Seeing is Believing

O.k., so I had this revelation this morning...well, maybe "revelation" is a little bit strong... But, anyway, I was listening to one of our pastors give a brief discourse from a story out of the Bible found in the historical account of the various Judges that lead the nation of Israel before the ancient monarchy was established.
The story he was referencing was about a guy named Sampson.  Maybe you've heard of him?  He was dedicated to God by his parents and they were told that if he followed a certain way of living, (fulfilling a vow called the Nazarite Vow), where he was given particular instructions about everything from what he could eat and drink to his appearance, that God would use him to save Israel from their oppressors.  
In this instance, as a result of Sampson keeping this vow, God gave Sampson supernatural strength.  Long story short, Sampson had a bit of difficulty fulfilling his vow.  And so, he lost the strength God had given him and he was taken captive by the enemies of Israel.  


The thing that caught my attention this morning was, that the Nazarite vow that Sampson took, stipulated that he was never to cut his hair, and from the Biblical account, it's really easy to make the correlation between his hair and his strength...that one was dependent upon the other.  
Now, in my opinion, his strength was not totally dependent upon his hair, it was just symbolic of his devotion to God and of the gift God had given him...
The reason Sampson lost his strength was because his heart wasn't in the right place.  He made a mockery of the gift God had given him and so the symbol of his strength was the means God chose to remove his strength from him.  ANYWAY, so much for trying to make a long story short...


So as a result of his arrogance, his head was shaved, he was taken captive and his eyes were put out.  The main point I'm getting to, eventually, is that once his eyes were put out, his hair began to grow...
You can reference this in the Bible in the section called Judges; chapters 13-16)
The lesson in this is: with humility, comes the strength to do what God has designed/called us to do.  
If we are not careful, we become blinded by our perceptions of reality and we  think we can see so much and in our arrogance we perceive little.  What we must do is allow God to give us the eyes to see what it is he is doing and allow Him to accomplish in and through us his desired outcome.
So in order to really see, we must in a sense, become blind...humbling ourselves in light of the fact that God is God and we are not...lest we lose the ability to perceive who He is and what He has for us to do.