Blinded by Desire
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Matthew 6:22-23
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
1 Samuel 16:7
For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
Blinded by Desire
The Nazarite Vow:
No touching dead bodies
No cutting of his hair
No drinking wine or strong drink
Judges 16:18-22 (NIV)
18 When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. 19 After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. 20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison. 22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
“A clouded heart leads to clouded vision, bad decisions, and spiritual blindness”
"What captures our eyes controls our hearts."
Genesis 3:6
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
Judges 16:27-30 (NIV)
27 Now 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. 28 Then 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.” 29 Then 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, 30 Samson 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.
Signs your vision is clouded and your heart is distorted:
1. You Chose What Looks Good Over What is Right (Judges 14:1-3)2. Continually Playing with fire, believing you won’t burned (Judges 16:1, 4-6)
3. Thinking your Strength makes you Invincible (Judges 16:20)
"The absence of God feels normal when compromise feels right."
Judges 16:22(NIV) 22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
(NLT) 22 But before long, his hair began to grow back.
Your Fade Isn’t Final—God’s Creating New Growth
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at having a clear heart, clear eyes, clear mind, and motives.
And if you wanna follow along, you can go to the YouVersion Bible app.
All the notes will be there.
You can go to Events, select Real Life Church, and then you will see the notes for today's message.
But I wanna give us a definition, a working definition that we have to go off of
For what clear means, it means to be free from darkness, obscurity, or cloudiness, to be transparent, without discoloration, defect, or blemish, a clear pane of glass.
And specifically today, I wanna talk about you and I having clear eyes and clear heart.
Having clear eyes and a clear heart.
I recently asked one of our more wiser in years staff members this question.
I said, hey, what is the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to having poor eyesight or poor vision?
And they clenched their glasses and said, I always am afraid and fearful and I lack confidence if I don't have my glasses.
They said, if I have to drive and I don't have them, I don't feel safe driving.
If I'm out and about, I feel nervous and apprehensive because if I don't have the ability to see, I have to be reliant, so much more reliant on other people.
And I thought, man, that has to be so true with our spiritual eyes and that it can be fearful or it can be dangerous to go through life not being able to see rightly.
I believe this when it comes to our eyesight is that whatever captures our eyes will control our hearts.
whatever captures our eyes, will control our heart.
I'm gonna talk a lot more about that today, but what our eyes look like, or look at, I should say, will begin to morph or shape or transform how our heart operates.
In fact, if you watch a lot of
of violent things, it's gonna change your heart.
If you watch things that are not glorifying to God, it's gonna change your heart.
If you obsess, typically you know people who are sports people because it comes out of their mouth, it comes out of their speech, it comes out whether they wear, but also they spend a lot of time with their eyes watching sports.
And so we know there is a connection and spiritually in Matthew chapter six, verse 22, it says that the eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.
If your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
And so we know that our eyes are really the first line of defense or the first line of
of having influence on who we are.
And so we wanna make sure we have clear eyes today, eyes that don't have distortion, eyes that are not cloudy.
But secondly is having a clear heart.
Now, we all know people, I know not any of us here, but there are people out there who are really good at faking it.
They're really good at putting on a facade.
They're really good at putting on the show of what something can look like.
But the reality is we cannot fake our hearts to God.
Where we can hide and put on the mask for other people, God is concerned and knows the condition of our heart.
In 1 Samuel 6, it says that for the Lord sees not as man sees.
Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
And so today, my challenge for us is that we would be those that operate with clear eyes and a clear heart.
Why?
Because the eyes are the lamp or are the main area that infiltrates our heart, and our heart matters to God.
And without clear eyes, it's impossible to have a clear heart.
And without a clear heart, it's impossible to live a consecrated life to God.
The title of my message is Blinded by Desire.
Blinded by Desire.
Father, I pray and ask that you would be with us in this third service.
Lord, I thank you for bringing everyone here who you ordained and wanted to be here.
God, would you remove any distractions?
God, would you let your word go forth and really minister to people's lives?
Help us, God, today to not walk out of here without being transformed by you and your word.
In Jesus' name, everybody said amen.
If you're anything like me, sometimes you can get up in the morning and you go to get in your car and you're a good husband, so the garage is reserved for your wife's vehicle and your vehicle is outside.
And one of the things that I experience in that is getting in my truck in the morning, and I look at my windshield, and it's just completely fogged over.
