Most people think a spiritual collapse happens in a single moment. They see the house fall and think it was the wind that did it. But usually, the rot had been eating the wood for years before the storm ever showed up.
A calling from God is not something you lose all at once. It is something you waste gradually.
In this series, we are going to look at the life of Samson. We aren’t just going to look at his great feats or his final failure; we are going to study his life as a progression.
We want to see not just what happened, but how it happened. Samson didn’t wake up one morning and decide to lose his hair, his eyes, and his freedom. He took a series of small, quiet steps that led him there.
The Pattern of the Waste
Samson will be our main example, but he isn’t the only one. We see this same pattern of “slow leaking” in others throughout Scripture:
- Lot didn’t start in Sodom; he just “pitched his tent toward” it.
- Solomon didn’t become an idolater overnight; he just slowly multiplied wives and gold against God’s warning.
- King Saul didn’t start as a rebel; he just started making small excuses for partial obedience.
The steps are almost always the same. If you don’t recognize the direction you are walking, you will end up at a destination you never intended to visit.
What’s Coming in This Series
We are going to walk through the four stages of wasting a calling. We will look at how a man with the Spirit of God upon him can end up grinding at a mill for his enemies.
- Ignore Your Purpose: Living like everyone else when you were born to be different.
- Follow What You See: Letting your eyes make decisions that God should be making.
- Get Comfortable in Sin: Losing your ability to feel shame & staying in the wrong places too long.
- The Final Decent: Flirting with the very thing that is designed to kill you, thinking you can go “as at other times” but the Lord has departed and the tragedy of waking up to the cost when the strength is gone.
The Warning
1 Corinthians 10:12 “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
If you think you are “safe” because you have a calling, a gift, or a position, you are in the most danger. A calling is a weight to be carried with fear and trembling. It is possible to be used by God and still be wasting the very life He gave you.
Don’t wait for the collapse to check the foundation. Let’s look at the steps before the fall.
