Danger Of Drifting

I heard about a well-known actor not long ago who performed for years on Broadway, who had been invited to perform at a party because of his amazing and incredible oratory skills. As part of the entertainment, they initially wanted him to come and quote Shakespeare from some of his most well-known plays, which he did. He agreed, and he did that, and everyone was entertained. It was amazing, but at one point, he turned to the audience and he said, I've quoted a lot of my most famous plays from Shakespeare, but he said, is there any request that anybody has from the audience that I may know? And this little voice in the back says it was a priest, and he said, I wonder, do you know Psalm 23? The actor said, actually, I don't really go to church, but I memorized it from a child. My mother and father made me memorize it, and he said, I'll do my best. And he stood up, and with power and boldness and certainty, he said, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me beside still waters. He leadeth me where he wants me to go. The yea though I walk through the water, he just gives this incredibly authoritative and bold delivery, and the more that he spoke, each line was with more boldness, more certainty, more authority, and everybody began to clap, and everybody began to cheer,

and when he got to the end of it, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It was a standing ovation in the entire room. And when he was done, everybody sat down, and he looked at the priest, and he said, okay, priest, you requested it, it's your turn. And the priest said, oh, no, I'm not a performer like you. And he said, no, no, no, you're not gonna get off that easy, so ingest, he said, come on, come on up, and you quote Psalm 23, it's your time, and the story goes that he makes his way up in front of everyone, doesn't get on stage, he just stands in front on the floor, and he bows his head, and with deep humility, and reverence, and gratitude, he said, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall never want. He maketh me to lie down at green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He has always restored my soul, and a silence fell upon the crowd. And as the more he spoke, the more people began to weep, and by the end of it, there wasn't a standing ovation, there wasn't even an applaud, there wasn't a cheer, there was just this contemplative moment of reflection, and not a dry eye in the house, and he simply excuses himself, and walks out the back. Later at dinner that night, one of the actors was,

that actor was having dinner with one of his peers, and he said, man, I've been sitting on this all night, and I don't know what to say, I'm just gonna bring it up. What in the world was that? What was the difference in the vibe in the room? Everybody could tell, it was totally different. What in the world hit different in those two moments? And the actor, while he's chewing his food, said, oh, there's no big mystery there. I know the psalm, he knows the shepherd. I know the psalm, it's clear he knows the shepherd. Brothers, it's not enough to know the psalm. It's not enough to know about him. It's not enough to know the Bible. It's not enough to memorize the scriptures. You have to be intimate with the shepherd if this is ever gonna work. And I came here tonight with a warning for all of us about the danger of drifting away from intimacy with the shepherd, because I promise you, it will not happen in a day, it will not happen in a week, it will not happen in a month, it will happen over time. Your enemy and my enemy is the master of playing the long game. And I wanna show it to you from one of the most incredible figures and most tragic figures in all of the Bible. The accomplishments of Samson are nothing short, and I mean nothing short of legendary, but unfortunately, so are his weaknesses.

As men, when I taught men of honor for 17 years, it was important, I told them that we know and keep in mind that when you die, I know you're gonna wanna be remembered for all your great accomplishments and all of your great accumulations. You will not be, in 32 years, that has not taught me what most children will remember, what most people will remember. Your life will be reduced to one sentence. You've gotta pick it now and live it out. I don't care what you say. I've never had a son walk to the pulpit with his dad's resume, not once. I've never had a daughter come up and read and recite her father's bank account and all of his accumulations or his properties. They speak about not what you did, not what you bought, but what sort of a man that you are. The summarization of your character. And if I had to pick one sentence for Samson to summarize his life, it would be this. Samson was an incredibly strong man with a dangerously weak will. An incredibly strong man. with a dangerously weak will. Let me just stop and give you a little background just in case you're new to the Bible or new to church. I never take for granted or assume that everybody in the room has been to church

