Samson—the Importance of Not Wasting God’s Calling or Gift

There are two figures who have been floating around in my mind and troubling me deeply, because they are like graphic illustrations of this concept of holiness and consecration that we have been discussing. Many times, there is nothing like a good illustration to firmly drive home something that has been presented to us in a theoretical, abstract way; a good illustration somehow firmly plants in the heart and mind something we have learned. And sometimes people do not even remember what we preached, but they remember a good illustration, a good image.

And there are two figures whom God has brought to my mind, and I have been meditating on them. And I have also been edified by them, and they have been warning me—to use that word as well—about the importance of taking care of our gift, taking care of our calling, and not wasting God’s calling or gift.

I am going to talk about these two figures in the next two meditations, and there are others as well—who knows whether I may continue later on—because I believe this is a subject that is beautiful to view from different perspectives, as we have been doing, so that the importance of holiness and of a life consecrated to the Lord may be firmly engraved upon us. This must be engraved upon our minds, beginning first and foremost with me.

These two figures are Esau, Jacob’s brother, and Samson. They are two negative illustrations; they are two negative figures. Why? Because both of them wasted their gift; they wasted a sublime calling that God had for them from before the foundation of the world, from their mother’s womb, and even before that.

And in both figures we see something: when God endows you, and God calls you, and God anoints you, and God has a purpose for your life, there is a price to pay. And you have to appreciate, value, and treasure the calling and the anointing that God has placed upon your life. If you do not assign to it the value it deserves, there are negative consequences and there is waste.

When God gives you a gift—and let me tell you something—every Christian has a gift, every Christian has a calling, every Christian woman has an endowment. What I am going to say is not only for special and extraordinary people like Samson. You may say, “Ah, well, that is for the people for whom God has something very great, so I do not have to adhere to those principles.” No. Everyone, everyone—God has an extraordinary purpose for each one of us. God has a calling and an endowment, and each one of us must live appreciating and treasuring what God has placed within us. Inside you there is a treasure, there is a jewel, there is a furnace that produces power and heat and light, and you have to protect that; you have to guard it; you have to pay the price.

Esau and Samson are two figures who did not know how to pay the price; they did not know how to appreciate their gift. They underestimated it and lived as though they did not have the sublime calling they actually had. And because they wasted their gift and underestimated it, they ended in failure, defeat, and tragedy. Although, interestingly, in both cases God gave them a second chance; that is also the interesting thing. Do not lose sight of that either. God is the God of the second chance, but do not trifle with Him. Because God gave Samson several opportunities, and Samson wasted them again and again, and finally his life met with a great tragedy and a humiliating and total defeat.

So what I want is for that to be engraved upon our minds today and for us to be warned. I believe God wants to speak to us through these two figures. So think about it and listen with great sobriety to what the Lord wants to say to His people.

Let us turn to Samson. There are four chapters, and obviously we are not going to read them all. I advise you to read them at home; make this your meditation this week and read these passages—the life of Samson. I have never preached about Samson in my entire life, although I am intimately familiar with his drama and his story. But it blessed me to refresh my memory and recall the sequence of his biography, the key moments in his life and ministry.

Now I understand him much more intimately. So do that: meditate and draw your own benefit from the life of Samson. And as I said, afterward we will also briefly look at the life of Esau. By the way, if you hear me slip up and say Gideon instead of Samson, it is because I have a neurosis about those two names—Gideon, Samson—so just make the proper correction in your mind.

Judges chapter 13. I am going to read only a few verses right at the beginning so that you can see the context of his life. It says in verse 1 of chapter 13:

“…The children of Israel again did evil in the sight of Jehovah, and Jehovah delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. And there was a man of Zorah, of the tribe of Dan, whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren…”

Whenever you see a barren woman in the Bible, say, “Hmm, good things are coming,” because God loves to make barren things fruitful and to do extraordinary things through barren wombs. That is one of the important things, because everything comes from Him and He is the one who has the power, and it is very important for us to remember that in light of what is coming.

“…and his wife was barren and had never had children. The angel of Jehovah appeared to this woman—this is a figure who appears several times in the Bible; some believe that he is a type of Jesus Christ Himself, or an emanation of Jehovah’s own glory—and said to her, ‘Behold, you are barren and have never had children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. Now therefore, do not drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing, for behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall pass over his head, because the child shall be a Nazirite’—that is a technical term—‘to God from birth, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines…’

Let us leave it there, and then we will enter into the story itself. How many of you are very familiar with the story of Samson? Raise your hand. If you are not, do not worry. Many people have heard of Samson, a man who had extraordinary strength, a Hercules-type figure, with an extraordinary, supernatural endowment from God. But they do not know the whole story. How many have heard of Delilah—Samson and Delilah—these movie characters?

