The God Of A Second Chance

²⁶Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.” ²⁷Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform.

²⁸Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” ²⁹Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, ³⁰Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.

³¹Then his brothers and his father’s whole family went down to get him. They brought him back and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had led^[a] Israel twenty years. Judges 16:26-31

Galatians 6:7 says, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap!” God means what He says. That is why Samson was unable to feel the power of God after he played with sin for so long. Judges 16.20 says that Samson “wist not (or knew not) that the Lord was departed from him.” But he soon found out! For the Philistines took him, put out his eyes, bound him, brought him down to Gaza, and caused him to grind at the millstone.

One of the first things sin does is to blind you. Sin looks good at the beginning, but all of a sudden, you are blind. You don’t know where you are going. You don’t have any direction at all. They brought Samson down to Gaza and put him in the prison house to grind, binding him to a stone wheel. There he is, blind, bound, and grinding day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out. Around, and around, and around he trudges.

Samson has plenty of time to think now. He has plenty of time to say, “If only I had listened to God!” What thundering, pulsating words! If only! He knows now that the pleasures of sin for a season are not worth the price he is now paying.

When you sin, you not only hurt yourself, but you hurt those around you, even those you love the most. Looking at Samson now, you would never recognize what God wanted him to be — a prophet of God, a ruler, a judge. Satan has reduced him to a nothing: A big zero!

And this is Satan’s purpose for your life, to reduce you to a nothing, to so humiliate you through disobedience to God that he can hold your life up before the world as a washed-out nothing — a zero!

Perhaps you have watched people fall into this trap of Satan. Thankfully, God has an answer for everyone in this tragic position. God still has a purpose for your life, a high and noble purpose. He does not want to leave you blinded, bound, and grinding day after day in the despair of defeat, humiliation, and the inability to overcome. God wants you to be able to hold your head up high in this world, to be an overcomer, to be someone who radiates the power of the life of Jesus Christ!

Sin may bind, blind, and grind; but God is able to deliver. Whatever Satan has done to you, God can undo from this day forward! He is the God of a second chance.