Thoughts on Judges 15

Today’s reading: Judges 15; Acts 26

I don’t think I’m shameless enough in prayer.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading, studying, thinking, and praying about prayer for the last half a year or so with some friends, trying to understand prayer better, and it has honestly been a helpful study to do personally, and has changed my prayer life quite a bit in some really good and enjoyable ways. But as I was reading Judges 15, I couldn’t help but chuckle and shake my head at Samson’s shameless prayer to God after his defeat of the Philistines. “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” He kind of sounds like my children when they don’t remember where they left their water and I tell them to find it instead of just getting a new one.

But the crazy thing is, God answers him by bringing forth a spring of water for him to drink! How crazy is that! That is probably the last kind of demanding and whiny prayer I would expect God to answer, but that’s exactly what He does! It’s a powerful reminder that God delights to give good things to His children. And while that obviously doesn’t mean we should expect Him to always give us everything we want exactly when we want it, there are definitely times when I don’t ask God for something because I just assume it’s not a prayer He would answer because it’s too unimportant or too random or not spiritual enough or something. But here is Samson, not following any formula for prayer, not speaking in eloquent words, or even respectful words for that matter, and really demanding something from God, and God answers him.

I need to be more bold and shameless in my prayers. If God says no, He says no, but I’d honestly rather He say no than have a prayer I never pray that He would have said yes to but I never asked for it because I assumed it wasn’t worth asking.

One other thing…

This isn’t directly related to what I was writing about, so I didn’t include it, but it was something I thought about and wanted to include in case anybody else is thinking about it as well.

At first I thought Samson’s whiny and demanding prayer sounded a lot like the Israelites in the wilderness, and while God did provide what they needed, they also got judged for it, so why does God not seem to take issue with Samson?

The reality is that the Israelites didn’t actually complain to God asking for water or food in the wilderness, they complained to Moses, and that was actually part of the problem in the wilderness. Instead of turning to the Lord with their issues, the people complained about the Lord to Moses over and over again, generally saying it would have been better to still be in slavery in Egypt rather than having followed God when He delivered them. So for Israel, it was ingratitude and faithlessness. On the flip side, with Samson, while I wouldn’t call his prayer respectful, he got a lot right. He recognized that God was the one who gave him the victory over the Philistines, and he also recognized God as the one with the power to give him the water he needed. So despite how his prayer comes off, he’s looking to God and trusting in Him to provide based on His past provisions and deliverances. And that makes it a VERY different kind of situation to Israel in the wilderness.