Day 93: Strengths and Weaknesses (2026)

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year Podcast,

where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lands of Scripture.

The Bible in a Year Podcast is brought to you by Ascension.

Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation,

discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today.

Today is day 93. We're reading from Judges 12, 13, 14, and 15.

There's no secondary book, except for the Book of Psalms, which we're praying Psalm 146 today,

kind of jumping ahead to Psalm 146. As always, the Bible translation that I am reading from

is the revised standard version, Second Catholic Edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible

from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit AscensionPress.com,

slash Bible in a year. You can also subscribe in your podcast app. If you did not yet,

done that, that would be a nice thing to do. Anyways, day 93 today, Judges 12,

13, 14, and 15, praying Psalm 146.

The Book of Judges, Chapter 12, Intertribal Fighting. The men of Ephraim were called to arms,

and they crossed to Zaphon and said to Jeff the, Why did you cross over to fight against the

Ammonites and did not call us to go with you? We will burn your house over you with fire.

And Jeff the said to them, I and my people had a great feud with the Ammonites, and when I called

you, you did not deliver me from their hand. And when I saw that you would not deliver me,

I took my life in my hand and crossed over against the Ammonites and the Lord gave them into my hand.

Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me? Then Jeff the gathered all the

men of Gilead and fought with Ephraim. And the men of Gilead struck Ephraim because they said,

You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and Manasseh.

And the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives

of Ephraim said, Let me go over, the men of Gilead said to them, Are you an Ephraimite? When they

said no, they said to him, Then say Shibulath. And he said, Sybilath, for he could not pronounce it

right. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. And they're fell at that time

42,000 of the Ephraimites. Jeff the judged Israel six years. Then Jeff the Gileadite died and was

buried in his city in Gilead. Ibsan, Elon, and Abdon. After him Ibsan of Bethlehem judged Israel.

He had 30 sons and 30 daughters he gave in marriage outside his clan. And 30 daughters he brought

in from outside for his sons. And he judged Israel seven years. Then Ibsan died and was buried

at Bethlehem. After him, Elon, the Zebulonite, judged Israel and he judged Israel ten years.

Then Elon, the Zebulonite, died and was buried at Ijanan in the land of Zebulon. After him, Abdon,

the son of Hellel, the Priethanite, judged Israel. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who wrote on

70 donkeys and he judged Israel eight years. Then Abdon, the son of Hellel, the Priethanite,

died and was buried at Priethan in the land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Amalakites.

Chapter 13 The Birth of Samson

And the sons of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and the Lord gave them

into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. And there was a certain man of Zora, of the tribe of

the Danites, whose name was Manoa. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of

the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, Behold, you are barren and have no children.

But you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore beware and drink no wine or strong drink and eat

nothing unclean for behold you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head.

For the boy shall be a Nazareth to God from birth. And he shall begin to deliver Israel from the

hand of the Philistines. Then the woman came and told her husband, a man of God came to me.

And his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God. Very terrible. I did not ask him

where he was from and he did not tell me his name. But he said to me, Behold, you shall conceive

and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink and eat nothing unclean for the boy

shall be a Nazareth to God from birth to the day of his death. Then Manoa entreated the Lord and

said, O Lord, I beg you. Let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we

are to do with the boy that will be born. And God listened to the voice of Manoa and the angel of God

came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but Manoa her husband was not with her.

And the woman ran in haste and told her husband, Behold, the man who came to me the other day has

appeared to me. And Manoa arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him,

Are you the man who spoke to this woman? And he said, I am. And Manoa said,

Now, when your words come true, what is to be the boy's manner of life and what is he to do?

And the angel of the Lord said to Manoa, of all that I said to the woman, let her be where.

She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink

or eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe. Manoa said to the angel of the

Lord, please let us detain you and prepare a kid for you. And the angel of the Lord said to Manoa,

If you detain me, I will not eat of your food, but if you make ready a burnt offering,

then offer it to the Lord. From Manoa did not know that he was the angel of the Lord. And

the manoa said to the angel of the Lord, What is your name? So that when your words come true,

we may honor you. And the angel of the Lord said to him, Why do you ask my name? Seeing it is wonderful.

