27 November 2025

BELIEVE HIS PROPHETS
Daily Bible Reading

Judges 14 – Samson – Strength, riddles and a divided heart
When calling and weakness live in the same life

Read online here

Introduction

Judges 14 is one of the best-known and most surprising chapters in Samson’s story. We do not meet him as a flawless hero, but as an impulsive man with a unique calling. His life shows us this truth: God works even when people are inconsistent, weak, or unwise. This chapter is not a polished moral example—it is a mirror reflecting the tension between divine calling and human vulnerability.

══════════════════════════

Commentary

Samson leaves his parents’ home and meets a Philistine woman he likes—and that is enough for him. Neither heritage nor spiritual identity seem to matter. His parents are shocked, for Israel lived under Philistine oppression, yet their son desires union with them. They see only human danger—not God’s greater purpose. For God intended to provoke confrontation, to awaken Israel from its paralysis and compromise.

As Samson travels with his parents, a young lion attacks him in the vineyard—he tears it apart with his bare hands, empowered by the Spirit of God. It is a moment of greatness, yet it produces no praise, no worship, no testimony. Days later he finds honey in the carcass—sweetness from what once threatened him. From this image his riddle is born:
“Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet.”
But the secret remains his alone.

At the wedding feast, pride and play mix together. Thirty men surround him—yet not as friends. His riddle becomes a contest, and the atmosphere shifts into tension, pressure, and deceit. His bride, manipulated and threatened, coaxes the answer from him. He entrusts her with his secret—she betrays it. His victory becomes loss, not triumph.

The chapter ends with a man strong in power yet torn inside. Consumed by anger, he kills thirty men to repay the wager stolen from him. But instead of returning to his bride, he leaves. The relationship collapses, and she is given to another. The story closes not in joy, but in unresolved sorrow and fracture.

══════════════════════════

Message for us today

• Samson acts impulsively—but God works anyway.
• His calling is revealed in the defeat of the lion.
• The riddle shows that God can bring sweetness out of bitterness.
• Trust is broken—both human and spiritual.
• The chapter ends painfully and open-ended: strength alone is not enough when the heart remains unguarded.

══════════════════════════

Message for us today 

Samson’s story teaches us:

✓ God can work through imperfect people.
 He even uses our failures to move His purpose forward.

✓ Spiritual power cannot replace maturity of heart.
 Gifts without character lead to loss, not blessing.

✓ Not every path that looks good is good for the soul.
 What pleases the eyes can become a trap.

✓ Sweetness can come from the strong.
 God can bring honey out of hardship—yet not without shaping us.

✓ True strength is found in obedience, not achievement.

══════════════════════════

Reflection

What decisions do I make based on what pleases my eyes—
and which decisions do I make because God desires them?

Samson could conquer a lion, but not his own heart.
God does not only want to give us power—He wants to give us guidance, wisdom, and inner clarity.

Source: https://fulfilleddesire.net/27-11-2025-%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-judges-chapter-14-samson-strength-riddles-and-a-divided-heart-%f0%9f%93%9c-believe-his-prophets/

November 27, 2025

Joseph – Faith That Carries You Through
Devotions from the Life of a Dreamer with Character

30. The End Is Better Than the Beginning
Why God’s story with you does not end at your lowest points

Daily Bible Verse

“Better is the end of a thing than its beginning.”
Ecclesiastes 7:8

────────────────────────────────

Introduction

Beginnings often feel unfinished—sometimes even painful.
A difficult start, a broken relationship, a bad decision, a loss—these can make us feel as though a story has ended before it even had a chance to begin.

But the Bible shows us again and again:
God does not judge a story by its early chapters.
He sees the journey. He sees the growth. He sees what He intends to create by the end.

And few demonstrate this as powerfully as Joseph.

────────────────────────────────

Devotion

Joseph was still a teenager when his life took a dramatic turn. Until then, he had been the beloved son—perhaps a bit inexperienced and too open with his dreams—but a young man with a genuine relationship with God. This beginning ended abruptly when his brothers attacked him out of jealousy, stripped him of his coat, and sold him to traders.

From one day to the next, everything that had shaped his life disappeared. In Egypt he served as a slave in Potiphar’s house. He was foreign, alone, and without any hope of return. Yet inwardly he remained steady. Joseph did what he always did—he stayed faithful, worked diligently, and did not give up.

But even this new beginning ended abruptly. Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him, and Joseph was thrown into prison—a place where many would have given up. But even there, he kept his posture. He served, helped, and used every opportunity that arose, even though he had no idea whether any of it would ever lead anywhere.

Two more years passed after the cupbearer had promised to speak for him. Two years in which nothing happened. Two years in which Joseph simply continued. It wasn’t heroic, dramatic waiting—it was everyday faithfulness.

Then, completely unexpectedly, the turning point came. Pharaoh had dreams no one could interpret. And suddenly the cupbearer remembered. Joseph was brought out—straight from prison to the throne room. He interpreted the dreams, offered wise counsel, and Pharaoh set him over all the land as the second-highest ruler.

What had begun as the lowest point became the starting point of a story only God could write. Joseph became a man who led an entire nation through famine, who saved his family, and who, at the end, did not say to his brothers, “You destroyed my life,” but:

“God made something good out of it.”

The beginning of his life was marked by brokenness, betrayal, and loss.
But the end?
It was marked by forgiveness, wisdom, influence, and a divine perspective greater than the pain.

Joseph showed that the end of a matter truly can be better than its beginning—when God is the one writing the story.

────────────────────────────────

Thoughts for Your Heart

God does not judge your story by what you lost,
but by what He will form from it.
Where you see only brokenness, He already sees what will emerge in the end.

────────────────────────────────

What We Can Learn from Joseph

• A bad beginning does not determine your ending.
• God uses seasons of waiting to shape us.
• He can write a good story even from unjust suffering.
• Faithfulness in small things prepares you for responsibility in great things.
• The ending is not in human hands—but in God’s hands.

────────────────────────────────

Practical Steps

1. Look back—not to find blame, but to discover God’s protection.

2. Bring your low points before God. Let Him speak into them instead of carrying them alone.

3. Do faithfully today what lies in front of you, even if it seems insignificant.

4. Pray a prayer of trust:
   “Lord, write my ending better than my beginning.”

────────────────────────────────

Questions for Reflection

• Which chapters of my life do I still judge as “failed”?
• Where do I need God’s perspective instead of my own?
• What steps of faithfulness can I take today, even if I cannot yet see the ending?

────────────────────────────────

Prayer

Dear Father in heaven,
you know my beginnings—even the difficult ones.
You know where I have fallen, where I have been wounded, where I have lost myself.
Please help me trust that You will write my ending better than my beginning.
Shape my steps, strengthen my faith, and let me see how You bring new hope out of my low points.
Amen.

────────────────────────────────

Key Thought of the Day

God does not judge by the beginning—He brings your story to completion.

────────────────────────────────

Blessing to Close

May the Lord bless you with hope that goes beyond what you see now.
May He give you patience, trust, and the certainty that your path does not end in darkness.
May He strengthen you to remain faithful—and to be surprised by the good ending He has prepared.
Amen.

────────────────────────────────

LumenCorde | Daily light for a living soul.

Source: https://fulfilleddesire.net/27-11-2025-%f0%9f%8c%bejoseph-faith-that-carries-you-through-30-the-end-is-better-than-the-beginning-%e2%9a%93-heart-anchor-youth-devotional/