Sunday Club 26.5.19. Samson
The session began with a discussion on strength. Who thinks they are strong? Who is the strongest person they know? How do people build up their strength?
We talked about how people often use weights to build up their strength and everyone handled 2 dumbbells. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be one of the strongest people on earth without ever having to work out with weights? Well our bible story today is about a man who had great strength, but that strength was not because of anything he did, it was a gift from God. You probably know who it was – yes – Samson.
A long time ago in Israel an angel of the Lord appeared to the wife of a man called Manoah. The angel told her that even though she had been unable to have children she would soon give birth to a son who would be dedicated to God and his hair must never be cut. When her son was born she named him Samson. The Lord blessed him as he grew up and he became one of the strongest men in the world.
Samson did lots of amazing things in his life and you can read all about them in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament section of the Bible. He killed a lion with God’s gift of strength. He destroyed the Philistine’s crops using 300 foxes and he killed a thousand Philistines with the jaw bone of a donkey.
Even though Samuel was blessed with great strength, he also had one weakness, a weakness for women and not always the kind of women that would be pleasing to God. Samson fell in love with a woman called Delilah who had no idea where his strength came from but when five rulers of the Philistine nation each offered her a thousand pieces of silver if she told them the secret of Samsons strength, she wanted to find out.
Of course, Samson didn’t tell Delilah straight away but after a while Samson weakened and told her the true secret of his strength. When Delilah told the Philistine rulers they came and cut Samson’s hair while he was sleeping and because his power had left him, they were able to capture him. Samson. They dragged Samson away, and did some terrible things. They tied him with chains and poked out his eyes. Day after day he was put to work turning a big heavy stone wheel.
But then his hair began to grow back!
One day when the Philistine leaders were having a great victory celebration, they decided to bring Samson in so that they could have some fun laughing at him. They made him stand between the two huge columns of the temple where they were celebrating but no one seemed to notice that Samson’s hair had grown back and they didn’t realize he’d regained his strength. As they were laughing and making fun of Samson and God, Samson was quietly praying. “Lord remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more” Then as he pushed the pillars he said “Let me die with the Philistines” and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it.
God gave him the strength to kill more enemies when he died than while he lived.
Prayer Heavenly Father, every good gift comes from you. Our prayer is that we will always use your gifts to bring about good. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen
We followed the prayer with a number of tug of war events and an activity demonstrating their own
strength by holding as many bibles or hymn books as they could on their hands.
The youngsters then decorated their own dumbbell cut outs, writing “God gives us strength to do good” on them.
Colouring and word activities were completed by those who wished at the back of church.