In the Lap of Delilah

Unlikely, Part 7: Samson and the hair that grows back

Have you ever driven somewhere and realized you couldn't remember the drive? Not one light, not one turn. You were going seventy miles an hour and you weren't really there.

That's how a lot of God's people are living. Hands on the wheel, eyes open, not really there. I was on fire once. I used to weep in worship. Now I'm just driving.

Samson was strong, anointed, and set apart before he was born. He ended up blind, in chains, grinding grain for the people he was raised up to defeat. His story is the sternest warning in this series and one of its sweetest mercies.

The Strength Was Never in the Hair

Samson was a Nazirite from the womb, and no razor was to touch his head. But the strength was never in the hair. If a haircut stole power, every barber in Indiana would be running a deliverance ministry.

The hair was the sign of the vow. The receipt. So when it came off, it didn't cause the problem. It announced the problem had already happened on the inside.

The Drift

Samson started strong. He killed a lion with his bare hands. He took out a thousand men with a donkey's jawbone. He caught three hundred foxes, and think about the day a man decides to catch three hundred foxes. That's not a quick errand. The man had drive.

But the story turns with a whisper, not a bang. What armies couldn't do, a compromise did.

Compromise rarely comes as rebellion. It comes as minor adjustments. A standard you let relax. A prayer life you let slide. A conviction that doesn't bother you anymore. The world calls that growth. It's callus.

And the drift didn't start with Delilah. His vow had three parts: no wine, no razor, no touching a dead body. Back in Judges 14 he scooped honey out of a lion's carcass and never told his parents where it came from. Compromise always hides. The hair was the last domino, not the first crack.

Delilah was patient. She wore him down day after day. The enemy isn't in a hurry with you either. The most dangerous things in your life probably aren't the ones screaming at you. They're the ones lying in your lap, telling you everything is fine.

He Did Not Know

And he awoke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free." But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. (Judges 16:20, NASB)

He did not know. That's the scariest line in the story. Not that the power left, but that it left and he couldn't tell. He kept the form and lost the fire.

You can lead worship without him. You can teach without him. You can run the program and smile on cue and never feel the cold spot where the fire used to be. Skill is not the same as the Spirit. You can be polished and powerless at the same time.

However

They put out his eyes and put him on the grinding wheel. Going in circles. Going nowhere. If the story ended there, it would be the worst story in the Bible. But thank God for one verse:

However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it was shaved off. (Judges 16:22, NASB)

The hair was the sign of the vow, so when it grows back, the vow is being renewed. Nobody saw it. The Philistines walked past him every day and thought he was finished. But God was at work in the dark, growing back what sin cut off.

John Newton's mother dedicated him to ministry, and he spent twenty years running from it, all the way into the slave trade. God got hold of him in a storm at sea in 1748, and slowly his eyes opened. He became a pastor, wrote "Amazing Grace," and helped William Wilberforce fight to end the trade he once served. Near the end of his life he said he remembered two things: that he was a great sinner, and that Christ was a great Savior.

The hair grows back.

Remember Me

Blind and standing between the pillars of Dagon's temple, Samson prayed the most honest prayer a backslidden man ever prayed: "O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time" (Judges 16:28).

God answered. And there was Another One, set apart from the womb, who stretched out his arms, not between two pillars but on a cross, and through his death destroyed the works of the enemy.

So stop pretending the drift isn't happening. You can't renew a vow you won't admit you broke. Rebuild one private discipline this week. And pray it in the car, at the kitchen sink, at your desk: Lord, remember me. One more time, let me feel your strength.

The hair grows back when the heart turns back.

Pastor Josh

This post is adapted from Unlikely: The Heroes You Read Right Past. Join us Sundays at 10 a.m. at 501 S Main St in Sheridan. Plan your visit.