When he fell into sin, he fell asleep - and then his strength left him. He was spiritually unaware of the danger in his life that his sin presented to him - so very soon he lost his crown of dominion. He lost his anointing, and strength to rule, he lost his power to destroy the enemy's yokes - and instead ended up in slavery. He lost his vision, he lost his destiny, he lost his hope, his freedom. He ended up enslaved - that is what that spirit power does to people.
When that spirit of witchcraft operates unchecked, it takes away vision, your hope, your destiny, your identity, any kind of strength that God would give you - and you end up in bondage, instead of living the life God called you to live.
Believe me, if you want to fulfil the destiny God has for you, you will have to rise against that spirit; and not let that spirit have access to your life, to shut down the anointing, control how you think, and steal the dreams.
It doesn't just steal your dreams - it steals your inheritance, and the legacy of the next generation. You cannot compromise with that spirit power. There is a war that must be engaged in, if any person's going to win over that.
When control powers come against you, the goal is to control - it's a fight for your freedom. You have to recognise it. It's not people, although it operates in and around people - it can even operate in your own life.
It is a spirit power, and so it requires spiritual weapons. Recognise the enemy, and how it comes.
In this case, it entered the door of his soul (through sexual sin); but here's the very, very positive news... When Samson repented - I guess when he found himself in that ‘low place’, he did the one thing that will get you out of that hole. If that thing's got a grip around you, there's one thing you need to do, and that is: turn to God! Turn to the living God, who's gracious and merciful!
He turned and he said: “oh God, remember me and restore my strength”. He felt the power of God come around him again. His life became to change. The Bible says: “in his last day he took down more than he'd taken in all his life”. Your ‘last days’ can be better than anything that went before, if you can connect with the living God, and His strength gets into your life! Oh Holy Ghost!
Here's the wonderful thing about Samson - in the New Testament, there's no record of his failure. There's just a record he was ‘a mighty man of faith’ - and we may fail, and fall over, but God wipes away the record when we repent. It just says: mighty man of faith, mighty woman of faith - you broke out of it, and finally ended well!
2) Turn to 1 Kings 19:1-5 - we find here another prophet, another mighty man of God.
1 Kings 19:1 - “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how Elijah had executed all the prophets with the sword”.
Oh I wish I could have seen all of that. My mind imagines it sometimes. There's a ruling power in the nation, all hope seems to be gone, but there's some people there who are crying out to God, some people who are in prayer and intimacy - and finally Elijah emerges out of the darkness, out of obscurity. There he is - and he shuts up the heaven, and then hides for three years. Then when they're getting desperate - he comes out, says to the prophets of Baal: come on out, let's see what you guys have got.
They set up an altar, and he sets up an altar. He says: let's see which God is the real God, by calling fire down from heaven - so they had this challenge. At the end of the day, he calls fire down from heaven - what a glorious thing to see.