Samson is born within the context of a history of oppression and war in Israel. As it says here, God’s people had sinned and turned away from God; this was an ongoing story. The Israelites went after other gods and became corrupt. God punished them and sent enemies to oppress them. They repented because they realized that this was the result of their bad conduct. They cried out to God; God forgave them and sent someone to deliver them. Deliverance and peace came, prosperity then came, and the cycle began to repeat itself once again. The same forgetfulness, the same betrayal of God, and the same thing all over again.

This is such a time. God calls these judges in the book of Judges—they were men and one woman, Deborah—to deliver His people. They were like political and military figures, and God creates this man from his mother’s womb; God conceives a deliverer for His people in this time of oppression. The Philistines oppress Israel. And an angel, an emissary, appears—not just any angel, because this is important. Notice how great God’s calling for Samson was. This angel appears to his mother, then to his father, and tells them exactly what they must do so that their son will grow up as God desires.

How many have heard of a Nazirite? What is a Nazirite? If you go to the book of Numbers, chapter 6, the Nazirite vow was when a man decided to devote a period of time—it could be one year or two years—to a special consecration to the Lord. It was like a fast, but an extraordinary one. This person entered into an extremely rigorous regimen of consecration to God. During that time he did not cut his hair; he did not drink wine in a culture where drinking wine was like drinking water; and neither could he touch any dead body, whether human or animal—nothing dead—because any of those things nullified his period of consecration. They made it completely worthless.

Because any contamination… These people were expected to consecrate themselves to Jehovah and remain pure before the Lord. It was like an offering, a burnt offering that the person made of his life to the Lord; it was a very intense consecration to God. God likes those moments, brothers and sisters. That is why, when we fast, when we decide to set aside a time of retreat to seek God, when we are tired and do not want to pray but give that time to the Lord, those very beautiful, very precious moments are a burnt offering; they are an offering. That still has value, brothers and sisters. You know, that did not pass away with the Old Testament. God still likes it when you make a special offering to His heart and dedicate something special to God.

Never lose that concept: God likes extraordinary offerings, and that generates power. It is not that you are trying to manipulate God. No, it is that God has told you, “I like that. I like it when, from time to time, you agonize a little and remember who I am, when you remember that your life belongs to Me, and when you dedicate to God something you love very much.” Do not turn it into a routine either, or into something manipulative. No, but do it sometimes when that comes into your heart—a desire to set aside a morning to fast, or a day, or to go away on a retreat for a weekend, or to give the Lord something extra. Do it in the name of the Lord and offer it to God.

So the Nazirites were people like that. In Samson’s case, God tells his mother and father, “He will have to live this way his entire life. He will be a Nazirite all his life, and through that act I will work, and My power will move through him in an extraordinary and exceptional way. But he has to remain pure and clean throughout his life.” His hair must not be cut. Everything a Nazirite did, as you can see in that passage from Numbers, was what Samson had to do throughout his life. Why? Because the calling God had for him was an extraordinary calling. And you can see the strength Samson had: he was a Hercules; his strength was completely exceptional for a man who had to be a warrior in order to deal with those Philistines who were oppressing God’s people.

But Samson did not do that. When Samson became a young adult, although he knew that God had a calling for his life, and although he served God—because it says that he judged Israel for 20 years; he was like the president of Israel; he was the champion, the military leader who brought deliverance and who evidently was also a ruler, and he brought peace, a certain measure of peace, to Israel, and began to cast off the Philistine yoke from Israel—

That is to say, he operated in his ministry, but he did so in a mediocre and partial way, and that is the point. He enjoyed a certain level of anointing in his life, but he was not living up to what God wanted. I believe that if Samson had lived up to it, perhaps he would have done even mightier and more extraordinary things; but for 20 years he was the leader of Israel.

But we see that he did not behave himself. On at least three occasions, we see that this man did not discipline himself, especially in the sexual area, although it could be any other area of a person’s life. But Samson liked women—it has to be said that way—he was a womanizer. And that process is interesting, because Samson had such tremendous vitality; he was a physical man, and that is one of the things that happens. Brothers and sisters, when God gives you a gift, you know what? I always say that every gift has a dark side. Your gift is often also your danger.