your whole life or you know the stories of the Bible. The Israelites had been unfaithful to God for many years, so God had allowed them to be ruled over by their neighboring enemies, a brutal tribe of people that were called the Philistines. After many years of oppression, God sends word that he is going to raise up a deliverer, a liberator, a man who is going to begin to break the bonds of the Philistines off of Israel, and this man's name was Samson. Now, he is a part of a lineage of a time and period in the nation of Israel that is known as the time of judges. They did not have a king. God never wanted them to have a king. He wanted them to be different and separate than the other nations of the planet. The only reason he relented and ever gave them a king was because they begged him and badgered him for a king, and the rest of their history, they kind of regretted ever having kings, but at this time, it was just judges. God would lay his hand on an individual in a unique way. The Bible says the spirit of God would come upon that individual, and it would give them supernatural wisdom, discernment, and ability to lead the nation of Israel and make decisions for the people, and Samson is part of this lineage of judges, and an angel came and appeared to his parents and said, God is going to do something different

with this one. This one's gonna look different. This one's gonna be different, and indeed he was. The angel said, God is gonna give him supernatural ability, supernatural strength, as long as he keeps a covenant with God that is known in the Bible as the Nazarite vow. Now, a Nazarite vow was basically a set of commitments that a non-priest, a non-Levite, someone who wasn't an official priest, could make as a lifelong covenant with God to honor him and put him first in some very special and unique ways. I want to point out to you what they are. There are three of them in the Nazarite vow. Number one, no whiskey, no alcohol ever, Bud Light, Mik Ultra, whatever's your flavor. There was none of that in his life. Number two, never touch anything dead or what they called unclean or in a state of decomposition. This was a Leviticus 25 law, and he embraced it as a Nazarite vow. He would never touch anything in a state of decomposition or anything considered unclean. Number three, we know this one well, never cut your wig. Okay, never cut your hair for all the days of your life. Now, I don't have time to get into it, but each one of these vows actually carried with its special significance, but as long as these were honored, God promised to use Samson and release his full potential. And when I say, again, his actions are legendary,

that is not a stretch of the imagination. Bible says he killed 1,000 enemy warriors at one time by himself with nothing but the jawbone of an animal. They were equipped with swords and spears and shields and armor, and he killed 1,000 men at one sitting with nothing but the jawbone of a donkey. He was attacked by a lion while walking through a vineyard one day, and the scriptures literally say that he tore this lion into two pieces. He literally, it gives the implication that he took him by his jaws and he ripped him apart like a piece of paper mache and killed a lion. He gets offended one time by this neighboring city in Phylicia by the men of the city, and he gets so ticked off that the Bible says just to show him who he was, he walks up to the city gates. Now, think about what you see on movies, these massive city gates that were the only point of ingress and egress that 10 men had to lift up the pylons, take them off of the hinges, and then open the doors. That's what this was, and he went up, pulled them out of the ground, put them on his shoulders, and went up and stuck them on a hill just to let them know, you'll never keep me out. If I want in, I'll get in whenever I want. Wanted them to know it. So this guy was different, a little different. I would tell you he was a beast on an entirely other level, but the greatest tragedy of his life is this.

It's in Judges 13, 14, and 15 through 16. You can go and read it for yourself. The tragedy is he conquered everything and everyone else in life but himself. He conquered everything and everyone else in life but himself. He ends up taking his relationship with God for granted, gives in to his lust, and loses everything that mattered, including his own life, far more prematurely than it should have been lost. He had a beyond amazing potential, but wasted it by drifting away from intimacy with God and the shepherd. You know what scares me to death when I read the story of Samson as I reread it preparing for tonight? He is just like you. We are no different other than we can't rip up gates and we're not gonna kill 1,000 men. Here's why he's the same. Every man in this room is full. I mean full of unbelievable godly potential. But at the same time, every man in this room is full of unbelievable self-destruction, including me. We are full of the ability for God to do great things in and through our life, for our lives to have legacy and to be pregnant with purpose and to make a difference for our wives, our children, our family, and our community. And we also have the ability to be a headline

