Love Lessons from Samson: Only Fools Rush In
“Afterward
it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.” – Judges 16:4
The story of Samson and Delilah reminds me
of an old Elvis song that begins “Wise
men say only fools rush in, but I can’t help falling in love with you.” Samson had already been married, but through
his own sins and destruction had caused the death of his ex-wife and her family
at the hands of the Philistines. But did
he wait before seeking another woman? No.
Samson seemed desperate to find love. He ran from one woman to another. After the murder of his ex-wife, Judges 16
opens by telling us that Samson went to Gaza, found a prostitute, and went in
to her. Rather than stopping and
learning from his mistakes, Samson went seeking a woman and letting lust be his
guide again. But this time, he fell for
the woman who would bring about his final destruction.
Samson was in the Valley of Sorek, a
Philistine town. The Philistines have
been his enemy since birth, having ruled over his people, the Israelites, with
a heavy hand for years. But they were
also personal enemies. Because of Samson’s
great strength, they had sought to destroy him many times. They had threatened his first wife and caused
her to break their marriage trust. They
had then returned and murdered his then ex-wife and her family. In many ways, this was Samson’s “valley of
desperation”. He was seeking love in all
the wrong places. But in Judges 16:4 we
read that “he LOVED a woman” named Delilah.
If you look in the wrong place for love
long enough, you’re going to find it. My
dad always told me “You will marry the
kind of man you date, so be careful who you date.” Its good advice and I wish I’d taken it more
often than I did. But it did cause me to
set rules for who I would date, and at the top was that they were a believer. God says in 2 Corinthians 6:14 that we are
not to be “unequally yoked together with
unbelievers”, which means that we are not to date or marry them. At our very core, having the Holy Spirit
within us as believers, we are different.
Our values are different, our desires are different, and it is simply
not a match made in Heaven. You may
think so, but the Word of God says differently!
Searching on your own for that perfect mate,
desiring to love and be loved is a path of destruction. After a while you will find that you forgive shortcomings,
overlook the things you don’t like, and tend to change the mold of what that
perfect mate looks like into what you have found. The search gets old and tiring. You start to settle for what you think is the
only one left for you. And that, my
friends, is why we should wait for God to bring that mate to us! We’re just lousy at match making in comparison
to God! Believe that He does have
someone set aside for you, and learn to rest in the love that God gives rather
than chasing after it from a mate.
What surprises me most about Samson is that
he never considered asking God to find him a woman to love. He ran head first into every relationship,
and it crashed and burned around him.
Yet he could believe God for the strength to kill 1,000 men at one time
with nothing more than a bone! He could
believe God for strength – but it appears nothing else. Having been set aside by God from birth to be
a Nazirite, we can only imagine what might have come of his life had he been as
devoted to God as God was to him. But
his desire to love and be loved wrote his life story.
Rushing into a relationship is just what
satan wants of God’s children. Don’t
consider what God wants for you, don’t believe that God has designed one person
for you, don’t wait for God but move headstrong into every relationship that
rolls around - and you’ll find exactly
what satan has planned.
In these last we are in, it is even more dangerous
to go seeking a mate on our own. Evil
abounds in both men and women, and false believers are around every
corner. No longer is it okay to check
off church attendance as a means of knowing they are of God. 2 Timothy 3:2-7 warns us what men and women
are like in these days, and how gullible lust-filled women (or men) can be led
into satans trap.
“For
men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving,
unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God, having a form of godliness but
denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort
are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded
down with sins, led away by various lusts, always
learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
They will enter into your lives, and lead
you away from God. When you are lead
away from what God says, and what God wants in your life, you will surely be on
a path of brokenness and destruction.
Samson was soon to find out just what a mess he had gotten himself into
with Delilah.
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