So Samson had incredible vitality; he was a warrior; he was physically strong. But I can imagine the kinds of meals this guy ate: eight pork chops and a whole trough of rice with beans on top, and ten tortillas. He was a physical guy because God had given him vitality; He had given him physical vigor. God gave him strength, but that strength also had its price and its danger. That is something you must always know.

Look, all of us have our weak side, let me tell you right now. Every one of us—and the devil knows where… I have said before that the devil… Do you remember the spot he is always probing to see where it is? The Bible says that we should never accuse God of tempting us, because He tempts no one; rather, when we are tempted, it is by our own lust. So every one of us—you and I—has a weak side, and the devil is constantly probing to find and discover where your weak side is. Identify your weak side, or your weak sides, because that is where the enemy will try to get at you. And one of the things you see throughout this whole passage is the Philistines looking for a way to get hold of Samson, trying to discover the secret of his strength. Be careful.

And Samson was a man who loved women and loved food. We see, for example, that when he kills that lion, he takes the honeycomb from the lion’s decomposing body and eats the honey. He was already sinning there; he was coming into intimate contact with a dead body—not only touching it, but intimately eating from it. He was a man of great appetites. And on three occasions we see his weakness: women. And that was where the devil dealt him the fatal blow. It may be other things: the devil gets some people through food, others through women, or men, others through money, others through pride and vanity, and others through some wound from the past that torments and weakens them and makes them vulnerable to people’s attention or manipulation, or through an insecurity that makes the person constantly seek approval, want to prove himself to others, or heal that doubt he has inside. For others, it may be the stubborn belief that this is mine, I am going to get it, and this is how it is, and they do not take anyone’s advice. There are many things, brothers and sisters, that kill people.

What is your weakness? Remember that. In your life, you and I must always try to be honest with ourselves: Where is the flaw in me? What are those cracks in my life through which the enemy can deal me a fatal blow and destroy me? Because he will be looking for them.

So Samson did not live up to his calling and ended in failure; he ended in destruction. In the end, the Philistines discovered the source of his power. It was not his hair, but Samson’s hair had never been cut. He was like a woman; his hair had never been cut, and that was like a sign of God’s authority over him. I believe that is what it was. Why was Samson’s hair so important? Because it represented authority.

In the Bible, I believe that this matter of hair—the woman, for example, wears a head covering when she goes to church; she has authority over her, the Bible says. Long hair. There is a sign of God’s authority, and I believe that was like a sign that said, “Look, I am willing to appear strange to people.” A man with hair down to his waist looks unusual, and perhaps Samson felt uncomfortable. Perhaps even his little friends, when he was a child, would say to him, “Oh, look at him, a little girl,” or something like that. They laughed. “And why is your hair like that? Haven’t you cut it?”

Samson had to live with that issue. I can imagine the beatings those boys must have received. I think perhaps they did not taunt him much—two or three good smacks, and they kept quiet forever after that. But the point is that it was like a sign of God’s authority and control over his life. He had to humble himself and be willing to sacrifice his self-image for God. That was it. It was not the hair, but rather the sign behind it.

But when he allowed it to be cut, because God had told him, “You must never cut your hair,” that was a spiritual transaction he made that weakened him, and God’s anointing left him. Then he became like a completely ordinary man. And we are going to talk a little more about that. But I am giving you the account so that you can see the course his life took. And in the end, poor Samson was captured and destroyed because he did not know how to guard his anointing.

This story tells us about a person who did not know how to appreciate or protect the powerful calling he had received. He did not know how to value it or care for it. He squandered and despised it. You and I must guard God’s anointing in our lives, God’s calling, the Word, the treasure God has placed within us as children of God, the great inheritance we have as children of God.

Notice the greatness of Samson’s calling, the exceptional nature of his endowment, and the solemnity of the divine purpose. That is important. God had a purpose. It was not as though God were saying, “I will see whether or not I use him.” No, God had determined, “I want to use this man.” But notice that we can do things that may even divert God’s purpose for our lives. No matter how determined God is to bless us, if you do not do your part, God will not complete the purpose He has for your life.

How many people might be here right now for whom God has incredible things, but they are not living up to the calling, and so the calling remains latent; it has not manifested itself. Others have been used by God in great things, but they squandered their gift and fell, and then the purpose God had for their lives was not fulfilled.

