The Samson Syndrome: What You Can Learn from the Baddest Boy in the Bible by Mark Atteberry

Author:Mark Atteberry [Atteberry, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2003-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. In this way, God disarmed the evil rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross of Christ (author’s emphasis).

Did you catch that? It says, “God disarmed the evil rulers and authorities.” That means he took away their weapons. He eliminated their power to control you. He fixed it so you don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.

And then verse 20 of the same chapter says it again: “You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the evil powers of this world” (author’s emphasis).

After reading these verses, can’t you see how silly it is for any Christian to plead helplessness in the face of sin? It doesn’t matter how long you’ve had a bad habit or how many times you’ve made the same mistake, you can change because the evil rulers and authorities have been disarmed. You’ve been set free from their power! Granted, this won’t be easy. But if God’s Word is true, it is possible.

It’s time to give up your lame excuses.

Third, LINE UP your life with God’s Word. When I was a kid, it was my job to put the chalk lines on the field at our local ball diamond. I’ll never forget the first time I did it. I had been told to stretch a string from the back corner of home plate to the outfield grass and line it up perfectly with the foul pole. Then I could push the chalk dispenser right along the string and make a nice straight line. But that seemed like a lot of extra work to me. I didn’t think I needed the string. I just knew I could make a straight line simply by eyeballing it.

You can guess what happened.

I wrinkled up my brow in concentration and started pushing the dispenser in what felt like a perfectly straight line. I was so very careful not to veer off line. But when I got to first base and turned around to inspect my work, it was a mess! The baseline I had made was so crooked it looked like a graph of the Dow Jones Industrials!

Friend, the only way for you to keep from repeatedly veering off in the Christian life is to stretch out the string of God’s Word and then follow it. If you try to eyeball a situation or follow your feelings, you’ll get off track every time.

In Scripture, Solomon was a strong man who made this mistake. Instead of stretching out the string of God’s Word and following it, he eyeballed difficult situations and acted on his feelings. He did whatever seemed prudent from a human point of view. That’s how he became the all-time champ, the world-record holder, the undisputed king of repeated mistakes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.