Welcome to the Daily Disciple Podcast, where we seek daily to be with and to become like Jesus, our teacher. Welcome to the Daily Disciple Podcast, this is Travis, and we're going to be in Judges chapter 15 today. We're going to talk about a man named Samson. And if you've been around the church block for any time at all, you have heard of Samson.
Maybe if you grew up in the church, he was one of your favorite Bible characters, the strongest man that ever lived, and he was certainly one of my favorite Bible characters. I didn't know at the time that the story of Samson is a bit of a tragedy. There's a number of reasons why the story of Samson is a bit of a tragedy, and we're going to put our finger on one of those reasons today in this podcast. And one of the neat things about scripture is we get to learn from people's successes, and we get to learn from people's failures.
And unfortunately, Samson is one of those characters where we get to learn a lot from his failures. And so one of the reasons why the story of Samson is a tragic story is because Samson became a man of anger. And so I want to title this podcast, When Anger Becomes Our Strategy. And of course, we often don't notice that anger has become our strategy.
We don't notice that we are reacting in anger as opposed to responding in the way that God is calling us to respond. But it is easy to drift into a place where anger becomes a strategy. And so I just want us to think for a moment about a time when we just said something quickly or did something quickly and later we realized it wasn't wisdom, it didn't come from prayer, it wasn't centered. It just came from pain, anger, betrayal, frustration, whatever.
And anger was the reaction. And it's very, very easy to do that. But what I want to talk about more in this podcast is that it's very, very easy to continue to do that and to actually become the kind of person where anger becomes our strategy. And we're not responding anymore in the way that God has uniquely called us to respond, you know, based on the teaching of Jesus.
We are reacting quickly to what it is that we're feeling in the moment. And after a number of different times of getting into that, our reaction, and maybe particularly anger, can actually become a strategy. So could we just think about that for a moment? Have we drifted into the place in life where anger, whatever form anger might take, has become more of a strategy and we're just reacting to what we might feel or the offense that we just received or whatever it might be.
And if that's the case, and I think that might be the case for some of us, at least it's a good thing to put our finger on it because that is a very prevalent drift in the life of someone. So we get to Samson, judges chapter 15, and it says in verse four, this is a crazy passage, that Samson went out and caught 300 foxes. Now that's a feat in and of itself. He tied their tails together into pairs, another difficult thing to do.
And then he tied torches to every pair of tails. This is one of Samson's amazing feats, although not often talked about. Samson then lit the torches and he let the foxes loose in the standing grain fields of the Philistines and obviously destroyed their whole harvest. Now I mean it's a strange story.
Maybe you've not heard the story. It's somewhat memorable once you've heard it because I mean think about doing something like that. It's deeply revealing about how easy it is to just react. And just to talk a little bit about what led up to this, Samson had just been insulted, embarrassed, wronged.
And he was angry inside. And instead of pausing, instead of pausing and then responding as a result of listening to God and playing the role that he was called to play in Israel, he just reacted. It just, he felt the insult, the embarrassment being wronged and just channelled his anger immediately into action and just destroyed the harvest of the Philistines. Now it is interesting that Samson was called by God to rescue Israel from the Philistines.
So in a sense he's walking in his calling, but what we see is that in this moment he is reacting out of a wounded pride, an anger, an offense, not the center calling that God has given him. And notice the line that is prevalent in the story of Samson. The spirit of the Lord came upon Samson in this moment is conspicuously absent in this story because it's Samson operating in strength, but without any surrender to how God wants to use that strength. And that's what anger does when it leads.
When we react in anger, it moves fast, it damages. You can't contain it. It has rippling effects, it hurts relationships, it destroys things. And as we begin to think about this story and think about whether reacting in anger or whatever our symptom might be, has that become a strategy, right?
We have to realize that we're not going to go burn the fields of the Philistines. We're not burning any fields. In fact, if you're burning fields today, you probably want to stop that. It's not a good idea, but we do send texts too quickly.
We fire emails too quickly. We make comments too quickly. We make decisions too quickly. We do all kinds of things as a reaction to pain, wounded pride, embarrassment, feeling left out, whatever it might be.
We don't pause often and see what God might want us to do or how God might want us to respond in this situation. It's just a reacting based on the offense and anger is present. If we do that enough times, then anger will become a strategy. Now, let's just go into personalities just for a moment because if you're more of an outward processor, more of a boisterous personality, then it is going to be rage or saying something rude or manipulating or pushing or pulling or overpowering or breaking a lamp or whatever it might be.
But if you're more of a passive person, maybe more of an introvert or an internal processor, it could simply be just stonewalling someone or refusing to talk or gossiping behind their back or eliminating them from your lives or thinking the worst of them or whatever it might be. But whatever form that anger rage takes, those are reactions to hurt and pain. And that's exactly what happened with Samson here. This whole fox, tails, torches, burn the fields.
Samson instead of saying, okay, I'm going to pause. I'm feeling betrayed. I'm feeling overlooked. I don't know what to do with this, but I'm going to pause.
I'm going to invite God in and I'm going to figure out how God wants me to respond. Instead, Samson just goes and he just reacts based on his wounded pride and it does a great deal of damage. And sometimes the invitation in the life of a daily disciple is just to pause and just kind of name the feeling. I feel overlooked.
I feel hurt. I feel angry. I feel dismissed. And God, I'm going to invite you into that.
And I'm not going to react in the way that it would be easy. I'm not going to burn the fields of the Philistines. I'm not going to burn this relationship up. I'm not going to send this text right away.
Have this conversation immediately. I'm not going to talk bad behind this person's back. I'm not going to think the worst of them. I'm not going to just eliminate them from my life.
I'm going to pause in this. I'm going to let God in. I'm going to let his wisdom in. And I'm going to respond in the way that God has called me to respond, which will be something that will bring life as opposed to let foxes loose in the fields of the Philistines, which is going to bring death.
And so I think this is a great thing to think about, meditate on, maybe read the passage again. Right now, how are we in this stage of life? Or with whom are we letting foxes with burning tails loose in their lives or in this situation? And just by the power of spirit, stop.
Let those feelings that are producing the anger surface, let God in. And instead of reacting, we respond in the way that God's calling us to respond. And we'll be daily disciples that let life loose into the world as opposed to daily disciples that react and let death loose into the world. So we'll talk soon.
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