Samson was conceived for great things. God had a great purpose for him. There was no hesitation in God concerning his destiny and calling. Samson had been destined to bring salvation and deliverance to Israel. And that is the tragedy of his story. Because Samson grows up in a corrupt society, as we do, and that society will try to undermine your calling. Israel was a corrupt people, and the Philistines were even more corrupt. The culture surrounding them did not favor Samson or his extreme calling to consecration and abstinence. You are a person living in a rotten culture, unfortunately, and the devil will do everything possible to contaminate you and make you live like the culture.

Samson wanted to live like the other young people in his culture. And that is why he fell into what he fell into. Samson had received a calling to live his entire life as a Nazirite, but he did not fulfill it.

What I want you to understand is this: Every gift has a cost, and to the extent that we protect the gift and abstain from everything that could contaminate it, to that same extent the gift will continue to function and improve. But if we do not, the gift declines and disappears from your life. Everything—the calling of God, the anointing, the Spirit, the presence, the moving of God, God’s purposes in your life—depends on the condition of your vessel. That is what is important.

Now I want to speak to you quickly about four little things. I want to speak to you about the origin of the gift. The account leads me to this: the origin of the gift, where the gift comes from. Second, I want to speak to you about the cost of the gift. Third, the power of the gift; and fourth, the danger of the gift. Those are the four things I want to discuss with you quickly in the time I have left.

Let us first look at the origin of the gift. Evidently, the gift comes from God. Why is it important for us to know this? Because God is the one who holds that gift in His hands. He does what He wants with that gift. It is loaned to you. God sovereignly gives it to whomever He wishes. Our power comes from God. Our ability to do great things comes from Him. Samson was perfectly ordinary without the Holy Spirit working in his life.

You see that every time Samson enters a crisis, when they come to kill or destroy him, it says that the Holy Spirit came upon him, and then he received extraordinary strength and could do what he had to do to protect himself. Our ability to do great things comes from God and from His Spirit within us.

When we enter the ways of the Lord, the power of God comes upon us with all its gifts and resources. When you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, the power of God enters your life. It is there, latent. We can live powerful lives as a result of those gifts God has placed within us. God has called us to perform mighty deeds, just as He called Samson.

The most ordinary and commonplace person can do extraordinary things like Samson if the Spirit of God is with him or her. Samson was a man of limited intellect. He was a very ordinary man; he had no great intellectual or cultural gifts or anything of the sort. He was simply someone who had a calling and an anointing that God had given him because God felt like it.

This weekend, at this conference, I met a Hispanic pastor who spoke to us—a completely ordinary man, and in fact also a very imperfect person, from the many things one could see there in his presentation. Nevertheless, this man has done some extraordinary, very powerful things in his life. I could imagine seeing this man on the street, on Albany Street, asking for quarters. In fact, he was a criminal when he was young, and God revealed Himself to him in prison. Today he is successful in ministry, very successful in ministry, with a great deal of prestige. But you listen to that person and say, “What is extraordinary about this person?” He is an ordinary, run-of-the-mill fellow—eminently ordinary—but the power of God is in him. And that man devoted himself to the Lord and surrendered his life to God. He repented of his sins, changed his life, dedicated his life to the Lord, and God has used him to do great things. He can do it with you, with anyone.

Many of the people who do great things in ministry are not naturally gifted people, but they are consecrated people, and that is the difference. The Pentecostal world reminds us of this fact. So many Pentecostals you see are people who, as I say, are eminently—well, the Pentecostal world is a very imperfect world. Nevertheless, those people, also in a very imperfect way, know what it means to pursue holiness, because they often do not perfectly understand what holiness is, but they consecrate themselves. And wherever there is consecration and dedication to something, there is strength.

Look at the Muslim world. The Muslim world serves a God who is not the God I believe we serve. They are closely related, they have Scriptures in common and other things, but that is not the God recorded in the Bible. He certainly is not the God recorded in the New Testament. It is a cruel, violent, aggressive world, practically without mercy. There are many good people, and a culture… it would take too long to explain; I do not want to get sidetracked. You know what I mean. There are always good people everywhere, and there is also a great deal of evil, but predominantly the tone of Muslim culture is fierce and Old Testament-like: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and violence in many things. And yet, why do those people have the power they have? Go there during Ramadan, that period of fasting and prayer. Those people do not taste even water from morning until night, for what I believe is a month, the month of Ramadan.

Now, at night they certainly gorge themselves enough to make up for everything they did not eat during the day. But all day long they do not taste even a drop of water, and they do that for a month every year. And those people have a strength that, I would say, is in some way demonic, but they have power because there is consecration. The males—those men—I have been in the Middle East, and I see the virility of that Muslim world. It is incredible. It is not primarily the women… you see those men filling the mosques, men consecrated to their cause and their faith, and they see only through the lenses of Islam. And they live for their cause. And that gives them tremendous power.