of terrible, destructive things. It's in us. Both are latent. And many times, the only difference between those two is whether we simply know the psalm or we truly know the shepherd. Whether we truly know the psalm or we just know the shepherd. And tonight, we're gonna look at some warnings from Samson's life. And more specifically, I wanna share with you three attitudes that tend to make strong men weak. And then when we get to the end of this message, I wanna show you this moment of mercy and redemption that is pregnant with purpose that I feel like the Lord wants to share with every one of us tonight before we gather in these altars and pray because it's the key to being free. It's the key to being free. There are three attitudes that prevail generally in men's lives that tend to make potentially strong men weak. Here we go, number one, it starts with lust. Flat out lust, there's just no way to whitewash it, there's no way to polish it up, it's just lust. And what makes lust dangerous is that it's this attitude that says, I want what I want and I'm not gonna stop until I get it. When a man sees something that he really desires,

that he really wants, and he has to have, he'll move heaven and earth to get it. And the most dangerous thing about this for us as men is that far too often, I want you to write this down if you've taken notes, our lust overrides our logic. Our lust overrides our logic. There are things we know we shouldn't be doing, know we shouldn't be going for, know we're playing with fire, and we do it anyway because our lust so many times overpowers the logic and the reasoning of our head. When a man slips and gives into the pattern of lust, our logic and our mentality take a backseat and we are spun into a whirlwind of unbridled emotions. For some men, it's just women. It is, for some men, it's just women. For some men, it's the promotion, it's the kill. You gotta be, it's your identity, what you drive, where you live, how much money you have, where you are on the org chart at your company. All of that is something we lust for. For some men, it's power. For some men, again, it's the house, the car, the boat. He makes himself and those around him completely vulnerable to destruction, even though he knows better, all because there's something inside of us that simply says, I want it, and no matter how bad it is or wrong it is, I'm going to get it.

Let me show it to you right here, Judges 14 and verse two. Now, Samson went to Timnah and returned and said to his father and mother, there is a Philistine woman down at Timnah who has caught my attention. Watch what he says, get her for me. He doesn't ask. He doesn't say, pop. I know I shouldn't have been at Phylicia anyway. I know I shouldn't be hanging out with the enemy. I know I have no business down there with the enemy, but I saw this woman and I know that as an Israelite, I'm not supposed to intermarry. You need to take close attention to that. This was against the law and the will of God. He didn't even go to his father and said, but man, she fine, bro. And, you know, we kind of hit it off, man. Conversation flowed. I mean, we got a lot in common. We were connecting mentally and emotionally. Dad, what do you think? He said, I saw her, she's fine, I want her, go get her. He didn't ask his mom. The intuition of his mother, what do you think I ought to do, mom? He was beyond that. He was Samson. He wasn't gonna ask permission of anybody to anything. He had already began to make his drift.

He was in a place he should have never been, hanging out with people that he should have never hung out with. Now, this is not Delilah, by the way. You need to know this. That will come later. This is actually his first marriage, and his first marriage did not work out. He ends up giving his first wife to his best friend, and it's only later in the book that he wants companionship, and he's back in Phylicia, hanging out with a hooker named Delilah. She's the one that gets him. She's the one that pulls the final straw. But he was already married to another Philistine woman, had no business being there. He knew better. He knew the law. He knew what God said for time and memorial. He knew the book of Deuteronomy, Numbers, and Leviticus. The Torah had been distributed to them. He knew what God said, but his lust override what he knew the word of God said, and he did it anyway, and it was the beginning. of his end. Listen to me carefully. Gentlemen, is there anything in your life that drives you to do things that you know you shouldn't be doing?

