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How many times have you felt weak? Like your past or your mistakes are too much, that God will never forgive you? Or maybe you’ve felt too small, like how can God use someone like me? Someone so broken or so messed up? So small and insignificant? So useless? Someone who maybe threw away everything or maybe missed too many opportunities or put faith in all the wrong people or searched for happiness in all the wrong places?

I think, everyone at some point in their lives has felt one or more of these feelings at one time. I know I have. Many, many times.

One of the many reasons why I love the story of Samson (and most of the other stories in the Bible) is because Samson messed up. He went after all the wrong things—from woman to woman, to running away from what God wanted but…

God used Samson’s mistakes.

When Samson married the Philistine woman, God used that wedding to kick-start the first time Samson really encountered the Philistines. It ended with Samson killing thirty soldiers and shortly after, the Philistines came after him and that, when Samson was weakest, had made a horrible mistake and dishonored his people by marrying someone outside of them, that is the moment when God chose to use him!

Samson killed a thousand soldiers in one battle! A thousand. God’s strength flowed through him because in that moment, Samson finally allowed God to use him.
But then, Samson went and did it again. I mean, for twenty years he obeyed God and became judge of Israel but then… Delilah came around and Samson got himself a little… distracted. He went off course, but that’s the amazing thing about God!

He directed Samson! Even when he veered way off course, God steered him back the right way. Samson had to get arrested and blinded, to get to his lowest point to finally see God and His will for his life. Then, God used him to fulfil His plan and purpose and in the end, Samson killed more Philistines than he had in his entire lifetime.

God uses our mistakes and those moments when we veer off course. He directs us, corrects us, and gets us back on His path. Sometimes, it takes us getting to our lowest point to see God and to see where He wants us. When we have nothing else in life, nothing left to lose, nothing left to search toward or rely on, when we are at the lowest we can go, then that is when we only have One God to search toward, to lean and rely on, One God to look up to. Sometimes, that’s what it takes.

But no matter who you are, where you are in life, what mistakes you have made, or how you or others feel about you, God is still going to use you. When we are weak, He is made strong. That isn’t just true for Samson.

He used all of Samson’s weaknesses and turned it into his greatest strength. God can and will do the same for you.