Here in the United States, for example, and in many parts of the world, the church is a weak church; it is a lukewarm church. People do the smallest little thing, and they already feel as though they are spiritual magnates. They get tired from the smallest thing. They went to church once that week, and already they feel like saying, “I am too tired.” Why be so consecrated? Why do this? Why do that? “It is a whole day; I have to work,” and they are already tired and overwhelmed because they gave one tiny drop of something.

Consecration gives power, brothers and sisters. And this is something we understand. The gift of God requires that consecration and surrender. A price must be paid. We must focus, because focusing, surrendering, and consecrating oneself is what allows the gift that belongs to God to come into your life and operate. The gift of God operates in the context of consecration and holiness unto Him.

That is why it is important to know where the gift comes from. Because it comes from God, and God gives it to you as long as you take care of it. But if you do not take care of it, He pulls it back and keeps it once again. He takes it away from you. Consecration is the price of it. When a person consecrates himself, he can do truly extraordinary things. We must remain deeply conscious of that fact. The gift is not mine; it belongs to God. It is on loan and comes with conditions. The gift comes upon me and returns to the Father. God takes it away if we do not use it properly. That applies to every Christian, not only to those destined for something extraordinary.

Something very serious and important is this, brothers and sisters, and it makes me tremble: God is beholden to no one. He slaps even the most handsome person. If the person He loves most does not respect the gift, God slaps him. It amazes me. After everything God had invested in that man, when he violated the commandment, it says that the Spirit of God departed from him. All the purposes God had, all the years God had invested in him, the historical purposes He had—all of that did not matter to God. When Samson violated the command and they cut off that hair concerning which God had said, “You must remain consecrated to Me,” God instantly said, “I am leaving here.” And Samson was left a purely ordinary man.

His extraordinary power left immediately. And that is very important. God may have great purposes for your life. God has called you to do great and powerful things. God loves you. God is fiercely committed to you. But when you do something, many times it will force God to remove His hand from you, and God will do it with sorrow in His soul. He will not do it because He wants to, but because He has to, because He respects His law.

That is the terrible thing about this: even though God loves me fiercely, tremendously, if I do not guide my life according to what He asks, He Himself has to remove His hand from me, because He respects Himself and He is holy, and He operates according to principles that He does not allow even Himself to violate. And that should keep us very careful. Because many of us feel, oh, God loves me, God is good, God has grace for me, God has great purposes, and we let down our guard. No. You have to know that God is always bound to respect Himself; what He has said, He has to fulfill. And that is why you and I have to walk very carefully. Sometimes there are things, I tell you, that I do not do, not because I do not want to do them, but because I am terrified of God. I am telling you, I fear God more than the appetite that would lead me to do something else. Simply because I know that God plays no favorites and that God is terribly clear about His ways.

The gift belongs to God, and if you do not remain consecrated and clean, that is God's property, and He takes it away from you. He took it away from Samson when he continued to defile himself, continued with the women—a prostitute; before that, he married a Philistine woman; and then Delilah came—three unclean women who were not even from Israel. God had had enough. In fact, it says that when He took away the gift, Samson did not even know that he no longer had it. There are many times in your life when you can go on doing everything and continue behaving in a certain way, and you say, well, nothing has happened to me; I am still doing this and that. But the gift has already departed from you, and a time will come when you will realize it. So you have to be careful. The origin of the gift is God, and that is why you have to guard it.

Second, there is the cost of the gift; we have already said it. Those benefits come at a price. Every gift of God has a price. God established this principle at the very beginning of creation, in the Garden of Eden. He said to Adam and Eve, I have a great many things for you; use them. Everything in this garden belongs to you, but be careful: do not touch that tree. Because God always sets up something as a sign. There is always something from which one must abstain in order for the glory of God to operate within oneself. There is a sign that God always establishes. He says, I am going to give you everything, but do not do that. Do not touch it. Do not go that way, because that is the symbol of My lordship over your life. And one must always be careful about that. There is a cost; there is a way one has to live. It is tremendous.

That is the issue of holiness. What is the price? And what are the requirements of the Christian anointing of God's children? There are many. First, one must receive the Holy Spirit. God says that you have to seek: you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. We believers have to seek the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We must seek that extra blessing which God says He has for us. We must consecrate ourselves; we have already said that.

