We praise God for each of your journeys and the ongoing work that our Father is making manifest in your lives! For many people deliverance may be a one-time event, but it isn’t that simple… After God delivers you, you will still experience spiritual warfare: evil spirits will try to come back and gain strongholds in your life! (Matthew 12:43-45) Ask God to help you fill your house with spiritual things now that he has helped you clean it up and drive out the trespassers! (read Eph 6 about putting on the armor of God).
Obadiah 1:17 God’s ultimate purpose is for his children to possess their God-given inheritance. Deliverance is the first, vital step, or condition. Holiness is the second condition. (1 Peter 1:16, Hebrews 12:14) Any process that attempts to bypass these conditions will not bring God’s people into their inheritance. The children of Israel represented a people who experienced deliverance (out of Egypt) but never quite figured out how to develop a relationship with a holy God. Ask God if it would be a good idea for you to read the book of Exodus this week for insights about your own deliverance journey: prayerfully consider what you have in common with the Israelites and ask God to help you overcome those pitfalls.
Note that God knows your capacity to handle your inheritance. (Exodus 23:29-30) He will never put more on you than you can handle, so it’s entirely possible you may still have giants in your life with which you’ll need to deal. Your part is to keep growing in your relationship with Him because God wants to do the work of driving them out and bringing you into your inheritance!
Samson
Here are four areas of Samson’s life that he never submitted to God:
- His relationships (Judges 14:1-2)
- His appetites (Judges 14:8-9, 16:1)
- His actions – (Judges 14:11-13) often deceptive (Satan is the deceiver) and always self serving (Philippians 2:3-4)
- His retaliation (Judges 15:7) Revenge belongs to the Lord (Romans 12:19), our anger doesn’t facilitate God’s work. (James 1:20)
Were there any points that I missed about Samson? Study it out for yourself and comment below!