A CLOSE SHAVE
I really don't think very many Christians understand how pervasive the spirit of the age has infiltrated their minds, lives, families, morals and spiritual experience. It is this quiet, constant, appealing worldliness that has blinded believers and bound them, much as Samson was defeated by Delilah.
Judges 16:16-22 (LITV)
(16) And it happened, because she distressed him with her words all the days, and urged him; and his soul was grieved to death,
(17) that he told her all his heart, and said to her, No razor has come on my head, for I am a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If I were shaved, my strength would go away from me, and I would be weak, and be like any one of men.
(18) And Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart. And she sent and called for the Philistine rulers, saying, Come, for this time he has told me all his heart. And the Philistine rulers came up to her, and brought the silver in their hand.
(19) And she made him sleep on her knees, and called for a man, and had him shave seven braids of his head, and began to afflict him. And his strength departed from him.
(20) And she said, Samson, the Philistines are upon you! And He awakened from his sleep, and said, I will go out and shake myself free as time after time. But he did not know that Jehovah had departed from him.
(21) And the Philistines seized him, and bored out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza. And they bound him with bands of bronze. And he was grinding in the house of prisoners.
(22) But the hair of his head began to grow, for he had been shaved.
THE ALTERNATIVE
Romans 12:1-2
(1) I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
(2) And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