We must live a life of abstinence. We must embrace holiness, with all the sacrifice and agony that this sometimes entails. We must embrace a life of discipline, inner struggle, and self-control. We must follow God's commandments in every way possible. That is the cost. That is the price; that is the agony of the gift and the anointing of God.

If you want God to use you, you have to know that there is a price that must be paid. Look at what Paul says in First Corinthians 9:24:

“…Do you not know that those who run in a race all indeed run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. Everyone who competes abstains from everything; they—the runners—do so to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. Therefore I, Paul, run this way, not aimlessly; this way I fight, not as one who beats the air, but I beat my body and bring it into subjection, lest, after having been a herald to others, I myself should be disqualified…”

Paul says, look, I myself know that if I am not careful, with everything God has given me and has for my life, if I do not maintain a life of discipline, I too will… I, who have served to bless so many people, will lose what they have received through my ministry and my life. So that is why I live that way. I live like an athlete. I abstain from the things from which I must abstain; I discipline myself, I train, I read, I pray, I fast, I seek the glory of God in my life. Every day, I keep filing away more and more of the rough edges of my personality, healing myself as much as I can. I live the life of an Olympic athlete because I want the anointing of God to remain in my life.

You see, that is the price of the anointing. It is a life of seeking. One must become completely identified with the style and way of Jesus. Ask yourself: Does my life, my character, my temperament, reflect the character of Jesus? Because Christ says, if you abide in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. If I am with you, ask for whatever you want and I will give it to you, He says. A life of power requires an affinity with the character of Jesus.

That is why holiness is not only, as I say, that crude matter of not being immoral. No, it is also embracing the way and personality of Jesus in every respect, living yoked to Jesus. May my life reflect the values and the person of Jesus. When that is in me, the power of God flows through me. That is the price of the anointing, the cost of the anointing.

Samson did not know how to do this; he did not pay the price. His extraordinary calling depended on God and required paying an extreme price. He wanted to live like an ordinary man, with ordinary privileges. He did not know how to abstain from the things God had forbidden him.

Look, if you want God to use you, I understood something a long time ago: I cannot live a normal life; I cannot work from nine to five and have Friday and Sunday off. Do you know where I would like to be right now, brothers and sisters? Speaking carnally—I love being here—but there are times, I confess to you, when I would like to be able to get up on Sundays at nine or ten in the morning, have The New York Times delivered to my home, and go to a café to eat a good brunch and stay there until one in the afternoon reading The New York Times, then return home and read another book, rest, do whatever, and live a normal life. To get up on Saturday morning and think about nothing except enjoying a long weekend. I will be truthful with you; I am being honest. Do not be scandalized. Sometimes it is like that.

And if other pastors do not admit it, it is because they are liars, because that happens to every pastor. I have learned that I am a priest, and I cannot live an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, nine-to-five life, retiring at sixty-three or sixty-five with a pension, an insurance policy I will collect, or whatever. It is a life of surrender, of sacrifice. It is a priesthood. Many pastors today want to live like corporate executives and all that sort of thing, and what that is doing is contaminating the anointing. Perhaps later I will also talk about another man who failed: Gehazi. You do not hear prosperity preachers talk much about Gehazi, because Gehazi is a problem for many people. Whoever wants to live a normal life while serving the Lord is mistaken.

There are many pastors today—I see them—who want to live a normal life and want to enjoy all the luxuries and all the benefits of ordinary people, and that is not how it works. The point is that your blessing and your power rest on your abstinence, on your being an empty vessel in which God can place His oil. If you fill your vessel with other things, with personal benefits, where is the oil of God?

My joy, my privilege, and my power lie in having the anointing of God flow through me. That is my treasure. That is my glory. That is my privilege. That is my reputation. I prefer that to a billion dollars, brothers and sisters, sincerely. I see so many people who want to serve God and secretly want to serve the world as well, while making others believe that they are serving God; but they do not want to abstain, and they seek twenty thousand theological justifications to excuse their inner corruption. And this is cursing the church and preventing it from confronting its enemies. Very large and apparently very anointed churches, but the anointing left long ago. What is there is merely the muscles of a big, strong man, but not the supernatural anointing, which is what enables those muscles to do truly extraordinary things. Large churches, many people, but the devil is perfectly at ease because they do nothing; they do not strike him where he truly feels it.

Because the price for the anointing must be paid—abstinence; one must suffer for it. You have to suffer. I have to suffer. That is why Samson speaks so powerfully to me, let me tell you. I have wrestled with Samson all these weeks because I know what that implies for my life, and it speaks harshly to me, and this is a very serious sermon for me to preach.

