Emotions That Take Strong Men Down Series

EMOTIONS THAT TAKE STRONG MEN DOWN

SAMSON; WEEK 2

If you have a bible turn to Judges 14, page 172 pew bible

We're looking at an interesting character named Samson.

If you missed last week,

let me give you a quick review.

Samson is a guy that from birth

was set apart, called and chosen by God

to help rescue God’s people,

who’d been conquered by and oppressed by the Philistines.

So God gave Samson supernatural strength;

Samson had more potential than we can even imagine.

The problem is, like so many of us,

even though he had great potential from God,

he continued to make self-destructive decisions

again and again and again and again.

In fact, last week we summarized his life with one statement.

We said that

Samson was an incredibly strong man with a dangerously weak will.

Just like so many of us

who have great God-given potential,

yet, because of the weakness of our will

we end up making poor decisions,

and waste that potential.

Last week we also looked at

three attitudes that make strong men weak.

The first was lust;

Samson left his hometown,

went into enemy territory

to go pursue a Philistine woman,

one who was off limits.

But he said, 'I want it!'

Because lust makes strong men weak.

Then we saw a spirit of entitlement;

Samson broke his Nazarite vow,

by touching a dead lion,

simply because he wanted a handful of honey.

He said, I don’t cares about my vow to God,

'I deserve it!'

And finally, his pride;

With his Nazirite vows he wasn't supposed to touch alcohol,

but he threw himself a keg party before his wedding.

He thought, No big deal, I can handle it.

3 attitudes that make strong men weak.

Lust, entitlement, and pride.

I want it,

I deserve it,

I can handle it.

So we saw last week that

Samson is squandering the strength God gave him,

and its not going to end well.

We are going to look this week

at another area of Samson’s weak will,

that undermines his great strength.

Here's our key thought for this week.

Like so many of us,

Samson was emotion driven, not Spirit led.

I want you to remember that,

so lets say that out loud together.

Samson was emotion driven, not Spirit led.

For those of you who are followers of Christ,

one of our big problems is

we should be led by the Spirit in all we do,

but we're often driven by emotions.

Now you men immediately react,

not me, I’m not emotion driven,

I’m not very emotional at all,

now my wife, she’s emotion driven,

but not me.

You see, as men

we don't like to think of ourselves as emotional.

Women are emotional, but we're strong.

Women are emotional, but we're tough.

But though its true that

men show their emotions much differently than women,

The reality is that we're all emotional

because emotions were built into all of us by God,

and they're not bad,

we just shouldn't be driven by them.

And of course, the difference between the way

men process emotions

and women process emotion

is very, very different.

Generally speaking, women talk, and men act.

When women are upset about something

they talk and talk and talk!

Men usually don't talk, we just act!

Some of you women, if you get upset,

you might call one of your women friends

and they'd come over,

and you’d sit on the sofa and drink tea and talk about it.

In all of my life, I've never had a dude ever call me

and say, "Ken, would you come over to my house

and drink some tea and sit on my sofa

so we can talk?"

If he did,

we wouldn't be friends anymore,

it would be over!

You see, men, we're just different in the way

we process emotions,

we tend to act,

but we don't like to talk as much.

Now, the problem is (men, be real honest)

how many of you would say that

sometimes your emotions, like maybe anger,

have led you to do something that you shouldn't have done?

How many would admit that?

The truth is, it doesn’t really take very much,

for me to let my emotions start driving me,

instead of being spirit led.

A couple days ago I was driving through Hamilton,

and this car ahead of me is driving so slow,

and I was in an area you couldn’t pass.

I started getting more and more impatient.

Now, most of you would say,

what’s the big deal about that,

so they’re driving slow.

And I agree, it wasn’t a big deal.

But yet, I’m getting aggravated at this driver,

they’re driving 20, in a 35 zone,

what is their problem.