LOCKDOWN: An Incubatory Crucible for Destiny Achievement

By Emmanuel Agormeda

You may be in a difficult "lockdown" akin to the lockdown manifestations of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of this book, "Lockdown" connotes a "season of siege" on areas of your life: marriage, business, ministry, career, parenting etc. but all for good reason. The good reason is that it forges the dynamics of faith to establish God's real intended purpose for your lockdown. This book will show you that your lockdown, in any form takes, is the divine crucible for your destiny achievement. In this ground-breaking treatise of immense revelation, the author insightfully posits the incidence or phenomenon of "lockdown" in real-life situations and offers critical answers that have eluded many perplexing questions of human misery in lockdown.
In five chapters of living biblical narratives of some key lockdown experiences, the author settles your lockdown anxieties in the faith crucible of God's Word. Sometimes, you need to be in lockdown to find, activate, and achieve God's ultimate destiny purpose for your life. You may be a lockdown away from God's glory manifestation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350917260

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

SAMSON IN LOCKDOWN

…In Gory Shambles

Many of us grew up having a mental picture of biblical Samson as a superman. This perception comes from what the Bible says about him. We see his superman status in his display of enormous physical strength and power in collapsing an ancient Philistine edifice that held over 3,000 people in it who were celebrating his capture. In the process, Samson killed everyone in the building, including himself. That was a feat worth the awe that it commands.

However, growing up and studying the Bible, we now know that Samson’s display of that awesome might and power in doing extraordinary feats wasn’t by any means his own strength. The Spirit of God that rested on him in the symbolic re-growth of his hair proved decisive in dealing with the Philistines that led to the devastating massacre when he prayed.

…"O Lord God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once,… So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life.

Judges 16:28-30

In fact, Samson was indeed a super-hero to some extent. His earthly exploits were beyond the ordinary.

Prophetic birth

My interest in Samson, however, stems from the circumstances of his birth. His birth was prophesied. Barren and obviously reeling under the mocking glances of other women endowed with children, Manoah’s wife was privileged to have been visited by an angel. The angel told her she would bear a son. Her son would bear a unique extraordinariness:

And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."

Judges 13:2

Therefore, even before his birth, God had defined Samson’s life’s purpose on earth: he was to be a Nazarite unto God from the womb to the day of his death and a deliverer of Israel from the hand of the oppressive Philistines. According to the Harpers Bible dictionary:

Nazirites (naʹzuh-rīts; Hebrew, ‘dedicated’ or ‘consecrated [ones]’), are men or women who entered a consecrated state upon their own or a parent’s vow (Numbers 6:1-21; 1 Samuel 1:1-11; Judges 13:1-7).

¹ Three conditions must guide every Nazarite;

1. He must abstain from the fruit of wine and other alcoholic beverages.

2. Also, no razor must touch his hair during the period he upholds the Nazarite vow.

3. Again, such people are not permitted to go near dead bodies, even that of their parents.

Purpose in Life

To help Samson fulfill his pre-determined purpose on earth, God added the virtue of divine power enablement to execute his purpose. Manoah’s son would have supernatural abilities to do what normal human beings were incapable of doing.

…the child grew, and the LORD blessed him. And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him.

Judges 13:24-25

Before he was knit in his mother’s womb, God had already anointed him in the Spirit realm with purpose and power to execute his prophetic mandate. His purpose was to start deliverance of God’s people from the hands of the Philistines.

Power to Accomplish

He began to live his prophetic life in exploits that stood him out as an extraordinary person from birth. Samson killed a young lion with his bare hands (Judges 14:5-6). Besides, he killed thirty (30) Philistine men and took their clothes to honor a pledge he made to anyone who provided the answer to his riddle (Judges 14:12). Moreover, hemmed in by Philistine enemies and a locked-up city, Samson uprooted the giant gates of the city and escaped a possible assassination attempt on his life (Judges 16:1-3). At another time, incensed by the wickedness of his Philistine father-in-law, Samson commandeered three hundred foxes, torched their tails, and released them into the farms of the Philistines to destroy their harvests (Judges 15;1-5). His supernatural prowess saw him slaughter one thousand Philistine men with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:13-15).

…the child grew, and the LORD blessed him. And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him…

Judges 13:24-25

The secret to his extraordinary power was the Spirit of God upon His life. His long locks signified the power of the Holy Spirit for exploits.

The Gold-digger Effect on Samson’s destiny expectation

Even though Samson was a man of unusual exploits – he was every Philistine man’s nightmare and every woman’s dream – his one weakness exposed him to enemy capture. In all his exploits, Samson had a secret to the source of his astounding physical strength. It was his hair! However, his overindulgent love affair with Philistine women, especially with the Philistine gold digger², Delilah, exposed him to his fatal end.

Determined to capture Samson by any means open to them to end their humiliation at the hands of one man, the Philistine lords exploited the relationship between their daughter, Delilah, and Samson to great advantage. They saw in Delilah the insider ally they badly needed to execute the kill. That Delilah was Samson’s heartbeat was an incontestable fact. He would go to any length to satisfy Delilah’s desires to prove that he loved her. That is the extent some will go to in their indulgences, oblivious of the subtlety and subterfuge inherent in love-drunkenness.

The Pastor Who Fell Flat

The story is told about a pastor with great ministry promise in one of the mainline church denominations. At his branch, he worked so hard to raise his small congregation to about 3,000 membership strong. Not only that, through his ministry enterprise, he built a massive church auditorium and a school. Then like a bolt from the skies, his ministry clout began to dose-dive into self-destructive oblivion.

At the height of his glory moments, the pastor veered into lock down straits by making a fatal choice. He fell into an amorous relationship with his secretary at a time when his wife was ill. To compound the murkiness of the illicit affair, the lady at the center of the love affair was also a married woman. Engrossed in his love escapade, the pastor would often delegate his ministry responsibilities to his assistant to run the church’s affairs, especially holding mid-week services, while he went off with his Delilah on vacations.

Soon, the church had wind of the pastor’s amorous relationship with his secretary. Much loved by his church, the elders confronted him with the allegation with the intent to help him out of it if he told them the truth. However, the pastor flatly denied any involvement in any sexual sin. Nevertheless, through intensive investigations, the church leadership established the pastor’s guilt of indecent sexual behavior. Consequently, he was stripped of his ministry office, lost all privileges that were due him, and was barred from preaching in that denomination.

Like Samson, the backlash of his sexual sin was harsh and tough. First, he lost his marriage and family. Second, he lost his ministry clout and all the reverence in which his congregation held him. Third, he lost his ministry work and the income therefrom, so he had to look for an alternative job. In context to the Samson story, the pastor lost his eyes. His ministry blindness landed him in enemy territory in captivity, and he became a source of entertainment in lock down captivity.

Left bare of a family, ministry, and resources, he decided to look for a job. Fortunately, he had one, but that did not give him the satisfaction he was used to. His passion was in preaching. At the company he worked, he would often sit alone at the parking lot and weep like a child, as the reality of his sexual sin outcomes hit him hard. He yearned to return to his calling as a preacher. Graciously, the Lord heard him and gave him another opportunity. But, rather disappointingly, the pastor messed up again. He hadn’t fully renounced that sin and repented. He still lived under the influence of sexual sin and made a mess of himself.

The sad end of the pastor epitomizes the Samson experience in his illicit love affair with the Philistine gold digger, Delilah. Samson’s destiny (ministry) end was as catastrophic as the ministry end of the pastor. Both Samson and the pastor went fishing in sexual waters