But what happens? When that gift of God is in you and you pay the price, then the power of that gift is marvelous. With the gift of God, you can move mountains, the Bible says. If you believe, it says, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here and cast yourself into the heart of the sea,’ and it will do so. The Lord used hyperbole, but that is the level of God's gift, of the power; and if you hunger for God to move in your life, pay the price, consecrate and surrender yourself, and seek God. Do not live with a foot in both camps. That is what many people are doing today, and we cannot do that. I cannot do it. You cannot do it.

God is saying to us, church, I want to give you great power, but you have to pay the price, because it is Mine, and I give it to the one who pays the price. I want those words of Paul to become real in my life: ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ I want that word of Jesus: If you believe in Me, greater things than those I have done, I will do them.

I sincerely believe that word has still not been fulfilled. Many people out there say that it has already been fulfilled. No, I do not believe so, sincerely. I do not believe so. I believe that what Christ meant when He said that they would do greater things than those He had done still lies ahead. I would like at least to see someone do it. At the very least, I want to witness what Christ said.

That is the power. That is the level of power. Whatever we ask God in the name of Jesus, if we believe, will be done for us. God has told His church that the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

All those promises are for you. You can live in the power of God. Prosperity, yes—the sound prosperity of God. You can live in the blessing of God. You can live in such a way that the devil has no power over you and does not harm you, that God gives you wisdom to solve your problems, to live a prosperous, constructive, healthy life, building and moving forward. But all of that requires a price to be paid, because the power is great and the cost is great, because God is great.

When you seek the power of God and treasure it, God blesses and uses you. He endows you with extraordinary strength. The source of the Christian's power is in the anointing of God. This is the greatest treasure the believer possesses.

Brothers and sisters, we are people of power. The power of God is our national currency. With power, the Christian buys and sells, invests and exchanges. That is what we operate in. We have to be people with a mindset of power. Everything you do has to be in terms of energy, power, dunamis, authority. You have to live as though… power were the brick you build with, and with it you handle the ordinary situations of life. You do the great things God has called you to do with the power of God. You overcome the enemy. You have wisdom and revelation to navigate life with the power of God.

Everything you do has to be through the power of God. You are a fragile creature, and you require power to have a good marriage, a powerful and prosperous career, a ministry in which God uses you, so that the devil has no power to harm you, so that God may prosper you and you may have a happy old age, so that your children may grow up in the ways of the Lord, so that God may deliver you from hardship and struggle. All of that requires the power of God dwelling in your life and paying the price so that this power remains within you.

Every time you want to chase after your appetites, say, for the sake of the power, the power, the anointing, the companionship and approval of God—and bite your tongue and draw back. And do what God told you, because the power must not depart from your life.

And the last thing is the danger. Why all these things? Why the seriousness? Remember this: the origin, the cost, the magnitude of the gift, but also the danger of the gift. We have enemies. Many people allow themselves many liberties because they do not understand that. Every man and every woman of God with a calling has enemies. The Philistines were bitter enemies of Samson because he represented a threat to their lives. And those enemies were like subterranean insects, searching: Where is this man's flaw? Where is his weak point? Where is his Achilles' heel? Where is it? Why does this man have the strength he has, and how can we bring him down?

So, what did they do? They looked for his weakness: women. And they used women to gain access to him, and that was the crowbar that broke everything apart. Because finally, after a long time, Delilah persisted. She asked him several times—listen, how stupid this man was. Three times this woman clearly showed that she wanted to destroy him, and in the end he gave her the answer. Because when you are living in sin, it ultimately blinds you.

You are walking in the ways of the Lord, God is using you, God is blessing you, God uses you for good and great things, you are a light in the world, you give people good advice, you pray for them, your children are growing up in the ways of the Lord and one day they may become something great—the devil will try to destroy you because of that. And that is the danger.

When you agree to live as a source of blessing in the world, the devil immediately declares war on you. And some people want to do both things. They want to be positive influences and be with God, but they do not realize that this very thing also puts them in the devil’s sights, and that therefore they have to watch their backs and walk accordingly, because otherwise failure will be part of your life; it will pursue you continually. That is the cost; that is the danger. With the anointing also come enemies who want to destroy you. So you have to walk carefully, and you always have to keep your nose clean, because otherwise, sooner or later, the devil will strike you. He will not rest until he discovers the source of your power and separates you from it.

So that is part of it. Remember, you are always in the enemy’s sights. And live your life—I must live my life, we must live our lives—always with incredible sobriety.

