Do you know that that gifts you have were given to you by God for God? Judges 12-16

Judges 16:28-30 (NASBStr)

Samson Is Avenged

 Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life.

Like many men God uses, in the later years of his life, Samson had become a disgrace both for God and for himself.  His wanton desire for joking and jesting and sexual play had finally caught up to him.   His last love affair, Delilah, had seduced him on four occasions.   On the fourth she discovered that his Nazarite vow and not cutting his hair was the reason for his strength.   She cuts it off and he is humiliated.   The only think left now is for him to be a sport for the Philistines, the very people he had battled all of his life (again, because of his first wife who the Philistines gave to another after his marriage).   In is in this final act we read above that Samson gets his vengeance.    However, it didn't have to be that way.   In his life he refused to give God the glory and therefore he was left to do so in his death.   Samson didn't realize the fullness of his strength until the end.  This is the only recorded prayer of Samson.   In all the battles he engaged in prior it was never for God, it was for his vengeance and for his sport.   He never sought God in life and therefore was left to find Him in his death.   Here is a man who had a Nazarite Vow, a sacred commitment that carried specific details (Numbers 6).   Despite the vow to God, however, Samson never realized it in his heart until he is humiliated and brought to the place of destruction.   Sometimes we can be given extreme gifts by God and never really experience how to use them for God.  We tend to take the gifts and use them for our own good.  It is only in the last breaths of life that some come to this realization.  Some never do.