When I spent some time living in Chicago, it would be completely covered in ice.
But like most people, there is a very strong desire in the morning to do something, and that is to not be late for work.
or not be late getting the kids to school on time.
And see, what can happen is we make the poor decision where our windshield looks like this and we say, you know what?
That's enough visibility for me.
Let me go.
And you're driving.
Come on, some of y'all do it.
And you're driving, look at that one little hole.
Like, okay.
Sometimes it gets so bad for me, I just roll down the window and stick my head out.
And it's like your eyes are all watering, but you're like, I gotta get there, I gotta get there.
Because there's a desire to get us somewhere, but the reality is we're blinded.
We don't have the visibility to see.
And some people will go through life without clear eyes, and they're risking wrecking their life, which would impact their heart.
And see, in other words, what can happen is we don't wanna take the time, because what?
Putting on that defrost, what does it take?
It takes time.
It takes time to allow the defrost to do what it needs to do.
And it's when our desires are blinding us that we're willing to risk it all by getting in the car and taking off.
But God desires to give us full vision, full clarity.
He desires for you and I to not operate with just this little picture or this little window, but he wants our peripherals to be able to see.
He wants us to have vision that is clear, that is without blemish, that is without distortions in it.
And when we operate with clear eyes, we are able to operate with a pure heart.
But we have to allow the time it takes to
for the defroster to work.
When I think about this idea of clear eyes or a clear heart, there's one person that immediately comes to my mind in the Bible, and that is Samson.
Samson is one of the judges of Israel, the last traditional judge of Israel, and he, in his life, is the perfect balance and story of this correlation between clear eyes and a clear heart.
In fact, he did not have clear eyes, and he did not have a clear heart.
And so I want us, as we're gonna be in Judges chapter 16, his whole life is Judges 13 through 16.
We don't have time to go through all of that.
I wanna encourage you, if you would love to go deeper in this, we have a small group called Deep Dive on Wednesday nights with Gary Bell that meets here that will go deeper into the Sunday morning sermon.
And so that'd be a great place.
But his life is 13 through 16.
We're gonna stop in chapter 16, and that's really where the heart of our message is gonna be at today.
But who was Samson?
Well, Samson was, his birth actually was announced by an angel.
That is like such a flex right there to tell your friends, hey, I don't know about you, but like before I came into this world, an angel came and told my mom I was gonna be born.
That's how special I am.
He was the son of Manoah, and his wife was barren at the time until God had intervened, meaning Samson's life was started with a miracle.
It just kicked off with a miracle.
It was a miracle that his mother became pregnant.
Samson was set apart as a child to what is called a Nazarite vow.
We're gonna talk a lot about that today.
His strength, he had supernatural strength, and this strength was a direct gift from God given to him.
His power came directly from the Spirit of God and was connected to the Nazarite vow that he had, especially.
his hair not being cut.
Samson at one time split a lion in half with his own bare hands, killing that lion.
He at one time picked up the jawbone of a donkey and he would slay a thousand Philistines who was Israel's enemy, public enemy number one.
He carried the gates of Gaza, these massive gates displaying the strength that he had.
When we look at this portion of Samson's life, we're like, man, he's got a great highlight reel for Instagram.
He's strong.
He was called by God.
He's devoted to God.
He is born out of a miracle.
He did these incredible feats.
But if we kept going and looking into Samson's life, there's more things that accompany his story.
See, Samson married foreign women based purely just off what they look like.
He told his mother and father one day, hey, you see her over there?
I want her.
Go make her my wife.
Samson would sleep with prostitutes.
He would continually fall into the lust and temptation of his eyes that would lead him ultimately into Delilah's lap, which we will discuss more today.
He was one that would touch dead corpses, and yet he continued to be one that was blinded by his desires.
He was continually allowing his eyes to put him in snares and entrap him.
And we need to learn from Samson's life.
And I think this is what I want us to all learn today.
You could write this down if you're taking notes.
A clouded heart leads to clouded vision, bad decisions, and spiritual blindness.
A clouded heart leads to clouded vision, bad decisions, and spiritual blindness, and Samson was guilty of that.
Now, I had said that he had taken up this Nazarite vow, and so if you will please bear with the Bible geek in me, we're gonna go into a little teaching mode.
We're gonna go into a classroom here, because it's important that we understand what does this Nazarite vow mean.
