SIMPLICITY OF FAITH
14th May 2014
I love the record of Samson’s birth; it is a wonderful example of faith. Manoah & his wife are living in hopeless days, both personally and nationally. Their country has been dominated by the Philistines for 40 years, and they are also childless.
It is into this situation that God breaks in and brings deliverance, for nothing is impossible to Him. First, there is an angelic visitor who appears to Manoah’s wife, terrifying yet glorious he states the fact of her barrenness, but tells her that she will have a son. He declares her pregnant now!
Faith and hope arise in her heart and she tells her husband, who also immediately believes the impossible and prays, “Master let the man of God you sent come again and teach us how to raise the boy who is to be born.” (Judges 13:8) What a faith response!
God listens and sends the angel a second time, and Manoah asks, “When what you say comes true, what do you have to tell us about this boy and his work?” The angel answers the questions, the story continues and when the angel ascends to heaven in the flames of a sacrifice, the enormity of the situation hits Manoah, he realises he has encountered an angel of God, fear grips him and he cries out “We are as good as dead!”
That’s when we need each other. His practical wife states that if God was planning to kill us he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering, revealed these things to us or given us this birth announcement.
The woman gives birth to a son, they name him Samson which means “Man of the Sun - light in darkness.” They believe and receive the reward of faith.
I long for that profound simplicity of faith that receives God’s promises, obeys instructions and sees the impossible made possible by God. This is all available for us today, for 2 Peter 1:4 says, “He has given us great and precious promises, so that through them we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world....”
by Joyce Sibthorpe
