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The Prison Mills of Gaza

by Jerry Ousley  
4/20/2012 / Christian Living

I always wanted to be strong. I used to dream of being Superman, saving the world from the bad guys and being a hero instead of a zero (which is pretty much what I was as a kid). I'll never forget a time my sister and brothers and I decided to create a potion that would make us like supermen (and woman in my sister's case). We had our "lab" set up in the basement. We crept through the house so that Mom wouldn't suspect anything and borrowed all sorts of household chemicals. Once we had them in our "lab" we began mixing, stirring and shaking all those ingredients together. Now this was back in the sixties and even though it was a "drug experimenting" decade we didn't know the first thing about drugs. We weren't trying to get high, just trying to become superheroes.

After we mixed it all up we at least had enough sense to know that there were poisonous chemicals in there so we didn't drink it. But we did take a hefty sniff all of us. Folks it must have made us high because all of a sudden we felt like we could lift boulders and leap off tall buildings in a single bound (but we didn't try doing any of those things fortunately). We were careful to return all those household items so Mom wouldn't suspect anything then after another quick sniff we put on our homemade capes and masks, mounted our bicycles and we just knew that we were riding around the block at super-speed!

A short time later we disposed of our homemade potion because we found out that we didn't really have super powers (that came when we tried to stop a bully and nearly got beat up in the process our silly costumes didn't help matters much). We never tried that again and our parents didn't find out anything about it until we were grown and talking about it around the kitchen table one day.

The story of Sampson has always fascinated me. You can read his entire story in Judges chapters 13 16. Here was a man granted super-strength from God. He was to carry the vow of the Nazarite from birth which meant that he was to not eat or drink anything made from the vine, never to come near a dead body, and never to shave his head. The vow of the Nazarite had been established in the Law of Moses and was utilized as a time to get closer to God. During his life Sampson broke all the rules of the Nazarite and many other laws established by God for the Jewish nation. He lived pretty much a riotous life spending time with harlots, nearly marrying a Philistine woman, eating honey from the carcass of a dead lion he had killed, using the jawbone of a dead donkey as a weapon, drinking wine and finally at the mercy of another Philistine woman, Delilah by name, he gave up the secret of his hair. Even though God had used him despite his disobedience in the end he lost his great strength, had his eyes put out and found himself blind, and chained to a large wheel where day in and day out he pushed grinding the grain in the prison mill at Gaza.

Of course, as the story goes, his hair began to grow again. But I don't believe his great strength lay in his long hair, but in the fact that all that time walking in circles he had opportunity to get things right with God. On a special day for the Philistines, all the leaders of the country were gathered in a large arena. They decided to bring Sampson in so they could make sport of him. While there he had a lad, who led him around, put him between the two pillars that held the arena up and after a prayer God allowed his great strength to return and he pushed down those pillars, killing himself but also killing more in his death than he had killed during his life.

The lesson in this incident for us is that despite our disobedience to God He will always be there for us. We may have run from Him, lived our lives in spite of Him, committed crimes and atrocities that were displeasing to Him and still when we come to Him in earnest prayer humbling ourselves before Him, He will forgive us.

Life may have taken us to the prison mills of Gaza. We may have spent our time there in hard labor spiritually (because we know from Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death), but as we spend our time thinking about our sin and then submit ourselves to the Lord He will allow us to return once again from our plight, die to ourselves and live victoriously in Christ Jesus.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of "Soul Challenge", "Soul Journey", "Ordeal", "The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional" and his first novel "The Shoe Tree." Newer books include "Finality" and "Dividing God's Church." Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge

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