There was really three main components, and if you would love to study this, you can go to Numbers chapter six, I believe it is, where we see that God giving the instructions of what the Nazarite vow meant.
But essentially, number one was that they were not to touch any dead bodies.
Now, you might think that's a little odd and a little strange, but the reason behind that is because as a Nazarite, taking that vow, you were committed to represent life and God, and God gave life, and so you were not to be associated with death.
This was taken to such a degree that if their mother or father were to pass, they were not allowed to be a part of the ceremonial process of burying them because they were not circumcised.
to touch a dead thing.
In other words, in layman's terms for us today, not touching dead bodies equates to you just having to be different and do different things than other people.
This was part of them setting themselves apart for God and being used by God.
Secondly, we see that there was to be no cutting of his hair.
He's called to look different.
This not cutting of his hair was a symbol of being holy.
It was a symbol that he was devout and that he was committed to God.
Not only was this long hair a sign for other people, but it would be a sign for that man himself.
When he would touch his hair, that when he would see his hair, he would be reminded of the commitment he made to God.
And so ultimately he's called to look different, to look set apart,
than anybody else.
It was a sign or a mark of submission, of God's authority, and it was a reminder of their commitment, yet again, not only to others, but to God.
Thirdly is that they were not to consume wine or strong drink.
See, wine represented celebration, pleasure, and indulgence.
And it was important that these men of God would devote themselves not to be satisfied by the pleasures or indulgence of this world, but that their joy would simply come from God.
And therefore...
They were called to carry themselves differently than other people.
These three things we might not be able to relate to on the surface, but all of us as children of God are called to look different than the world.
We're called to behave differently than the world, right?
We're called to carry ourselves different than the world.
And all of that is to be a sign and a representation that I have consecrated, I've set my life apart for God as devotion to God.
Now, before we get into Judges chapter 16, I wanna paint this picture for us to know exactly where Samson is at.
He finds himself in the lap of this woman named Delilah, one of the last women that his eyes get him in trouble with.
And up until this point, before we read verse 17, she has been asking him, she's been wanting and begging, what is the secret to your strength?
See, the Philistines have cut a deal with her.
And if she can find out the secret to his strength, they're going to pay her off.
And so what would happen is that she would, Samson would be there with her.
She would ask him, what is the secret?
And he would lie and he would say, oh, if you tie me up with fresh ropes, that will take away my strength.
And then all of a sudden he finds himself tied up with rope.
And she would scream, hey, the Philistines are here, they're coming.
And he would snap out of it and he would get up and he would defeat the Philistines.
And then a second time she would come to him, why did you lie to me?
How can you be restrained?
What is the secret to your strength?
And he says, well, if you take these bow strings and do that, that will do it.
And yet again, then all of a sudden the Philistines come.
He wakes up, he's tied up, he breaks free and he defeats the Philistines.
Now, some of y'all are looking at Samson like, bro,
How many times you gotta wake up tied up before you realize you need to get a new relationship?
There is something not working here.
But that's what we look like when we're operating without clear vision.
That's what it looks like when our eyes are clouded and distorted, is that we can do something that a whole room could laugh at, and it could be so glaringly obvious to some, but yet we are imprisoned by it.
See, he was blinded by his desire for Delilah, that after the third time of getting up, he's still in the same room with this woman.
And she hit him with that age-old one-liner, her fourth time asking, Samson, if you really love me, will you tell me the secret of your strength?
And that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
And he told her, verse 17's not on there.
I'm gonna read it for us, but verse 17 and then 18 through 22.
So he told her everything.
No razor has ever been used on my head, he said, because I have been a Nazarite dedicated to God from my mother's womb.
If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me and I would become as weak as any other man.
When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, come back once more.
He told me everything.
So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hand.
After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to come and shave off his seven braids of his hair.
And so began, I'm sorry, to subdue him and his strength
had left him.
Then she called, Samson, the Philistines are upon you.
He awoke from his sleep and thought, I'll go out as before and shake myself free.
But he did not know the Lord had left him.
Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and took him down to Gaza.
Binding him with bronze shackles, they sent him to grinding grain in prison,
But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
I wanna give us four signs from Samson's life, four signs that we might have our vision being clouded or our heart being distorted.
Four things that we can learn from his life that might be a part of our check the engine light dashboard that our vision is clouded and that our heart is distorted.
Number one is when you choose what looks good over what is right.
When you choose what looks good over what is right.
Samson was so guilty of this.