Is there anything in your life that drives you to act in ways that you know you shouldn't be acting? Or is there anything in your life that drives you to be pressing for, longing for, lusting for things you know isn't God's best for your life? And it's not even a question. Like, you know it. You know the Bible enough. You've heard enough sound doctrine. Even the Holy Spirit has convicted you and said this isn't for you. This isn't for God's people. This isn't for a son of God. My sense right here is that we don't have to think too hard about that. I know I don't. It's a hard question, and if it is a hard question for you to answer, I have a scripture that holds a prayer that will help you identify it immediately. It's in Psalm 139, verse 23 and 24. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Search me, O God. This is David saying, I recognize that sometimes I see my faults and I see my frailties, but I also recognize there's some things in me that are driving me that I don't even know

how to put my finger on, but I'm fearfully, wonderfully made. You know me better than I know myself, and I'm coming open before you, Heavenly Father. Reveal to me what's wrong with me. Reveal to me what's not like you. Search me, O God. Know my heart. Test me. Know my thoughts. Point out anything in me that is offensive to you and lead me along the path to everlasting life. You ever wanna pray a prayer that will get the attention of God that he'll answer 100% of the time? Psalm 139. I dare you to pray it. God, what is it in me that is not like you, that offends you, that's leading me away from everlasting life? If you pray it sincerely, God will begin to speak to you clearly, and then perhaps you have ever heard them speak. It starts with lust because it's our most primal instinct as a man. It's our most primal. That's why he starts there. We were born this way. There's a drive in us that God gave us

that is supposed to be sanctified and brought under his control. But when it's unsanctified and it's running unbridled, it can be the beginning of our end. And then it has this ugly cousin that comes along behind it called entitlement. Entitlement. Lust says, I want it. Entitlement, oh, it's got a different mantra. Entitlement says, no, I deserve this. I deserve this. It's the spirit that says, hey, man, I work hard. I pay my, I pay in my time. I do my deed. I do what needs to be done. Everybody's counting on me and I deliver. I deserve this. But I want you to hear me well, gentlemen. Whatever we think we deserve, if it leads us contrary to God's word and his will for our lives, leave it alone. It's not worth it. It will eventually destroy the most meaningful things in our lives. Let me show this to you in the Bible. Remember what I said a minute ago about the lion that Samson encountered? This is where it happens. Samson is walking through a vineyard. He is confronted by a lion.

He tears the thing apart with his bare hands and then he goes on his way. And sometime later, Bible says that he's coming back the same path, heading back to Israel and the lion's carcass has been sitting there for weeks now and when he stops, he looks over and he sees something. Judges 14, eight and nine. On his way back, he turned aside to look at the lion he had killed and he was surprised to find a swarm of bees and some honey inside the dead lion and he scraped the honey out into his hands and ate it as he walked alone, like a snow cone. Just like he pulled over, got him a snow cone and it gives the picture. He's just walking, eating the honey. Wait, wait, wait. What was one of his Nazarite vows? Yeah, you're not supposed to drink alcohol. You're not supposed to cut your hair. Oh yeah, you're not supposed to touch any dead thing. Number one, that's just nasty. You know it's just nasty. I mean to go survivor man on a dead rotting lion carcass but secondly, to be so casual in your covenant with God, to be so cavalier in your relationship with God that you wouldn't even think twice about breaking one of your important of three Nazarite vows. He was not supposed to touch anything dead or decomposing

and he nonchalantly strolls over to it, gets him a big old scoop of honey and goes. about eating it like it was nothing. Let me tell you what happened. He started to get so cold in his relationship with God that his willingness to disregard and dishonor his vow was as cheap as a stupid handful of honey. The Spirit of God meant nothing more to him. The power of God using him meant nothing more to him. The anointing on his life meant nothing more to him than a stupid handful of honey. Somewhere along the way, here's what I think. Samson began to forget where his real power and strength came from, and he started to actually believe his own press clippings that he actually was the man, that he was the dude, that he killed that lion all by himself. Therefore, in his mind, if he was ultimately responsible for the death of the lion because of his own strength, in his mind, he deserved to do whatever he wanted to do with that lion. The spirit of entitlement, gentlemen, is so dangerous because it makes us forget what David said in Psalm 100, acknowledge the Lord, he is God. It is he that has made us and not we ourselves. Oh, we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. We better remember that we're his sheep and we're eating his green grass. There is no such thing in this world as a self-made man or woman.

