Delilah: A Warning About What We Keep Returning To
May 23, 2026
Delilah: A Warning About What We Keep Returning To
Samson was one of the most supernaturally gifted men in all of Scripture. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. He was set apart from birth, a Nazirite consecrated to God, raised up to deliver Israel from the Philistines. And yet his story ends in a Philistine prison, blind and broken.
Not because God abandoned him. Because of what he kept returning to.
Judges 16 tells us that Samson loved a woman named Delilah. The Philistine leaders came to her with an offer — a fortune in silver if she could discover the secret of his strength. And so she began to ask. Samson lied to her three times, and three times she betrayed him to his enemies. Three times he saw exactly who she was — and went back anyway.
That is the part of the story that should make us catch our breath.
Eventually, worn down by her persistence, he told her everything. While he slept on her lap, his head was shaved and his strength left him. Judges 16:20 contains one of the saddest lines in all of Scripture — “he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.” He woke up thinking he was still the man he had been. He wasn’t.
Friend, the enemy rarely comes at us with obvious force. He comes through what we keep returning to — the relationship we know isn’t right, the habit we keep excusing, the compromise we’ve made peace with. Samson’s gift didn’t protect him from Samson’s choices.
But here is the grace — in that prison, blind and humbled, Samson’s hair began to grow again. And in Judges 16:28 he cried out to God one last time, and God heard him. It was never too late to return.
It is never too late for you either.
May God give us the wisdom to recognise what we keep returning to, and the courage to turn away — before the prison, not after.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.