Summary
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of resisting temptation and making good decisions in life. It suggests that small compromises can lead to bigger problems, using the biblical character Samson as an example. The text encourages seeking God’s guidance when faced with temptation, and highlights the positive impact of small changes in one’s life. It concludes with a prayer for strength and guidance, and a reminder of the power of Jesus Christ.
Transcript
I have my brother Chris here. Good morning, Chris. How are you doing? I’m doing well, brother. Another day to serve the Lord. That is awesome. Amen, amen. And, man, this morning, we’ve had a lot of conversations already about coming out of Babylon, about rebellion, the Tower of Babel, pride of man, transhumanism. We’ve talked about a lot of topics this morning already. But as we head into this one, we wanted to mention about the moment for Samson. And this could be a moment that many brothers and sisters this morning are going through, where they were just living like an autopilot type of a life, you know? And in the story of Samson, he got to a point where it says in Judges 1620, and she said, The Philistine be upon thee, Samson.
And he awoke out of his sleep and said, I will go out as other times before and shake myself. And he withnot that the Lord was departed from him. Man, that’s got to be one of the… Wow, right? To get to a point where you just think that, oh, it’s okay. It’s okay that I do this. It’s okay that I live like that. I’ll just shake it off. But wow, that’s sad, isn’t it, man? When you see something like that, that you can just, you know, have that mentality and then boom, he withnot that the Lord departed from him.
That’s a sad state of affairs, man. You know, there was a lot of warning signs that he ignored. There was a lot of behaviors that he allowed himself to partake in. There were many opportunities for him to stay on the path of righteousness. And really, you think about what he did. I mean, he ended up being with a harlot. He had a wife. You know, he was really not supposed to drink. You know, he was supposed to be a Nazarete, didn’t have his hair cut. There was a number of different things. So there’s a number of warnings.
There’s a number of attitudes that he took on. And there was a number of times that he seems as though he took vengeance upon himself to pay back evil for evil. So, I mean, there was just a variety of things. And the Lord was so merciful with him in so many ways that, you know, he really messed up after mess up after mess up. And finally, you know, and then Delilah was just toying with him. And he was toying with her. You know, just so many things. And we should take all that stuff as warnings.
Like, hey, we let that stuff start happening. We’re heading down a path that could be very unfortunate for us because, you know, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I always had to remember that. Yeah, man. There’s a term called friend zoning. When your friends zone, there’s a lot of people that like to friend zone demons out there, too. Like you said, the way he was interacting with her. And it was a series of irrational decisions, you know, and no good comes out of us interacting with sin. You know, when you interact with sin in that manner, and you can drink it and eat it and taste it, you know, and then you think you can just be slick and just walk right back in like nothing.
It’s an attitude that sometimes we have in our life that it’s just not conducive towards us being good ambassadors of Jesus Christ on this world. You know, like in the songs of Solomon to five to 15, I’m sorry, take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines for our vines have tender grapes. And it’s in these little moments of trials and tribulations are in testing and temptations that we have to be so, so, so, so careful, because these seducing spirits will throw in thoughts in your mind that sound sound like the right thing to do.
You know, temptations that sound like the right thing to take action on. But it’s part of the deception. And Samson didn’t just wake up one day and realize that the Lord had departed from him. It didn’t just happen like that, right? Chris, it was a series of bad actions. And I’ve known in my life, I found myself in positions where one little bad decision led to another bad decision, led to another bad decision. And then you barely recognize who you are in the mirror. You’re a Christian by name alone. You know, you’re a Christian because everyone calls themselves a Christian, but are we really followers of Christ? These are some of the questions that I’ve had to go through in my life, Chris, you know, asking those honest questions of, am I really in this? Or am I just another statistic of a person who goes to church because it’s a, it’s a, like a social club, you know, you know, what, what is one of the areas or probably the area where we think we’re clever, we think we can outsmart God.
We think that the inside of the cup can be filthy dirty and no one’s going to know God knows. He knows. He knows every little motive for the actions that we do, for the thoughts that we have. And those are the reasons we have to be very careful on what we, you know, accept is something we can actually let ourselves think about. I mean, think about this is that we believe we have this, these private little ruins in our mind. We can go here and think about this kind of thing, this kind of sin or this kind of temptation.
We can go there, brother or sister, those doors are open to the Lord, whether we think they are or not. He knows. And so the wise thing for us to do in most of my life, I failed at this, but now he’s shown me a fire. I enjoy the interaction with the Lord on a second by second basis. There is no separation. There is no, I’m going to go think about this dirty daughter. I’m going to be this way. No, we stay in his presence. That’s where we get to experience the peace that passes all understanding.
It’s a beautiful place to be. We can be there always. And that’s where our warning signal starts. If that peace is even ruffled a tiny bit, we’re like, what’s going on? Something’s up. Yeah. And we should be very alert today. Yeah. 100. It’s like, uh, when your car alarm goes off or your house alarm goes off or your sensor goes off, uh, actually this morning I had the, the ring alert come go off, uh, the front door at four something in the morning. I was like, what? I was like, who’s at my door? And it was a cat, you know, but it’s still alarming.
You know, it’s still so many somethings out there, you know, and the Holy Spirit’s the same way. The Holy Spirit will convict you. He’ll convict you of all things. And when you’re in that one accord with the Holy Spirit of God, and you’re living in that, then we’re not saying that you’re not going to go through the moments of temptation. We’re not saying that you’re not going to go through trials and difficulties, but it, it, first Corinthians 10, 13 says it all. There has no temptation taking you, but such as is common to man, but God is faithful.