He gave you the energy, the intellect, the opportunity, and the ability, all of the glory always goes to God. We can do nothing without him. Apart from him, he said we can do nothing. Whatever we have and whatever we have produced, it is only because of God's amazing grace and power flowing through our lives. In fact, the very breath that we breathe comes from him and we must never forget that. Lust says, I want it, I want it and I will have it. Entitlement says, I deserve it because I earned it and I'm gonna get what's coming to me. And then it's got this third one that's just the catch-all that the Bible says is always the beginning of the end, pride, that's ultimately what ate him alive. All of these were birthed out of pride. Pride says, oh, I can handle it. I mean, you know, for other people it might be a problem, but not for me. Let's go back to his marriage to the initial Philistine woman, not Delilah, but his initial marriage. Samson's father and mother go find this woman and they begin to work out all the details and arrangements from the party. And in celebration and anticipation of his wedding, Samson throws a bachelor party. Judges 14 verse 10, watch it. And as his father went down to meet with the woman, Samson made a feast.

Please underscore the word feast there, as was customary for young men to do. The word feast looks very harmless and innocuous, but translated into the Hebrew, the Hebrew word is mishta. The word mishta means a banquet of wine. Keg party. My man said, I'm getting married. Swing by Jack's Liquors and pick us up a few kegs, boys. We strapping one on the night, son. And all night long, they pounding wine, pounding wine, pounding wine. Wait a minute. What's the covenant? No touching dead things. No cutting your hair. Oh man, no alcohol. And here's Samson's philosophy. It might be sketchy for some people to get this close to the line, but I'm the dude that killed a thousand men. I'm the dude that ripped the lion in half with his bare hands. Y'all are mere mortals. I'm the dude that pulled up the gates and set him up on the hill. I know this could be sketchy for mere mortal men or for some men, but I'm Samson. I can handle it because I can walk the line that other men can't walk.

It's a lie, brothers. It's a lie. He's got us right where he wants us when he gets us to the edge. He'll bait you and bait you and bait you right to the edge. And then when you get so close to the edge, you don't know how to stop the slip and the slide and you're falling. He's laughing at you the whole way down. He knows what he's doing. He's studied us for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, I wanna show you something that I've shared with the men of honor for years in Psalm chapter one. I wanna show you the progression. I wanna show you how sin progresses. It doesn't start, it never starts by telling you the end. This is why the Bible says, acknowledges, there are pleasures in sin, but gentlemen, they're for a season. Those seasons will come to an end and then the season of payback will come. The season of retribution will come. He never shows you that end. He shows you the joy of the beginning. Never the pain of the destructive end, but they end up in my office. They've ended up in my office. They've ended up committing suicide, and I've buried them.

I'm telling you, I've seen the worst of the worst, but I wanna show you how it walks. There's three verbs in Psalm chapter one that I wanna show to you that are the progression of sin. Psalm chapter one, listen to the verbs. I'll put it on the screen. Blessed is the man that, here's the first verb, walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor, second verb, stands in the way of sinners, nor, third verb, sits in the seat of the scornful. Look at the progression in the verbs. Psalm one, it starts with walking, then standing, then sitting. Here's how it happens. We find ourselves around this thing that we know has the potential to not be good for us or God's will for us or dangerous, and we start walking around it. Now, we're still moving, and because we're still moving, we're testing the waters. Is it gonna bite me? Is it gonna strike me? Is it gonna hurt me? Is it gonna affect me? And when we walk around it long enough and nothing happens and we don't get struck and we don't get bit and we feel like we can handle this so far and it's not getting out of hand, the next thing you know, we're standing next to it. We're no longer moving.

