THAT BARBEE

 Hello there!

Belated Valentine wishes.

Welcome to today’s gist.

Last week we started on Uncle Sammy’s story and we’re going to continue today. 

So Uncle Sammy had been making series of ill-advised decisions and perhaps the most terrible one was deciding to have an affair with Aunty Deli. Immediately the leaders of the Philistines discovered that he had begun a relationship with Deli, they went to meet her and promised her 1100 pieces of Silver each to help them find out how they could weaken Sammy and overpower him (who else noticed that in every betrayal in the Bible, pieces of silver was always the commodity of exchange). Now why would they want to overpower Sammy? God had been using him still to wreak havoc on the Philistines despite his many indiscretions: this probably made Sammy feel cocky, after all he was flagrantly disobeying God yet God was still manifestly using Him. And that’s something we do too. You know when we fall into sin, one of our first thoughts is that we’ll not be able to do the things we typically do for God. When we find out that the gifts do not go, it makes us arrogant, has us feeling like we are doing no wrong with our sinful habits, or that God doesn’t care about our sin, after all “we cannot out-sin the grace of God”, as you want deceive yourself, just remember that in Romans 6:1-2, the answer to whether we should continue to sin because grace abounds is GOD FORBID!

Anyway, God was still using Sammy to destroy the Philistines so when they saw an inroad through Deli, they capitalized on it. Seeing as Sammy had fallen in love with her, Deli sought to use his love as the leverage to use him. Before you say ‘women are wicked’, think of your relationships with the people around you –romantic and otherwise, hope you’re not leveraging on their love for you to use them? Back to our story, Deli begins to cajole Sammy into telling her the source of his enormous strength. Now I’m sure she had a plausible excuse for why she needed to know the source of his strength and she pesters him, Sammy told her that if he was bound with 7 fresh bowstrings, he would be “as weak as any other man”: such a statement smacking of arrogance –superhuman wey e be now. Here’s something interesting in this portion, Sammy’s first instinct in the face of Deli’s inquisition was to lie; this makes me believe that somewhere in the midst of Sammy’s fallenness was the operation of God in His life letting him know he shouldn’t be divulging such a vital piece of information to Deli, why is that? Because God always gives us a way out! He did that with Sammy by nudging him away from telling Deli the source of his strength. Now I am definitely NOT saying God instructed Sammy to lie, I am merely saying that He told Sammy not to divulge, the decision to prevent the divulgence through lies, another sin, was entirely Sammy’s own. Every time we come to a crossroad of compromise, God is there; telling us the right way to go because He will never lead us astray. Most of the time we either decide to go the wrong way or we attempt to go the right way in the wrong form of transport like Sammy did: he could very well have left Deli but no, he decided to lie his way out of telling her the source of his strength.

What does Deli do with the information? She gets 7 fresh bowstrings and ties up while she has the Philistines lie in wait in her house, she then calls out to him that the Phillys were there and he rises, breaking the 7 bowstrings “as a strand of yarn breaks when it touches fire”(Judges 16:9b, NKJV). There are a lot of things wrong with this picture: why did she tie him when he said doing that would make him weak? Why did Sammy allow himself be tied? How come he didn’t notice the Philistines lying in wait? How did she later explain away the presence of the Phillys to Sammy? But the most important question was WHY DID SAMMY STILL STAY WITH HER?

I would imagine that he would find out that she had evil intentions but either his spiritual antenna had become too dull, or he was deluding himself that he had enough discipline and control to withstand her. That mistake is one that we make, and very frequently too. Sometimes, God tells you that you shouldn’t be with someone or in a place or indulging in certain thoughts or conversations but what do we do? Tell ourselves we’ll be more ‘careful’, but do we leave this compromised position? At all! We will still stay there. The thing with sin is that we cannot be overly cautious about it, moving away is always the safer option than staying to find out if you can withstand the temptation, that’s why in 1 Corinthians 10:13, the Bible says God will show us a way of ESCAPE! Not a way to stand there and form voltron, but a way of escape! When God shows you, abeg escape oh! I tell you from experience that you will fall! No deceive yourself. 

Sammy stays with Deli, lying his way each time she asked, but never leaving her. The thing that tires me about this whole ordeal is that each time he tells her another lie; new ropes, plaiting his hair into 7 strands, she tried it and it failed. It makes me wonder “why did it not bother Sammy that each time he told her something, she tried it each time and always brought Philistines to lie in wait?” Because one time is a fluke, 2 times may be coincidence but 3 times! That’s a pattern if I ever saw one. But no, Sammy still deludes himself for whatever reason and stays with Deli, just like we do with sins and habits God is constantly calling our attention to. Sometimes we find that we fall into sin because we stay in the place of temptation but we still don’t leave that place; I’ve found that the reason we do not leave the place of temptation after we have fallen is that we, simply put, take God’s grace for granted. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m above this, I still find myself in such situations sometimes but I’m learning the act of fleeing temptation these days and that’s why I’m sharing this with you, so that you can flee too.

