Hit the Pause Button Before You Go Down to Timnah

If Samson, chosen and gifted by God, could drift that far, how do we avoid presuming on God? How do we keep from toying with sin until God is done letting us toy with it?

Pause

Next time you have a decision to make, hit the pause button. "Am I going down to Timnah?" Samson, that's a Philistine city. You have no business there. "I'm going to Gaza." "I can make some new friends down there." Those aren't friends. They're people who want to capture and exploit you. "There's a really nice girl down there named Delilah." The answer is no.

The danger is in his presumption phrase: "as before." The mindset is the same, but the context has changed. Delilah's lap probably felt like his wife's lap in Timnah: same perfume, same dress, same culture. But it was different, and you don't know when your context might change. The world has changed. We deal with things in church today we never imagined 20 years ago.

Pray

I can only use Samson as a bad example, so here's a good one. Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king of Persia, the guy who tasted the wine first so that if someone poisoned it, he died instead of the king. One day he looked heartbroken over Jerusalem's broken walls. The king asked if he was okay. Partly because if Nehemiah was sick, maybe the king was about to eat something bad. Then:

Then the king said to me, "What do you request?" So I prayed to the God of heaven. (Nehemiah 2:4)

He paused mid-conversation. He knew what God had burdened him with and why God had put him in the palace. Even so, when the king asked, he hit pause and asked God for wisdom first.

Another example is a guy named Dave. King Dave. He fought Philistines, but first he asked God:

Therefore David inquired of the LORD, saying, "Shall I go and attack these Philistines?" And the LORD said to David, "Go and attack the Philistines, and save Keilah." (1 Samuel 23:2)

He asked again and again. He knew he was supposed to fight the Philistines. He was the king. But every time, he asked first: "God, do You want me to do this?"

My son-in-law wears a little orange bracelet from his church in Tampa that says Pray First. It reminds him to pause and pray before decisions. Prayer is not a last resort, and treating it as one breaks the heart of God.

I don't know what your trigger needs to be. Maybe it's a conversation with your spouse. I don't make big decisions without talking to my wife and to God. Maybe it's pressure. Ever been pressured into buying a car or a time-share? Any time we feel pressured, we need to pray. Maybe it's a spending limit: anything over a set amount, you pray first.

Delilah tied him up three times, and he laughed it off. God gave him enough rope to figure things out. That wasn't approval. It was a grace period, slack meant to lead him to repentance: strike one, strike two, strike three. Maybe some of us are on our third time. You got caught and talked your way out of it. God's grace period is for your willing repentance, and at some point it runs out.

Proceed prayerfully

Then take a step: "God, I'm going to move forward, and if this isn't You, close the door. I'd really like a relationship with this person, but if it's not Your will, shut it down."

Otherwise we just drift, like riding the next wave because God's always done it this way. God says, "No, we're stopping that."

Before you sign the contract, take the job, or make the move, pause and pray. Don't presume.