His entire life was indulging on what looked good, not what was right.
Whether it was the women he chose, whether it was when he saw the lion's carcass on the side of the road and he touched it and scooped up the honey and ate the honey because it looked good to him, his life was controlled by what looked good, not what was right.
And oftentimes you and I have to answer that question of why we are doing such a thing.
Is it because it looks good?
Because it looks pleasurable?
I mean, we can go back all the way to Genesis with the enemy tempting Eve and she looks at the fruit and she sees, oh, it looks pleasing to the eyes.
And so if you and I are living our lives based on what looks good, then there's a sign we have clouded vision.
Delilah asked him four times, and he can't see it.
He can't get past it.
He's still stuck.
He's still in her gaze.
He still can't get past the fact that, man, this might not be right for me because his vision was clouded.
Essentially, what Samson had was lack of impulse control.
He saw something.
His brain's like, ooh, I like that.
I want that.
He grabbed it.
You saw that extra cookie?
Ooh, I want that cookie.
Let me eat that cookie.
Not thinking, man, maybe I shouldn't.
I've already had three or four of them.
Impulse control.
And we can be guilty of this because we want everything right when we want it, the way we want it, immediately.
And so what we can learn from Samson is saying, man, if I am being bound by impulse control, then there's a real warning sign, a real trigger that I might actually have clouded vision.
that my heart might just be completely distorted.
Because man, I just act on anything I wanna do, even though it might not be right.
I don't care in the moment, I just wanted to do it, so I did it.
I'm an adult, I can do it.
I'm grown, so I can do it.
Those aren't the phrases of a mature Christian that says, no, I'm submitted to God, so actually I can't do it.
I have people who depend on me, so I won't do it.
It's not about having the authority or power to do it, it's being surrendered to something greater than your own authority and power.
Number two.
continually playing with fire, believing you won't get burned.
Oh yeah, that's a warning sign right there that you got clouded vision and a distorted heart.
When you will play with fire, but you think, you know what?
Yeah, I hear about it.
It happened to that person.
Oh, it happened to that person, but it'll never happen to me.
I hear this all the time.
You talk to people who go through something traumatic.
Maybe it was a divorce.
Maybe it was getting fired from their job.
It was something catastrophic.
And they say, oh, it'll never happen to me though.
I didn't believe it could happen to me.
Samson played with fire constantly, whether it was the women he was with.
He made everything a game and a joke.
He would make riddles about matters that were important.
He would flirt with things that he shouldn't be.
He would entertain thoughts that he shouldn't entertain.
He was playing with fire, and he didn't expect to get burned.
And can I tell you, you might be
Get away with playing with fire five times, 100 times, 500 times.
But let's not mistake God's grace and mercy as a license to keep on doing what we're doing.
It just means his judgment hasn't come yet.
Number three is only crying out to God in crisis.
There's two times, Samson did a lot of miracles.
He did a lot of acts of great strength, but there's only two times that he actually prayed to God.
One is praying to God after he defeats a thousand Philistines, and he prays and says, God, I'm thirsty.
I'm about to die.
Can you give me some water?
And number two is what we'll read about in just a second.
But he was guilty for only crying out to God in a crisis, never just commuting with God because of relationship.
Now, I know nobody here has ever said this, so we'll just say somebody we know.
Praise that prayer.
Oh God, if you just get me out of this situation, I'm never going to drink again.
I'm never going to smoke again.
I'm going to start going to church.
I'm going to read my Bible.
Lord, just get me out of this moment.
That's a sign and a marker that your vision is clouded.
and that your heart is distorted.
I often tell people, when you're a new believer, your decision matrix is really between what is ungodly, unrighteous, and what is righteous and godly.
But that's not how it should be as we continue to mature.
As we continue to walk with God, your decision matrix is not between, do I sin or do I not sin?
It's actually, did I consult and talk to God and do what he told me to do?
Or did I just do the thing that is good that I decided I wanted to in my own strength, in my own time, in my own will, in my own way?
So what Samson was guilty of is he was accustomed to moving on behalf of God before consulting God.
Philistines, let me go kill 1,000 of them.
Let me go move these gates.
Let me go tear this lion apart.
Let me do whatever I wanna do.
Let me get all these little foxes and set them on fire and take away, destroy the enemy's camp.
He did whatever he wanted to do without consulting God first, and that is a marker that your vision might be impaired.
that your heart is with blemish, your heart is not feeling properly because you only wanna cry out to God when it's convenient and you're in a crisis.
