False Full Pt 2. Death by Swiss Cake Roll

(This is the second in a three part series on being satisfied in God. Today's passage is from Judges chapters 13 through 16.)

I have a few weaknesses in life. Ok, maybe honesty is one of those weaknesses because truthfully, I have a ton of weaknesses but I’m only willing to share a few today. Some weaknesses are fine, like how my knees still get weak when my wife walks into a room. Some are tough, like when my kids weaken my pride by asking me questions like, “Dad, were you really born before the internet?” (Yes, I was.) Some are silly, for example I don’t possess the fortitude to change the channel if Braveheart, Godfather or Rocky IV is on and I'm powerless to walk away if my dog rolls over and asks for a belly rub. But my true kryptonite lives in the kitchen pantry. The snacks in the pantry remind me that my willpower is delicate when facing chips and pretzels but it is completely and utterly spineless during nights that Swiss Cake Rolls have taken up residence on the third shelf. Have you ever had to fess up to eating the last swiss cake roll that was previously reserved for a kids’ lunch?

Have you ever had to fess up to eating the entire box of swiss cake rolls in one sitting? One Swiss Cake Roll is never enough. I told you… weak

Did you know that eating some foods can actually make you hungrier? That’s not even fair, but it’s true. When we snack on certain foods, they announce to the body that an entire meal is on the way so the body gets excited for real sustenance and then one little Swiss Cake Roll shows up with no protein and certainly no satisfaction. The body responds to that snack by forcefully demanding more food! I snack because I think it will fill me up and I convince myself that it will hold me off until I can find something better. It doesn’t work, in fact it is a complete and epic fail. Eating like that just makes me hungrier.

Can I be painfully honest about something else? I think we’re doing the same thing in our walk with Christ.

We’re trying to fill up on things that were never meant to satisfy us and our soul is telling us that we’re still hungry.

Take a moment and be honest with yourself. Does your relationship with God look like a quick snack to get you by in a pinch or does it look like a feast? I’m talking about the kind of feast where you sit around the table enjoying each other’s company and stay until you are satisfied. Pay attention because here’s where it gets dangerous. When our relationship with God continually feels more like a snack and less like a feast, we begin to forget what satisfaction feels like, or more to the point, we forget where our soul goes to be satisfied. And all the while, the real longing of our soul is muted by the constant appetite for a quick snack.

In a sense, we become satisfied with dissatisfaction. That happens to God’s people now and it happened to God’s people in the Bible.

The book of Judges contains candid accounts of God using some very natural people to do some very unnatural things. That’s “God-stuff 101” you know. God calls and uses people that the world never expects much out of in order to do things that the world never expected to happen. God changed world history by asking some fishermen to drop their nets and follow Him. Sometimes we drop our nets to follow and sometimes God pries our fingers off of the net in order to be used. Chapters 13-16 tell of an occasion in which God did the latter in order to bring his kids back to the table.

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Judges tells the story of Samson whose worldly expectations were sky-high, but before Samson could truly be used for God’s greater purpose, some things in his life had to change. Samson was born with lofty expectations and he certainly began his life shining brightly on center stage. He bested a lion in the ultimate man versus animal throw-down, he leveled armies and he ripped massive doors off their hinges just for grins and giggles. Think Thor with a donkey jawbone instead of a hammer or imagine ‘The Rock’ with a mullet. Samson was ridiculously blessed by God. He was made to feast on God and protect God’s people but he began to snack instead of feast. He ate a little honey where he shouldn’t have eaten it (14:9) and then he dated a little “honey” that he shouldn’t have dated (16:4).

Soon Samson lost his appetite for God and he was overtaken by the enemy because he was snacking on the wrong things. Worse, He didn’t even know that his hunger was gone. Judges 16:20-21 tells us the most tragic part of the entire story:

“And she (Delilah) 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. And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles.” Jdg. 16:20-21

You want to know the most disturbing sentence in the bible? “But he did not know that the Lord had left him.” The torture with Samson’s eyes was rough, but the state of his soul was devastating. He was starving and he wasn’t even aware. He thought he had everything that he needed to fight but he was famished because he had been snacking on all the wrong things.

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When Samson’s life was disconnected from God’s purpose he found out that his power was never really his power at all. His belly was full but his life was empty. Sometimes eating makes us hungry and we forget what it’s like to be full.

God is calling us to the table (Psalm 23:5), Taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). "For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things." (Psalm 107:9)

God wasn’t done with Samson. He can still be used, he just needs to come back to the table. We'll finish up the series with the rest of Samson's story in the next blog.