden. I’m sure he was surprised when he didn’t make it out alive because I believe he never really wanted to die in that den.
I recently saw a movie with a lead actress who was engaged to be married while she was still in high school. Her father relocated to another city where she made new set of friends in school and around the community. However, one of her new friends was determined to bend her resolve to remain a virgin till she got married and he succeeded at his mission even though he claimed to have fallen in love with her somewhere along the way.
This lead actress was convinced that she would stay true to her fiancé, but her strong determination started chipping away as she continued to expose herself to this guy who just wouldn’t let her be. She even slapped him on one occasion but over time, she lost the ability to fight back until she finally succumbed to peer pressure.
Samson’s story readily came to mind as I watched that movie. Clearly, Samson had fallen in love with a woman who didn’t endorse his value systems, but he gave in to constant nagging and prodding from his “fiancée” which eventually led to his downfall. Samson was so blinded by a love that eventually led to foolishness and his ultimate destruction. It seemed strange that this strong and anointed Samson would tell his secret to a woman who had connived with his enemies to bring him to ruin.
It’s very easy to condemn Samson but what about you and I? Strength is good but that strength can easily become weakness if left unguarded and exposed to attack. I guess the statement “how the mighty are fallen” was coined because of situations like this. We have always been advised to work on our weaknesses but I daresay, we must work harder at guarding our areas of strength.
I want to paint a picture in your mind. Imagine you have this strong piece of mahogany or iroko wooden table. One day, someone comes into your house and drives a heavy metal hammer right through the center of your table. The table doesn’t cave in so you tell him, “Nothing can break this table, it’s made from the finest and strongest wood around”. You decide to place a bet to which your friend agrees while promising to break your precious table in one week.
Every day, your friend spends about two hours hitting this table with his hammer and by the third day, you notice your table is looking weak. By day five, the table falls apart and you’ve lost the bet. You are now wondering if the furniture maker lied to you about the quality of the wood simply because you had a firm and faulty belief that the strong table would never cave in.
That’s the way we are wired as human beings. If we expose our strength to constant pressure, it’s only a matter of time before the strength falls apart with what you once trusted in failing you totally. How then should we guard our areas of strength?
- Flee every appearance of evil. It says appearance not the evil itself. i.e., once it appears to be evil run far from it, don’t negotiate with it at all.
- Don’t expose your strength to external and unnecessary pressure, err on the side of caution
- Don’t boast about your strength. Remain humble because you are only strong by the grace of God and someone else is completely weak and helpless in that same area
Constant and deliberate exposure of your areas of strength to the elements would eventually weaken the so called “strength” so I say to you again, run, baby run! Run for your life…