Or you only wanna cry out to God when you're ready for him to be the genie on the lamp that you can rub.
Fourthly, is thinking that your strength makes you invisible.
He had a belief system that his strength that was given by God could never depart from him.
his strength always got him out of the situation.
His strength always was able to rescue him.
Because of his strength, he could defeat a thousand men by himself.
Because of his strength, he could overcome a lion with his bare hands.
See, he had the problem of making his strengths become his identity.
I'm Samson, I'm strong.
I'm able to do all of these things.
And so the question we have to ask ourselves is what is the strength in your life
that is becoming an identity blanket for you.
Maybe it's your 401k and your retirement.
And that's where you rest all your strength in.
That's where you put all your faith in.
That's where you put all your hope in and you feel like you're bulletproof, you're invincible because of that.
Maybe it's your status or your position at work.
Maybe it's the relationships you have in your life, the last name that you carry, that is making you think that you are invincible to ever facing adversity or hardships or difficulties.
These are all warning signs.
that we need to check under the engine.
We need to check the heart and see what's actually happening.
Now, if you're like me, when we read verse 17, it was very interesting to me.
This is when he's telling her, this is where all my strength comes from.
There's no razor that's ever touched my head.
Because since I was a child in my mother's womb, I have been dedicated to God.
I've kept this Nazarite vow.
Now, if we just recount all the things that he did, did it sound like he was a man of God?
Did he sound like someone who was serving God?
And I don't know if it was between which prostitute he was sleeping with.
I don't know what made us think that, but his actions didn't align what his vow and commitment was supposed to be to God.
And so when he's lying to Delilah these three times about what is the key to his strength, I first read that and I thought, well, he probably doesn't trust her.
I mean, he's got trust issues, clearly.
So he doesn't want to tell her the secret to his strength.
But as I began to think about it more, what if it's not that he was lying to her because he didn't feel like he could trust her, but in fact he was lying to himself because he didn't want to become fronted with the truth of who he was.
So he kept saying all these other reasons as to why or how his strength can be taken away.
But the reality was, no, he really just didn't want to have to confess to her when he's living a life that doesn't align with how a Nazarite vow should be lived out.
He doesn't want to have to confess to her and be faced with the truth of, you know what?
yeah, I'm supposed to be devoted to God.
I'm supposed to not drink.
I'm supposed to not cut my hair.
I'm supposed to not touch these dead things, and yet here I am laying in your lap.
And he didn't want to be confronted with the truth.
See, I believe the truth sets you free, but the truth will also set us straight.
And sometimes we're not free because we're afraid of the straightening that the truth is gonna do in our lives.
It finally got to the point where Samson had to confess,
this is how I ought to be living and this is who I'm supposed to be, but she could see the reality of this is who he is.
He was dodging the truth as much as he was dodging from telling Delilah the truth.
When you and I, when our eyes can't see straight, our heart will not beat right.
It's just when our eyes are off, you cannot have a sacred, purified heart, but you have eyes that are living in the gutter.
It will impact you.
It will impact you and I in our lives.
I want to better give a depiction of all this.
So my oldest son, Apollos, he has an issue of messy food eating disorder.
I don't know.
And he, look at the ketchup is everywhere.
And yes, that's a Chipotle bag at In-N-Out.
Our family's complicated.
He, it doesn't matter if he's eating rice,
You know, this happened yesterday at lunch.
He's eating pizza and ranch.
And he's really just like all ranch with a little bit of pizza.
And this stuff grosses me out, so it's hard.
It might gross you out.
But you know when they got all that ranch right there?
Like, it's just like hanging and, oof.
I mean, he's my son, and it still makes me like, oof.
So I'm like, son, wipe your face.
Please, like, wipe the ranch off your face.
And he gets the paper towel and he starts wiping this side of his face.
I'm like, no, it's the other side.
Wipe it.
And he's like, where?
What do you mean?
I'm like, it's right there.
And I'm asking him this question.
How can you not feel that?
Like, really?
How can you not feel that?
You look silly.
You look unkept.
You look not ready to go.
But believers, I have a question for you.
How can you not feel that?
How can you not feel that living a life of compromise in your life will result in God not being there?
How can you not feel that it's impacting your heart?
How can you not feel that it's impacting your eyes when you look at things that are ungodly?
