God trains us for spiritual battle and to overcome all the difficulties of life. Look how creative God is with Samson in the Samson and the lion story.

The Bible says that the Spirit of God was stirring Samson to begin to confront the Philistines (Jud 13:25). No mean feat as all his people had accommodated them and he had grown up in this culture. How often do we just accept the status quo of our culture or church and don’t live what the Bible says instead. How often do we not use our God given authority against Satan and his evil schemes?

So God must use incidences in our lives to stir us to live differently. Let’s see how he does this with Samson:

1.God sends a lion against him!

Samson’s strength is untried as yet. The lion incident (Jud 14:5) tested his strength and his courage to face a lion alone. He would have to face the Philistines alone many times after this. Did not David kill the lion many times before he encountered Goliath. Was God not training David? And here Samson.
So what difficulty or person is God sending us to train us in courage?

2.God gives Samson a means to provoke further training

Samson loved riddles and delighted in riddles that others couldn’t solve. So God gave him a riddle that He knew the Philistines would never solve and so be a source of confrontation (Jud 14:14). Hence, this annoying riddle provoked the Philistines and so brought them into conflict.

Did not God allow Martin Luther to be provoked by the Catholic Church, so that he went deeper into the Scriptures and started instead a revolution. If the Catholic Church had instead reacted well, Luther would have remained a Catholic and the great Reformation would have never happened!!

The early believers did not initially obey the mission of Jesus to take the Gospel to Samaria, Judea and the ends of the earth. So God allowed persecution to push them outwards from their comfortable place in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1)

3.God sends honey

The Christian life is not all battle and confrontation. There is much sweetness in it as well. God knows that we are only human. So is the story of the bees’ honey that Samson found in the decayed skeleton remains of the lion (Jud 14:8-9). It taught him that in the midst of battles there we can find sweetness too, even in the most unlikely scenarios.

Also the Israelites had forgotten that they had inherited a land of milk and honey, but that they still had to take it first!! God always rewards daring for Him.

Conclusion

Many times, what seems to be problems, difficulties or big challenges in our lives are in fact what God is using to train us. But it is not all struggle. There is sweetness and delight for us in the midst of the training too, if we will just look for it.