After 3 failed attempts, Deli continues to nag and whine and pester Sammy into telling her the secret of his strength (Solomon really puts it well when he says it is better to live on the corner of the rooftop than with a nagging woman). Finally, because he was “weary unto death”, Sammy finally breaks down and tells her the secret of his strength: this is what remaining in the place of temptation does to us, it wears us down bit by bit until our spirit becomes very weak and we fall!

Know what Deli did immediately Sammy finally tells her that the true way to weaken him would be by cutting his hair? She immediately sent message to the Philly leaders telling them that she finally knew the source of Sammy’s strength and they could come this final time to get him. The way the Bible records it, she lulls Sammy to sleep on her lap, probably singing some soothing music to get him to really relax and sleep well, then she “barbs” his hair! Then she calls to him, waking him abruptly from his sleep (the kind of nasty headache that must have brought) “the Philistines are here!” 

Believe me when I say that very few things give me the kind of chills I get whenever I read, or even think about, what happens next: the Bible says Sammy stands up, thinking to himself “I will rise and go out as before” BUT HE DID NOT KNOW THAT THE SPIRIT OF GOD HAD LEFT HIM! In the words of my Tiv friends “Wuuu Aondo!” You say what? God withdrew His Spirit from Sammy! The terribleness of this situation is twofold: first, God’s Spirit left, and second, Sammy didn’t even realize that God had taken a walk! Of all the consequences you think can occur as a result of sin, the loss of God’s Spirit is the worst! You are, for all intents and purposes, DEAD! That you are still breathing is completely irrelevant, the thing is that you are dead. I want to encourage you today, please be very mindful of the presence of God’s Spirit in your life, be sensitive to Him and covet His presence, do not let anything rob you of the privilege of having God dwelling in you and the greatest thief of God’s Spirit is Sin. Sin is the one thing God cannot live with, He can leave with your flaws, He can leave with your weaknesses but He cannot live in you with you going on a sinning spree, He will leave you and go. 

If you’ve ever enjoyed the presence of God’s Spirit in your life, you will know when He leaves. This has happened to me a number of times. I couldn’t explain what was happening, all I knew was that I would suddenly feel so dry and empty, it was until the end of last year while I was at a prayer meeting organized by my mentor Sir Chinedu Isagbah that I understood that that dryness I couldn’t quite explain was as a result of God’s Spirit taking a hike from my life. So even where there are no outward and physically recognizable consequences of your actions, losing the Spirit of God is a real and terrible one. The thing about losing the presence of God’s Spirit is that you may think that you can continue as you have been doing before, not knowing that you’ll merely be going through the motions without any realness. So Sammy rose and thought that He could go out as he had always been doing before, after all this wasn’t his first cavort with sin so why should the situation be any different now? Little did he know that 'levels don change now, dem go fit hold am'. This time around they were able to overpower him and of course they didn’t stop there, they gorged his eyes out and put him to work at the mills while Deli his love made away with her thousands of silver pieces; let us at this point stop and take note of the fact that because Sammy decided to cavort with sin, he became incapacitated and could no longer perform the deliverance work that God sent him to do: sin will make you incapable of performing the assignment God has given you.

The story goes on to state how Sammy’s hair began to grow back after a while, alluding to the return of God’s Spirit to him. After a while, the Phillys decided to throw a feast to celebrate Sammy’s capture and they brought Sammy to be a laughing stock –dem turn a whole “as weak as any other man” to laughing stock! Fear Sin oh!

Then Sammy asks God for a final favour, to be able to kill this Phillys and that was good and well, God answered the prayer and gave him the strength to pull down the entire building where the Phillys were in. Then comes the part I will need Sammy to clarify when we meet in Yonder, wetin make am ask to die with the Philistines? I mean the way I see it, he could very well have survived if not that he asked God to let him die with the Philistines, does that mean he was that attached to them? But the lesson I learnt from that incident was the fact that if you don’t let go of sin, it will take you down when it goes down; it’s like wearing six-inch pencil heels, when it breaks, it doesn’t just fall on its own, it takes the wearer down with it too. So until we fully and completely let go of sin, we are merely preparing ourselves for eventual ruin, may God not let it be our portion, and may we also not turn God’s hand and make it our portion by the decisions we make.

The Story of Samson is one that intrigues me a lot, time and again when God leads me to study that portion of the Bible; I meet new lessons and get new enlightenment. Like I said last week, I recently was a part of a study and I thought to share the lessons I learnt. 

I know it’s a long read but thank you for staying with me to this point, I hope you learnt a thing or two from Samson’s life like I have. You can find his entire story in Judges 13 to 16, I advise you to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Samson’s life in general and the lessons you learnt.

See you next week, and in the comments.

Love, 

Achenyo.