Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 385 - The 7th Trap for Samson: Enslaved by Lust (Please click here for English podcast)

Friday, November 27, 2015

OT DAY 385 - The 7th Trap for Samson: Enslaved by Lust (Please click here for English podcast)

Please click the link below to my new 40 days Break.Build site any time you like to having a 40 days "Break.Build" daily devotion with one to two people as a discipler to help those Jesus prepares for you to disciple. You need to know that the call and purpose of my Break.Build and this Discipler123 blog/podcast is for you to become a discipler to help more people to have a daily intimate relationship with Jesus and then they can become disciplers too:
http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Please click these links to the app. Andy Ng wrote if you have an Android cel.:

Discipler123: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.rec.app

Break.Build: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.bb.app

Silence

1. Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2. Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace and feel His presence. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1. Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2. Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3. Open your heart to praise the Lord

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart;
  before the gods I sing your praise;
  I bow down toward your holy temple
    and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness,
    for you have exalted above all things   your name and your word.

Psalm 138 :1-2

Confession and Repentance (Subjective Shifting Devotion Method http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html)

1. Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

“Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2. Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

"Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (Judges 16:7-21)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges 16&version=ESV

16 And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. 17 And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.”
18 When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up again, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. 19 She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison. Judges 16:16-21

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening

Thanks for your patience the past three days! All seven brothers and sisters from REC participated in the five days Pastoral Care School had major renewal.

Four days ago we talked about the 6th trap for Samson is LUST. And today, it is more than lust but "enslaved by lust". Samson who had a godly parents, with an anointed life should be having a glorious life honouring God. But, just the contrary, because of all those traps he stepped in until he could not pull himself out. So many times God pulled him out but he was just enslaved by his lust and made a big, big mess!

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

There was the woman who bore him, who knew God's vision for his life, made her commitment to God and to him, but then had to watch him make a mess of his entire life even while being unwittingly the means of God's will bring put into effect. It must have been evident to her that he was never happy, and I imagine her grieving each day and each night about his fate…
Israel had conventional ways of dividing up tasks in the family: the men plowed while the women ground grain. There isn't much a blind man's captors can make him do. What they make him do is the work of a woman.

John Goldingay. Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.1239-140, 141.

Do you understand a little bit now how Satan can do to you? Samson as the most powerful and anointed man but he was forced to do the work of a woman because of his being enslaved by lust.

Satan can do the same to you if you are being enslaved by lust!

Jesus reminds me now of what I copied from the Bible this morning with all my 68 classmates as you can see in the pictures below:

18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.” 2 Peter 2: 18-22

Dear Lord Jesus,

Free us from all kinds of enslavement that we can do the job you appointed us to do glorifying your Holy Name. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Have you been enslaved by anything or anyone? Do you know the consequence?

2. What can you do now if you are being enslaved by something or someone?

3. What have you got from Jesus today?

Today's Time with Abba daily reading that I recited loudly and copy the Bible is:

Psalm 131:1-3

Daniel 4:1-37

2 Peter 1:1- 21

Proverbs 28:17-18

Photos of my copying the Bible the past three days using Time with Abba passages