How can you not feel that?
I think sometimes God is looking down on us.
He's saying, son, daughter, do you not feel what that's doing to you?
Do you not feel what watching that is doing to your heart?
Do you not feel when gossiping like that is doing to your soul?
Do you not feel that the way you're conducting yourself is actually having a negative impact on your life?
Do you not feel that?
And this is what Samson amazes me about his story is that he gets up to go and fight him for the fourth time, and he did not feel that God had departed from him.
He didn't even notice the difference.
He thought it was gonna be the same thing, the same story, the same song.
I'll get up, I'll shake myself free, and I'll go fight and defeat the Philistines, but he did not recognize God has left him, and I believe this to be true.
The absence of God feels normal when compromise feels right.
The absence of God in your life will feel normal when compromise has felt right.
We cannot go through life, compromise, compromise, compromise, breaking the vow, breaking the vow, breaking the vow, breaking the vow, and then not think that in that moment, we're gonna feel, oh, God's left me.
Because in fact, our devotion, our commitment, the vow we made to him, we've broken it several times over.
Samson didn't keep his vow.
He was guilty of breaking it.
But he did not recognize that God had departed him because it felt normal for him to compromise.
It felt regular.
It felt comfortable.
When our eyes are constantly diverted away from the things of God, our heart is also diverted away from the things of God.
He teaches us that if we continually break God's vow, our vow to him over and over and over again, eventually the spirit of God will depart from us.
But what I love about God, and I'm so glad he's not petty like me, is that despite Samson's failures, despite our failures, God still used Samson to defeat Israel's enemies.
Judges 16, 27 through 30.
Now the temple was crowded with men and women.
All the rulers of the Philistines were there.
And on the roof were about 3,000 men and women watching Samson perform.
And Samson prayed to the Lord.
Catch this, now he's praying to God.
Sovereign Lord, remember me.
Please God, strengthen me just one more.
And let with one blow, let me get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.
Then Samson reached towards the two central pillars on which the temple stood, bracing himself against them, his right hand on one, his left hand on the other.
Samson said, let me die with the Philistines.
And then he pushed with all of 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 when he lived.
It took Samson physically having his eyes gouged out and taken away in order for his spiritual eyes to be opened.
He did not see straight.
He did not see with clarity.
He did not see rightly until God had to allow for his eyes to be taken out by his enemy.
And then he was able to see.
I can't just operate my own strength.
I actually need to pray and ask God for the strength.
And it's at his lowest place where he's humiliated.
Everyone is looking down at him in the lowest place, making fun of him.
He's there for their entertainment where he learns to pray and ask and seek God.
for the source of his strength, not leaning on what he had himself, but leaning on the one who gave it.
One act of obedience in Samson's life was more impactful than doing things his home way.
The Bible says he did more work defeating the Philistines and the enemy of God in his final act of obedience than he did trying to live life with his own compromises again and again and again.
I love verse 16, 22.
because it says immediately after that he's captured and they pluck out his eyes, it says, but his hair began to grow back.
In fact, Judges 16, 22 in the NLT says, but before long, his hair began to grow back.
See, I think oftentimes in life, we can have an encounter, we can come to
the realization of our own sin, or we can come to the realization or the revelation of like, man, God, I am far from you.
And it can kind of leave us embarrassed.
It can lead us feeling shame.
It can lead us wanting to hide in darkness and not be seen.
In fact, a lot of those feelings can be similar to when you get a really bad haircut.
You go to the barber, and the barber pushes you like all the way back.
All the way back.
And you could feel and walk through life kind of like, man, everyone sees it.
Everyone's noticing.
My life is ruined, it's over.
I made the mistake and chose the wrong barber.
I made the mistake and I entrusted something to someone else and look at what I look like now.
This is embarrassing, this is humiliating.
This is not something I want people to see.
But here's the promise from Judges 16, 22, is that it will grow back.
Listen to me.
Your final fade, or your fade, I should say, isn't final.
God is creating new growth in your life today.
New growth.
That last cut had you looking whack, had you feeling whack, had you feeling like, man, I was not living my best life.
I was not operating with clarity.
Here's the good news.
God is creating new growth in your life.
He's creating new growth.
Now we're talking spiritually because y'all can look at me as a testament that new growth isn't coming physically all the time.
But God is creating new growth.
He wants to create new growth in your life.
And I love this about the grace and mercy of God.
This is just showing the redemption of God.
