Judges 15:15, “He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it”
I saw “Apollo 13″ movie once or twice that taught me a biblical principle. As depicted in this movie, two days after the launch, the Apollo spacecraft was crippled by an explosion caused by an electrical fault in an oxygen tank. The explosion damaged the Service Module, resulting in a loss of oxygen and electrical power. A failed mission was aborted before it became successful. Not only did the mission fail, to bring the men back to earth safely was a challenge. At one, the man in charge on the ground began to work with his crew to find ways to bring the astronauts to a safe landing. He reached out to one of the top guys, engineers to explain what some of the systems were designed to do only to be told they were designed for specific tasks only and could not be used for anything else. His reaction, “forget everything the machines were designed to do or not do and let’s see how we can take what we have, modify them to do what we want done and bring the astronauts back home safely“(paraphrased). And that is what they did and it worked. God has many ways of bringing victory in situations you thought were out of reach.
If you know the story of Samson, you will understand that he was a very unique individual. Born at a very specific time in history to fight against the Philistines. If you look at Joshua and David, they were men of war, trained and had men (warriors) with them. Samson was different, not born to be a warrior, had no training of any kind yet he would be used to deliver Israel from the Philistines as a one man army. After being born, he began to grow and God blessed him. He had seven locks of hair that was not supposed to be cut. It was a sign of God’s presence and strength. The uniqueness of Samson was, he did great and mighty things when the Spirit of God moved in his life. That is what the Spirit of God does; He empowers you to do what you have no ability to do. He makes you do the impossible by taking something in the natural and using it to accomplish something in the supernatural.
Anytime the Philistine faced him, the bible says, the Spirit of God would come upon him mightily and use him to destroy the enemy. On one particular day when he was delivered to the Philistine bound, the Spirit of God came upon him. There were so many men against him; he did not have any sophisticated weapons to fight back like Rambo. What was present, “…a fresh jawbone of a donkey…”, Judges 15:15. To think about it, what can a jawbone do? God did not design it to be a weapon. It might injure one or two people, but how can you face over a thousand men with something like that? This is where the Spirit of God makes a difference. He empowers to the extent that you can take less and do much with it. The strength is not on the weapon but in the ability given to one to accomplish something. Jesus said in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon, because He (God) has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor…” Jesus being on earth in the flesh, there are certain things He was limited to do (as designed by His coming) and God had empower Him through His Spirit. He laid aside His majesty and completely yielded to the power from above, the Holy Spirit. Acts 10:38, “How God anointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth who went about doing good unto the children of man”. Just like the captain taking what was designed for other things and improvising it to use to bring victory in one area, so was the jawbone Samson used. God used something that was available, a jawbone. Judges 15:15, “…reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it”. It’s not the jawbone that killed men, it’s the Spirit of God driven through the jawbone that killed men. Anyone else who might have tried to take the same jawbone to do the same job and would have failed.
I want us to know that God can use anything around to bring victory in your life. It could be something around you that was never designed for what you want to accomplish but God could use it. It may just be a jawbone, not have significance or even look stupid to use. You may be waiting to see sophisticated things before you see yourself becoming victorious. Let this be a reminder to you, it is the Spirit of God that empowers not what is around. When Samson was done with the jawbone, he did not keep it because of the work it did. I believe the reason was, he knew God had used it just as a means to destroy the enemy. It was a temporary thing to use but it did a work to remember. Pray that the Spirit of God will empower you to take less and do much with it and more so be more like Christ. Blessings Ev
He Has Magnified His Word 