Now we've settled it, got so comfortable with it that we're standing with it, and we realize nothing happened when I walked around, and so I can stand with it and probably be okay, too. And then before long, we've gotten so comfortable with it that we're sitting in the midst of sin that we never would have considered 10 years ago. We never even would have contemplated doing 10 years ago. We never even would have thought about messing around with, and we're sitting in the middle of it, and we look around, and we don't know how in the world we got so far so fast. Bible says that Samson judged the nation of Israel for 20 years. This was not a two-year stint, and my man fell off the cliff. This was not a five-year commitment, and he slid off the mountain. It didn't start day one. Samson never woke up one day, the first year that he was honored by God and anointed to be the judge of Israel by saying, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna sabotage this whole freaking thing, and I'm gonna end up in the prime of my life with my eyes gouged out, standing in a Colosseum with 3,000 Philistines, letting them make sport of me. That's what I want for my life. That's where he ended up, but he didn't get up dreaming about that.

There's a man in this room that dreams of getting up one day and losing his family from alcoholism, but you better be careful. There's a man in this room that thinks a little flirtation at the office is gonna go anywhere meaningful. We're just friends. You better handle that. You'll start walking around and walking around, and before you know it, you're standing with her. Before you know it, you're sitting with her. Before you know it, you're laying with her. I've been doing this too long, boys, and I've had him sit in my office after 21 years of marriage and three children and say, I don't, I just want her back, and his wife is over it because she's been so abused by for so long, and he would have given anything to go back and just ignored that woman in his office. We better not just know the psalm. We better know the shepherd. It goes like this every time. I want it, I deserve it, I can handle it. It's a lie. You do want it, you don't deserve it, and you dang sure can't handle it, and neither can I. You dang sure can't handle it, and neither can I. I live my entire life

with what I call a healthy, wonderful, spiritual fear. Now, I know we preach, there's a great sermon that said thou shalt not fear, and it's in the Bible, 365 days, which, by the way, is a lie. It's not in the Bible, 365. I hate to destroy your messed up theology, but it's not. It's only in there a little over 100 times. Sounds good, makes for a really good devotion, but it's not in there, 365. But I know the Bible says that we should be anxious for nothing and all that, but there is a healthy, respectful, listen, if you're gonna get in the octagon at UFC, you better have a little fear to get on the other side of that thing, or you're gonna get your wings snapped and your neck broke in just a little bit of time. There is a such thing as a healthy fear. You should be afraid of rattlesnakes. I'm preaching. Y'all should be afraid of 60-mile-an-hour buses when you cross the street. There's some things in your life you need to have a healthy, Fear of and sin should be at the top of your list. It should be at the top of your list. I'm not talking about perfection. I'm talking about those areas in our life where we started walking around it and we know it.

We feel like we got away with it, it hasn't burned us yet. And then all of a sudden, we're standing with it. And see, for some of you guys in this room, you're in the walking stage right now. You've been walking around it for a while and I'm talking and the Holy Spirit's going. And for some of you past that stage, you're standing next to it and you're going, well, I survived the walking stage. Standing stage gets a little more hairy, a little more sketchy, but I'm still pretty good. It hasn't bit me yet, it hasn't shown up in my family yet. It hasn't shown up in my daily life yet. And if you let that go another five or 10 years, then eventually you're gonna be sitting with it. And who knows where it goes from there. And the whole time the Spirit of God is grieved and the enemy is laughing. It took Samson 20 years to finally get there. And the end of his life is a tragic one. The last scene of his life is what I just described. Delilah finally gets his hair. The last of the Nazarite vows, which is, I want you to hear this too, which to me is such a, it's such a symbol of the grace of God. And brothers, he is graceful. It is such a symbol of the mercy of God and he is merciful. He doesn't want it to happen to you and me. And so he gives us grace after grace after grace. He will convict you and convict you and convict you

to try to get you to turn the other way. Even when Samson spit in the face of God with the lion and he spit in the face of God with the keg party, the Spirit of God still was with him and he still maintained his strength, even though he had spit in God's face multiple times. This was God just going, but I'm still graceful and merciful. It was only the third thing. Finally, when all of the vows had been broken, that the Bible says that the Spirit of the Lord withdrew from him and Samson made the great miscalculation that just because God was using him powerfully, that everything was still right between him and God personally. And it wasn't. And he finds himself another normal man. They capture him, gouge his eyes out. Make him work like a dog for a while and then because he had killed so many of them, they're rejoicing at the overcoming of their great enemy, this man who had terrorized the nation of Phylicia. And they got drunk one day and said, bring him to the Coliseum that he may make sport and they brought him there. I just wanna read this to you and I wanna show you something the Holy Spirit showed me tonight for us that I think could change the game. This is the key to being free.

