Samson, Delilah & Jesus

This week I launch a ministry that God spoke to me over a decade ago, and now is the time. Samson & Delilah: Reclaiming His Inner Strength and Restoring Her Inner Beauty.

If you remember this Old Testament story, Samson was raised a Nazarene, a more restrictive lifestyle than most. He was never to touch the unclean, cut his hair, or eat of the vine, less the grapes ferment and cause him to be drunk, unable to make sound judgments as a judge of the people of God, Israel.

The Nazarene Samson's outer strength was strong enough for him to resist and defeat an army of Philistines with a jaw of a donkey. But Samson's inner strength was insufficient to resist a woman's beauty. So Samson would fall from glory to doing the work of a mule.

Jesus from Nazareth, outer strength wasn't strong enough to resist those who would kill him. But Jesus' inner strength was significant enough to hang on a cross and resist calling down 12 legions of angels to His defense. As a result, Jesus would rise to glory, sitting on the Father's right hand in Heaven.

Fast forward to today, we still have men who build muscle to become the strongest, only to be too weak to resist engaging in unhealthy sexual conduct. Where are the men who can lift their bride over the threshold and hold down a career without losing their family to infidelity?

And not just men. Where are the women who can preserve their beauty for one husband and bear a family of children that share the same Father? Have you paid attention to women under 30 and their body count? A body count is the vernacular of how many people have had sexual relations.

Sexual sins have a more significant consequence on and in the person than most other sins. Sexual sins are a sin against one's own body. I wonder if that has anything to do with the identity crisis we are currently suffering in our culture.

God made both males and females in his image. So the very first thing we identify in a person is their gender. Even from afar off, I see a male approaching or a female waiting at the door. This gender identity is before skin color and nationality. And most certain before creed and religion, ideology, and political parties that most often must be discovered through communications, not outer appearance.

God created a healthy desire for sexual relations between one man and one woman for a lifetime of commitment, respect, and affection. We are designed to be fruitful and multiply. But our culture has fed an unhealthy appetite for illegal relations to an unfathomed fantasy of strange flesh that God himself has not even thought of. Our sexual desire cannot even be satisfied by two genders. So now we create genders out of thin air to keep our fantasies satiable.

Samson, welcome to Samson & Delilah: Reclaiming His Inner Strength and Restoring Her Inner Beauty. It is not the muscles of a man that makes a man masculine. It is the man's inner fortitude to stand up and take responsibility for his life and those who he has been given responsibility. A man is masculine when he can say no to illicit love affairs and yes to a monogamous, life-long holy marriage.

Unfortunately, we have all been born into a sinful world and the weakness of the flesh. And for many men, we weren't raised on how to be godly masculine men. We weren't raised to be men but to remain forever in the adolescent state of being controlled and led by our desires and hormones.

There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh but the spirit. We can't change yesterday and all its appetites and destructions, but we can reclaim the inner strength God placed there from the beginning. So, Samson! Reclaim your inner strength today by learning to walk with God, not in the flesh but in the spirit.

Delilah, welcome to Samson & Delilah: Reclaiming His Inner Strength and Restoring Her Inner Beauty. It is not the outer adorning of the flesh of a woman that makes her beautiful but the inner peace of God that causes a woman to be attractive in caring for those whom she has been given responsibility over, her husband and children, along with other work that a Proverbs 31 woman has been entrusted. Conversely, when a woman engages in illicit love affairs, she loses her inner beauty. She becomes ruff and gruff, a fighter, not a reconciler, a separator, not a gatherer, an aggressor, not a healer.

Women, too, have been born into a world hostile to how God made women beautiful. Women today are raised to be as aggressive as men and use their sexuality to weaken a man's resolve. Women are raised to seduce to get what they want rather than allow their God-given femineity to shine like a new morning star, only catching the eye of a masculine godly man. The glory of a man is his wife and family.

Now there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh but the spirit. A woman can't roll back her body count and become a virgin again, but she can restore her inner beauty as it was meant from the beginning. So, Delilah! Be restored to your original beauty today by learning to walk with God, not in the flesh but in the spirit.