So Manoa took the kid with the serial offering and offered it upon the rock to the Lord,

to him who works wonders. And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar,

the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar while Manoa and his wife looked on,

and they fell on their faces to the ground. The angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoa

into his wife. Then Manoa knew that he was the angel of the Lord, and Manoa said to his wife,

We shall surely die, for we have seen God. But his wife said to him, If the Lord had meant to kill

us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a serial offering at our hands, or shown us all

these things, or announced to us such things as these. And the woman bore a son, and called his name

Samson, and the boy grew, and the Lord blessed him, and the spirit of the Lord began to stir in him

at Mahanadan, between Zora and Eshtaol. Chapter 14

Samson's marriage at Timna Samson went down to Timna, and at Timna he saw one of the daughters

of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, I saw one of the daughters

of the Philistines at Timna, now get her for me as my wife. But his father and mother said to him,

Is there not a woman among the daughters of your kinsmen, or among all our people,

that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? But Samson said to his father,

get her for me, for she pleases me well. His father and mother did not know that it was from the

Lord, for he was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. At that time, the Philistines had

dominion over Israel. Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timna, and he came to

the vineyards of Timna, and he hold a young lion roared against him, and the spirit of the Lord

came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion a sunder as one tears a kid, and he had nothing in

his hand. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done. Then he went down and

talked with the woman, and she pleased Samson well. And after a while, he returned to take her,

and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the

body of the lion, and honey. He scripted out into his hands, and went on, eating as he went,

and he came to his father and mother, and gave some to them, and they ate. But he did not tell them

that he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion. And his father went down to the woman,

and Samson made a feast there for so the young men used to do, and when the people saw him,

they brought thirty companions to be with him. And Samson said to them,

let me now put a riddle to you. If you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast

and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festival garments.

But if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty

festival garments. And they said to him, put your riddle that we may hear it. And he said to them,

out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet. And they could not

in three days tell what the riddle was, on the fourth day they said to Samson's wife,

entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father's house with

fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us? And Samson's wife wept before him and said,

you only hate me, you do not love me, you have put a riddle to my countrymen, and you have not told

me what it is. And he said to her, behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and I shall tell

you. She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her

because she pressed him hard. Then she told the riddle to her countrymen, and the men of the city

said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey? What is

stronger than a lion? And he said to them, if you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have

found out my riddle. And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon

and killed thirty men of the town and took their spoil and gave the festival garments to those who had

told the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father's house, and Samson's wife was given to

his companion, who had been his best man. Chapter 15, Samson defeats the Philistines. After a while,

at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a kid, and he said,

I will go into my wife in the chamber, but her father would not allow him to go in. And her father

said, I really thought that you utterly hated her, so I gave her to your companion,

is not her younger sister favor than she, please take her instead. And Samson said to them,

this time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them mischief. So Samson went

and caught three hundred foxes and took torches, and he turned them, tail to tail, and put a torch

between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the

standing grain of the Philistines and burned up the shocks and the standing grain as well as the

olive orchards. Then the Philistines said, who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law

of the Timnite because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion. And the Philistines

came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them, if this is what you do,

I swear I will be avenged upon you and after that I will quit. And he struck them, hip and thigh

with great slaughter. And he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Item. Then the Philistines

came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. And the men of Judah said, why have you come

up against us? They said, we have come up to bind Samson to do to him as he did to us. Then the

three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Item and said to Samson,

do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?

And he said to them, as they did to me, so have I done to them? And they said to him, we have come

down to bind you that we may give you into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said to them,

swear to me that you will not fall upon me yourselves. They said to him, no, we will only bind you

and give you into their hands, we will not kill you. So they bound him with two new ropes and brought

him up from the rock. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him, and the spirit of the

Lord came mightily upon him and the ropes which were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire

and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey and put out his hand

and seized it, and with it he slew a thousand men. And Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey

heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey, have I slain a thousand men. When he had finished

speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand, and that place was called Ramath Lehi.

And he was very thirsty, and he called on the Lord and said, you have granted this great

deliverance by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands

of the uncircumcised. And God split open a hollow place that is at Lehi, and there came water from

it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore, the name of it was called

Enhakor. It is at Lehi to this day, and he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines 20 years.

Psalm 146. Praise for God's help. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord on my soul.

I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God while I have being.

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man in whom there is no help. When his breath departs,

he returns to his earth on that very day his plans perish. Happy is he, whose help is the God of Jacob,

whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them,

who keeps faith forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets prisoners free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are

bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners. He upholds the widow

and the fatherless. But the way of the wicked, he brings to ruin. The Lord will reign forever.

Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord.

Father in heaven, we do give you praise and glory. We thank you so much for the gift of yourself,

the gift of faith, the gift of your word that you've given to us every single day, these last

90 three days, Lord, you keep speaking to us. You keep teaching us. You teach us not only

about ourselves and about the history, but you teach us about your heart. You teach us about

yourself. And so we ask that you please continue to allow our ears to be open or hearts to be open,

our minds to be shaped by who you are and what you call us to. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

The name of the Father, the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So we heard it from

a couple different, a couple different judges. We had, you know, Jeff, obviously, we had

Ibsan, Elan, and Abdon, really briefly. And then we had Samson, who is probably, I would say,

the most famousist, most famous is all the judges. One of the things to keep in mind is this theme.