This is not exemplifying Samson as this glorified man of God.
This is exemplifying the goodness and grace of God.
That even when Samson has his eyes plucked out and he's been captured, it's at that moment that the Bible records his hair began to grow.
Because God already had a redemption plan for him.
before he even prays and cries out to God.
God had already begun to grow his hair back.
All that is is symbolic.
As a Nazarite who took this Nazarite vow, it is just symbolic that God can restore you.
God can bring strength back to you, back to that circumstance, back to that marriage, back to that relationship, that though it might seem over, though you might seem in captivity, God can give you new growth.
He can give you new strength.
And it's in that moment that,
where Samson is finally aligning with God.
He's seeing with clarity.
His heart is in the place of saying, God, I need you to be the one to do this.
I said it before, I'll say it again.
A clouded heart leads to a clouded vision, bad decisions, and spiritual blindness.
And God does not want you and I to be spiritually blind.
I've said it in one way.
I wanna say it, and I'm gonna ask you one more time.
Can you feel that?
Can you feel that God wants to create a new growth in you?
Like, can you feel that though you might feel like, man, I'm embarrassed, I'm ashamed, I haven't been living right, I haven't been seeing right, can you feel that he's calling you?
He's beckoning to you?
He's saying, man, if you would just place your trust in me, son or daughter, I will cause in you new growth that other people might not even be able to recognize.
Can you feel that I'm still here?
Can you feel that I'm still available?
Can you feel that I still wanna restore you, not embarrass you?
That I still wanna redeem you, not humiliate you?
Can you feel that I still love you in spite of that?
It's the message of the cross.
It's the message of Jesus that in our lowest place of sinning against God, Jesus would show his greatest act of sacrifice and love by saying, I'll die for you in that moment.
God wants to create new growth in you and I's lives today.
And it starts right now.
Would you all stand to your feet with me today?
We're gonna do things a little bit different.
I wanna give space.
You know, I believe it's so important when we come to church, we worship God.
I believe we honor God's word.
And then we respond to God's word and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us.
I just feel like that is so important when we come to corporate gatherings.
We worship God, we exalt him.
He says, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.
We honor the teaching of the word of God and then we respond to God's word.
And I wanna give us a chance to respond.
And this is purely for everyone in the room who says, God, I want my life this year, I want it to be marked with clarity.
I want my eyes to be clear.
I want my eyes to be without distortion and cloudiness.
So I want whatever you need to change the programming of what my eyes are seeing, God, I need you to change it.
And secondly, of saying, God, I want to have a clear heart.
I don't want my heart to be distorted with the wicked things.
I don't want my heart to be distorted with what my eyes see on the news or what I see on social media.
I want my heart to be pure and devoted and committed to you.
So if that's you and you're here today, you say, God, I want clear eyes.
I want a clear heart.
And I want to have that commitment, that devotion to you.
The altars are open.
Would you just come to the altar?
Pastor Brandon.
and the worship team is gonna lead us.
We're just gonna have some time of worship and prayer.
But if you're saying, God, I want clear eyes, I want clear heart, and I wanna renew that vow.
I want my vow to you to mean something.
I want my life to be consecrated.
Would you just come down to the altar?
Myself, the pastors, our prayer ministers, we're just gonna be walking around.
We're gonna lay hands on you.
Please don't feel shy.
Come on all the way to the front.
There's gonna be many people.
We need to fill the altars.
Scoot on up.
We're gonna pray and worship.
And I just wanna encourage you as we begin to sing out, let these words minister to you.
Because see, we don't wanna be people that just have this negative vision of, I don't wanna see that, I don't wanna see that.
But instead, we wanna be people that say, God, if you would just show me you, if I could just get a picture of who you are, it would change my heart.
saying, God, I just want to see you rightly.
I don't want to see you as this condemning God.
He's not here to condemn the world, but he has come to save it.
So come on, with all hands lifted, can we just worship him and can we honor him today?
Hallelujah, Jesus.
Open the eyes of my heart.
Come on, y'all.
We say, open the eyes of my heart, Lord.
Open the eyes of my heart.
I want to see you.
I want to see you.
Come on back.
Say, open the eyes of my heart.
Open the eyes of my heart I wanna see you I wanna see you Open the eyes Open the eyes of my heart Open the eyes of my heart
I wanna see you.
Open the eyes of my heart.
Open the eyes of my heart.