I always like to end on a positive note. Samson failed; they gouged out his eyes, put him in prison, and ridiculed him. One day, after he had become merely a distant name, a legend—ah, Samson, the one who used to do all those things—they brought him out to amuse themselves with him. By then, his hair had grown back. And they placed him between two columns that supported an immense hall. There were about 3,000 Philistines there, and the entire Philistine government was at that gathering. Ah, let’s laugh at Samson. And the grace of the Lord came.

Because when you repent, there is blessing. When you seek the presence of God, when you humble yourself… humble yourself before the Lord. David sinned, humbled himself, and God restored and blessed him. If you have sinned, if you recognize that your life is not right with God, repent; do not be foolish, and ask the Lord to restore you. Walk with God.

God gave him an opportunity. Samson said, “Place me between the two columns of this building,” and he asked the Lord, “Lord, one last time, let Your power flow through me.” And God, in His goodness and mercy, sent the anointing once again. And Samson took hold of those two supporting columns—and what was it that happened with the Twin Towers? When the perfect balance of a large structure is disrupted, everything else comes crashing down, because a force is now bearing upon an area where it was not before, and then it puts pressure on the others, destabilizing them, and… the whole building came crashing down.

The Bible says that in his death Samson killed more Philistines than he had in his entire life, because he humbled himself, and God is a God of many opportunities. And in the end, he was able to redeem his foolishness, and he died with honor and destroyed them.

I believe that God still has something in store. I know that He does in this society as well. I tell you, in just a few days God can cast out all this wickedness of the devil that this society has chosen. I know it; I feel it in my spirit. There are two columns at the center, supporting this entire diabolical framework that has been placed over this culture. All these rotten values—we have seen them; in my own lifetime, I have seen how they have advanced. Just yesterday I witnessed a spectacle. I was with Miguel and Caleb in a little park, and we saw some young girls and some boys who were already corrupt at fourteen or fifteen years old.

I think God put them there to torture me. I cannot get the image of those young girls out of my mind. Sexually corrupt at fourteen or fifteen years old. What a horrible thing! They are someone’s daughters, and there were also two or three young boys. But it was disgusting, those young girls already manipulating. There was this scene involving one young girl, the oldest one, and another person, and I watched how the level of sexuality between the two of them increased over about twenty-five minutes. Meche tells me that I am quarrelsome, but human dramas fascinate me. And I watched how this little couple corrupted each other in just a moment as they sat there. And how the level of sexuality kept rising.

That is the depravity of this culture in which we live, along with so many other things—many of them. But let me tell you, in that framework, in that building, there are two columns, and if we truly consecrate ourselves, if we consecrate ourselves, repent, and pay the price—if the church of Christ unites and pays the price—the church will place its hands side by side, and that column will come crashing down. And the glory of God will fall upon the earth.

But we have to pay the price. The price must be paid; we must consecrate ourselves. I tell you, Samson has been speaking to me throughout all these days. I am not afraid of the devil. I know that what he has done is purely… the result of the space we have allowed him to occupy. The day the church gets itself in order and pays the price, look, those two columns will come crashing down in an instant.

God is telling you, and He is telling me: pay the price of the anointing. Consecrate yourself and understand the seriousness of the path you are walking. May the Lord speak to you and me on this day. He has spoken to me. As I preached this sermon, I said, “Lord, I want to preach this sermon to myself. I want it to be a poem for You; I want it to be a declaration.” If no one were here, I would preach it anyway, because this is for God, for the devil, and for me, and simply so that the very air may receive these very important principles.

May the Lord grant that we leave here with a sense of calling in our lives. The anointing is precious; it can do incredible things, but there is a price, there is a danger, there is a source, and it possesses tremendous power. It is worth it, brothers and sisters. Let us sanctify ourselves; let us cleanse ourselves. It is worth it. And God desires it.

Let us stand. Consecrate your life to the Lord. I am doing so right now. Lord, we are going to walk with You. We are going to draw closer to You every day; we are going to seek Your face. We are going to seek You; we want Your glory, Lord. We want Your anointing more than anything. We want Your power to flow through us, Father. Do not let us waste Your anointing. And allow this word to be sealed in our hearts and minds, Lord, and may each of us leave here with a deep conviction that You have spoken to us and that we must pay the price. I want to pay the price. Each of us wants to pay the price. This church pays the price. We desire to pay the price, Lord; teach us what that price may be.

Let us sing that chorus, that chorus we sang at the beginning, at the outset: “We want nothing, only You.”