The theme is of couples who long for a child. And Samson's parents are no different. This is one of

those stories we're going to hear in just even a couple days in first Samuel, the same thing with

Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who longs for a child. Here is Manoa and his wife, who long for a child

and here is the Lord God, who blesses them with with a child. And so again, whenever we have this

theme, I think it's so important for us to stop and to pray for all couples that are in crisis

pregnancies, couples that are unable to conceive or have been able to conceive into this point.

And it's just been so powerful. So many people have reached out. Whenever we bring this up and I

invite this community, right, the people who are going through the Bible in a year to pray,

some things have powerful things have happened. So many lives have been blessed, particularly when

it comes to those couples that are, again, as I said, truly longing and praying desperate, maybe even

sometimes for a child. Here's the Lord God, who comes to Manoa and his wife. And he is consecrated

as a Nazarete from birth, which is, we talked about the Nazarete vow back in Leviticus. We talked

about how people would go off on retreat. And at the end of that retreat, you know, during the

retreat, they wouldn't, basically it was a retreat. It's our common word for it. During that time,

probably wouldn't shave, wouldn't really cut their hair, wouldn't drink. They would have that

retreat time. And at the end of it, they might cut off the hair that grew during that time, the

beard that grew during that time, maybe even shaved their head and then burned that. Now, the

Nazarete vow would be a very brief vow, right, from maybe a week, maybe four weeks. It's very,

very rare that someone has actually consecrated a Nazarete from birth and lives that way for their

entire life. The three examples that we get is here, Samson, we get John the Baptist, and maybe,

maybe, maybe Samuel, who is in the first book of Samuel. So we can introduce to him in first

Samuel. We don't know if necessarily if Samuel for sure is a Nazarete, but nonetheless,

here we have Samson. And Samson is not a good guy. Samson is the hero, right? He is that

figure of the action hero. He is the person that I got to tell you when I read my action Bible

growing up. It was my favorite scenes where all the Samson scenes of this guy was, you know,

just ripped and jacked and the servant of God. And yet, when you get to know the story,

he realized, wow, Samson is not great. Samson is strong, but he's not wise. Samson is consecrated,

but he actually isn't living a consecrated life. We even see that in the fact that he not only

killed the lion, right? He goes back and he eats out of killing a lion's nut. That's not bad.

It's when he goes back and he eats honey from the carcass of the lion, right? He's touching a dead

thing. We have all of us have heard the rules when it comes to coming into contact with dead bodies,

not only that, but he also then gave his mom and dad honey that come from a dead thing. So he made

them ritually unclean without even telling them. And there's that sense of even wanting to

feats that thousand people at Lehigh, he's using the job one of an ass, right? Of a donkey. And

again, an unclean object. And so one of the things we recognize is that Samson, while strong,

has a lot of weaknesses. One is, though while he's consecrated, he's not living a consecrated life

very clearly, but also while strong, he has so many weaknesses. And one of his weaknesses is his

passion, his anger that has gotten him into so much trouble, even in the chapters we've read,

but also his lust, which we're going to hear about in the next couple chapters tomorrow,

not only his lust when it comes to Delilah as that story unfolds, but also some other,

at least one other occasion where just going to get him into trouble. One of the things we recognize

for all of us is that all of us have certain strengths, but also all of us have certain weaknesses.

And those strengths do not make up for the weakness. We have to actually address the weakness.

We can't just say, well, I'm strong in this area. Therefore, I can tolerate the weakness.

What we get to do is we get to say, okay, Lord, I am strong in these areas. You may be strong in

these areas. And yet, I also recognize that I am in great, great need of purification. I'm a great

need of strengthening in a number of other places. And so rather than A, despairing over that,

we come to the Lord with them, or B, dismissing those things. We come to the Lord with them.

So my invitation for all of us is acknowledge our strengths, praise the Lord for the times

where the Spirit of the Lord does come upon us, but also address the weakness. Neither despair

because of it or nor dismiss the weakness, but bring them and entrust them to the Lord saying,

God, however, whatever you want to do with this weakness, I give you permission to purify

for my life. I give you permission to release me from, I give you permission to heal me of this,

or I give you permission to just simply give me the strength to not let these weaknesses become

my downfall because that is what's going to happen with Samson. Spoiler alert. Oh, we keep

praying for each other. Man, oh, man, I love the book of Judges is so powerful and is so good for

us because not because they're all great heroes that save the day and are incredible, but because

they reveal us to us and thank you. That's what God's Word does. Thank you, God, for doing that.

Please keep praying for each other. I'm praying for you and please pray for me. My name is Father

Mike. I cannot wait. This is you tomorrow. God bless.