I wanna see you.
As we sing holy, holy, holy.
Sing you high and lifted up.
Sing shining in the light.
Shining in the light of your glory.
Pour out your power.
Pour out your power and love.
As we sing holy, holy, holy.
yeah I wanna see you yes I do God say I wanna see you yeah cause I wanna I wanna see you yeah say I wanna see you I wanna see you I wanna see you Jesus I wanna see you
So we sing clean my hands Purify my heart I wanna burn for you
Only for you.
And take my life.
As a sacrifice.
I want to pray for you.
Only for you.
Come on, sing.
Clean my head.
And purify my heart.
I want to pray for you.
I have to sacrifice.
So I want to burn.
Only for you.
Come on, clean my hands.
Purify my heart.
as a sacrifice I want to burn for you I want to burn for you I want to burn for you I want to burn for you
I wanna burn for you Only for you Oh, clean my hands Purify my heart I wanna burn for you Only for you Would you take my life As a sacrifice
I want to burn for you, only for you.
Take my life as a sacrifice.
I want to burn for you, only for you.
Jesus, would you take my life?
As a sacrifice, I wanna burn for you.
Only for you, Lord.
I wanna burn for you.
Only for you.
Hallelujah, Jesus.
Hallelujah, Jesus.
If you're able, would you just put your hand on your heart?
Lord, I think if we were all honest in this room, at one point, at one moment, God, in our lives, we were just like Samson, Lord, guilty of breaking our commitment to you or guilty of indulging in what seemed right in our eyes but wasn't right to you, God.
Lord, I just pray for every heart represented here.
God, we need our hearts, God, to be clear, to be without defect, Lord Jesus.
God, I pray that you would speak to our hearts.
I pray that you would silence any condemnation in this moment, but that, God, you would help us with opening arms to accept the gift of salvation, to accept the gift of grace and mercy, God.
Lord, I pray that you would, in our hearts, transform us.
That God, if we have been guilty of compromise, if we've been guilty of just living a life like that, not feeling anything, that you would replace our heart of stone with a heart of flesh, Lord.
I pray that, God, you would be the ruler over our heart, our emotions, our thinking, and our eyes, God.
Give us courage, Lord, because I believe and trust that you're going to show us who you are in a greater revelation.
You're going to show us your ways.
You're going to show us the plans you have for our lives.
But give us courage that when you show us, God, we'll have the faith to say, yes, I'll follow you.
That we'll have the boldness to say, it might not be my way, but it's my God's way.
And so I say, yes, and I will follow you.
Help us, Lord.
to not be blinded by our desires, but to be set free by our dependence on you, God.
That freedom would come when we say yes, when we surrender, when we are set apart and consecrated to you, Lord.
We thank you, God, that only you can take the stain of sin, God, and you can make it white as snow.
So Jesus, I pray that you would speak to the condition of our hearts.
I pray that, God, that just by your spirit, someone would right now, even in this moment or whether watching online, that they would surrender their heart over to you, not because a man on a stage led it, but because the spirit of God was speaking to them and they said yes to you, God.
I thank you for what you're doing in our church and the lives of individuals.
And God, I just pray that we would be positioned to be hungry and ready, God, to run with you, to walk with you, and to allow you to continually renew our eyes and to transform our hearts, Lord.
We thank you, God, that you're doing a new work in us.
We thank you that you're growing us, God, you're maturing us, God.
We might not look like what we used to look like, but God, you are maturing us and you are creating in us a new creation.
So I pray that solitude will become normal, God, for us.
That spending time in your presence would be the defroster that our heart needs sometimes, that our eyes need, God.
That it would not be that we try to live a life of following all these rules of what not to do, but that we would walk in the freedom of just saying, I have seen God and that is what I want for my life and for my heart.
So God, we just say yes to you today.
We commit ourselves to you.
knowing that we are going to be dependent upon you, God, to help us every step of the way.
But we say yes to that.
We honor you with that yes.
We say have your way in and through our lives.
And if that's your prayer today, would you just say amen and amen and give God praise.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Jesus.
Amen.
I want to encourage you this week, allow the Lord to speak to your eyes.
Allow him to speak to what you're consuming.
Allow him to confirm or critique or correct the way that you're operating.
And let's believe God for the transformation work he's going to do in our hearts.
Amen?
Amen.
We love you, church family.
We hope to see you tonight at Glory Nights.
God bless you all.