Daily PresenceSample

I love game night. Nothing like a good board game or card game with friends. The problem is I’m too competitive. I can control myself, but I still question whether not playing to win is even playing at all. My wife titles me as ‘too aggressive’ when I play. I either play to win or not at all. I always give it my best effort to destroy the competition with no regard for feelings. I can see where she’s coming from. Granted, most of the time I don’t win.

We’ve all heard the story of Samson before. Strongest man to ever live. If someone played to win, it would be Samson. He didn’t even need to be competitive, no one was a match for him. His secret? His long hair, or so he thought. I honestly can’t understand Samson’s decision to tell Deliliah the truth about his hair after the third time she tricked him and tried to get him killed. She clearly wasn’t trustworthy. Fool me once it’s on you, fool me twice it’s on me, am I right? Yet time and time again Samson played with the idea that he was strong enough. He flirted with sin, danced along the edges thinking he would never fall. Even after they had shaved his head he thought he was going to get away with it. Samson trusted his own strength and fell.

At the end of the day I don’t believe Samson’s hair had anything to do with it. Time and time again in the passage we see that Samson was filled with the Holy Spirit, thus he was able to do the incredible things that he did. I believe Samson grieved the Holy Spirit for being a fool. Proverbs 26:11 says, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” Samson kept going back to and trying to push the limits. Paul in Ephesians 4:30 tells us not to grief the Holy Spirit with malice.

I don’t know about you, but my goal for today is not to grieve the Holy Spirit. Not to go back to sin. To do what I want to do and not what I hate. I pray that we may run our race in a way that we get the prize. That we maintain our relationship with Jesus.