So when you’re living in the presence of God and you’re constantly in one accord with the heavenly father, right? It’s so beautiful because you get to see that God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you’re able. So whenever that temptation comes, right? Today’s a Monday and you’re watching this. And whenever that difficulty comes in your life, you’re able to see that what with the temptation will also make a way of escape. So first Corinthians 10, 13 lets you know that, Hey, we’re going to go through moments of difficulties.
We’re going to go through moments where that temptation may seem a little bit, a little bit too difficult, but God is faithful. That temptation that has overtaken you on this day, whether it’s a temptation just to be super depressed all day, super anxious all day, right? Unforgiving, you know, maybe you’ve gotten a little scuffle with your husband, your wife, or your coworkers. I don’t know what it is, but take the way of escape. Take the way of escape because the devil loves to get us to be so focused on some of the bigger aspects of life, which is not a problem to be able to look at those.
But sometimes those little tiny little compromises that we make, they add up one inch becomes two inches, three inches, four inches. And by the time you know it, you’re at a point like Samson, a series of bad decisions get you to a point that you’re just unrecognizable. You’re unrecognizable to your family. You’re unrecognizable to other people. You can play it off pretty good because we’ve all been at that point where we can play off the Christian ease. But little by little, you find yourself at a point that you’re just not who you know that God called you to be.
You’re just not. I know I’ve been there plenty of times. So I’m not saying any of this because I think I’m better than any of you. We just desire that today, you and I and brother Chris, as we’re going to go to you for some final words as well. And we’re going to go to prayer that if you’re finding yourself that you’re, you know, that God has told you to cut things off, but you’re being like Samson a little bit. You’re indulging a little bit in the thing that you know you shouldn’t be doing.
It’s going to cost you. It’s going to cost you, you know, and you find, what do you think brother Chris on that? Samson got his eyes gouged out. So that’s, that was his cause, part of his cause. I mean, eventually when he pulled the pillars down in that whole Coliseum or whatever it was collapsed, it cost him his life, cost him his life. We have to be mindful. The verse that you said, dude, I can remember. I’ve said that verse in my probably thousands of times at this point, but you know, let’s be honest with one another.
When we sin, there’s only one reason why. We don’t look for the way of escape. We got to look for it. That means we know it’s there. So Lord, I need that way of escape. I need it. I’m being overwhelmed with temptation. Show it to me and it’ll come to us in a thought or a scripture or call this person or, you know, do this, do that. There will be a way. The thing is we have to look for it. We have to take it and then let the stay on the path of that way of escape.
So it’s kind of a process. We got to look for it. That should be a first thing. If we don’t even want to look at it and we want to look at the sin, you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to sin. We look for the way of escape. We know it’s going to be there. We know it’s going to be there. It doesn’t say sometimes I’ll show you once in a while, but you’ll always show us a way of escape. So that’s where we need to go. No, Amen. Amen. And may we take that way of escape every day and family.
The reason we talk about these things is because moments of difficulties at some point in time may approach this earth, you know, and the enemy is constantly trying to mess with our minds, mess with our families, mess with all of the plans that God has for us. And every single day, if you take thoughts captive, every single day, if you look for that way of escape, every single day, if you work towards having that one accord with the heavenly Father, man, where He is living in you and it’s so beautiful, you know, it’ll just help you, your family, your walk, your neighbors, your coworkers, your husband, your wife.
You’d be surprised at how just making little changes in your life can really, really, really just change generations in your whole family as well. This can only be done via the power of Jesus. This cannot be done with just our own will. It’s via Jesus Christ. So we’re going to go ahead and pray right now. And if you’re finding yourself today that any of this has resonated with you, or maybe you have a friend and their family member that you want to pray for in regards to this aspect of their life, I want you to join us in prayer and for us to end this Monday off in an awesome, awesome way.
All right. All right. Let’s pray. Father, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for another Monday. Another Monday that even if you’re feeling a little bit exhausted, you’ve allowed us to get up. You’ve allowed us to be able to go and drink some coffee, eat a little bit of breakfast, possibly go out and provide for our families. I don’t know what you have my brothers and sisters in the Lord doing this morning, going to the doctor, maybe working out. I don’t know what it is, but you desire heavenly father, that we have a relationship with you because you’re our father and you love us as your children and you’ve given us your Holy Spirit to teach us and guide us into all truth.
May in the name of Jesus Christ today, we humble ourselves before you allow you to continue to mold us and change us and teach us, allow us to see that way of escape, allow us to see that your ways are higher than our ways, that your way of thinking is bigger than our way of thinking. Allow us to see that in the name of Jesus Christ. Thank you for salvation. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for saving us in Jesus mighty name. Amen. We love you guys so much. Brother Chris, thank you for being here on these Mondays, man.
It’s really grateful, man. I’m really grateful for it. Praise the Lord. It’s a great opportunity to talk about him and to give him all the glory and to help stir one another for what lies ahead and what our eternal destination is. So thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. And family, on the screen, you’re going to see a video that’s to our second channel, our Bible TV channel. There we have Wednesday services, Saturday services, Sunday services, devotionals throughout the week and videos just like this, where we’re just talking about things. If you’re looking for that style of content, go ahead and subscribe to that channel because there’s a lot more videos on there and the style of videos on this channel always continue on here as well.
We’re just trying to bring you added content throughout the week to be able to help edify each other for Jesus Christ. So God bless you guys and thank you for tuning in. All right. God bless you guys. [tr:trw].