Judges 16, 26 through 30. He's standing there, he's blind, he's just another normal man and they've assigned him a little boy to lead him around by the hand. And Samson says unto the lad that held him by the hand, suffer me that I may fill the pillars. I want you to watch this, whereupon all the house stands, that I may lean upon them. Now the house was full of men and women and all the lords of the Philistines were there and there were upon the roof about 3,000 men and women that beheld while Samson made sport. And Samson called unto the Lord and said, Lord, remember me, I pray and strengthen me only this once that I may be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood and on which it was borne up, one with his right and one with his left. And Samson said, let me die with the Philistines and he bowed himself with all of his might and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the house. So the dead that he slew in his death were more than he slew even in his entire life. I'll show you what something God spoke to me. Samson understood something. First, he repented. Bible talks about how be it the hair of his head began to grow again.

It's a sign of him being renewed in his covenant. But he was in the stronghold of the enemy and he instinctively knew that this stronghold that had been built by his enemies had a degree and a place of load-bearing columns. He knew there was a place that the entire Colosseum was standing upon and had been borne up. And what Samson knew is if he could just get his hands on it and ask the Holy Spirit to give him strength one more time, he could bring down everything his enemies had built against him. There's a stronghold the enemy's building in every one of our lives, gentlemen. Listen, for some of us, it is lust. For some of us, those columns are entitlement. For some of us those columns are pride for some of us It may not be lust entitlement or pride for some of us It's something that happened to us that the enemy has still been working against us for some of us. It's abuse as a child It's abandonment by a father It's a father wound. It's this feeling of sin and shame and guilt and maybe Unforgiveness and the enemy has been working against the work of God out of that stronghold in our life But here's what I do know whatever it is There is a load-bearing place in the enemy stronghold that tonight if you can get your hands on it and ask God to give you The power of the Spirit you can bring it down Everything the enemy's built against you But if you ignore it and act like this isn't for you Then you'll suffer with it for the rest of your life until it finally progresses and graduates perhaps an ultimate destruction It requires courage To say to the lad Take me to the place

I'm not gonna ignore it anymore. I'm not gonna deny it anymore. I'm not gonna act like it doesn't exist I'm not gonna act like I don't deal with it Because the enemy proliferates in the places we refuse to address or talk about He's hoping we won't talk about him with our brothers he's hoping we won't come clean He's hoping we won't get honest before God and honest with ourselves that we'll just keep acting like it's not that big of a deal Because Every day we do it grows a little bigger and a little stronger Until eventually he's built a stronghold in our life That seemingly is over unovercome able But if you have the courage to say Lord take me to the place search my heart Oh God Take me to the place and then Lord. I can't do it It's not by might nor by power, but it's by your spirit even Samson knew it in the end They said Lord give me strength one more time I'm gonna apply my strength that you've given me to this thing and I'm gonna look this thing in the eye and I'm gonna bring It down all around my enemy Whom the Sun sets free is free indeed I've had to do this so many times in my life Because I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to miss sell this I don't want to sell this to you like oh man tonight. We're gonna do it And you ain't never gonna have to do it again Hawk, there's a Greek word hog. Yo wash. Yo, okay, that means bull You're gonna have to keep doing this and keep doing this and keep doing this and keep doing this I got some new devils and I got some devils that's been with me for 35 years that I'm still scrapping with But I'll tell you what I made up my stinking mind I ain't gonna lay down let him have me I ain't gonna lay down and let him have me Now some days I'm on top and some days they on top, but I'm swinging baby. I'm swinging. I Ain't going down like that. I Got a wife that's counting on me. I got children that are counting on me. I got a church that's counting on me I got a heavenly father that's entrusted me There's too much at stake for us to act like this don't matter. No, no, no, no, no, it matters