SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask that as we look at your word today, that you would inspire us, that you would move us, that you would meet us where we are in the daily struggles of our lives and the desires of our heart the same way that you met Hannah.
SPEAKER_00: But not only that, that you would meet us here today and inspire us to see your character in a deeper way that would draw us closer to you and send us out of here changed.
SPEAKER_00: That we would want to give towards your glory all that you bestow upon us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot going on here, but the first thing that comes to my mind is a question.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever desired something so badly that it brought you to tears?
SPEAKER_00: Let me have you ever desired something good so badly that it brought you to tears?
SPEAKER_00: See, because sometimes we hear how bad our desire is, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there are times for each of us, for sure, that our desires are bad, but sometimes what we want is not bad in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: It's good.
SPEAKER_00: And like Hannah, who wants to be a mother, this is nothing wrong with this desire.
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of desires we have that we go, well, surely God's not giving me that because I can see that the desires of my heart are wicked there.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes it doesn't make sense to us.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes what we want, we want so deeply, and we read scripture, and it seems to line up with the heart of God, and we're going, God, why won't you let this come to fruition?
SPEAKER_00: I want this, and it seems to match your desires.
SPEAKER_00: So why is this thing missing from my life?
SPEAKER_00: When I think of it, I think of a friend of mine.
SPEAKER_00: See, in college, I walked away from the Lord and I lived a life of disobedience for a few years.
SPEAKER_00: And during that time, I met this guy who was in my friend group.
SPEAKER_00: And even though I was living a life of sin, he was one of the kindest guys that I ever met.
SPEAKER_00: Nice to everyone, literally would give the shirt off his back to help anyone who needed anything.
SPEAKER_00: And the more I got to know him, the more I realized he didn't believe in God, not because he hadn't met him, but because he had met hypocrites who spoke his name.
SPEAKER_00: He was raised in a church where he saw a lot of hypocrisy and people that would stand in the front and claim their faith in one way, he saw them on the public square acting another way.
SPEAKER_00: And he thought, if these leaders can have no impact on their daily life when it comes to God, that I don't think this God is real.
SPEAKER_00: As time went on, God called me back to himself, and my man, my friendship with this man stayed.
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted desperately for him to know the love of Christ and to be freed of this picture that he got through the hypocrisy that he had seen.
SPEAKER_00: I tried to share the gospel with them in different ways, sometimes through fear.
SPEAKER_00: And one day I took my students to an evangelism conference early in my student ministry career, and I was talking to them, and I had challenged them at this conference how they could share with their friends and lead their friends to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we were having this discussion about who did they know that was on their heart that they could pray for and make movement towards and try to expose the glory of God to them.
SPEAKER_00: And as I was challenging him, my friend came to mind, and I broke down.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: It still doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: And he still doesn't know.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can relate.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe like Hannah, you've desired to be a parent.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe like me, you've desired to see somebody come to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's something else.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: There's a thousand things that we could want that are good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about material things.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want a friend.
SPEAKER_00: Seems simple.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're lonely.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want healing in a broken relationship with your parents.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want freedom from the heartbreak over the loss of a loved one.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want release from a sin that binds you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you want to repair a rift in your relationship with your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's a love one you desire to see, come to know the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is.
SPEAKER_00: There are a thousand different desires you can have that when you look at them, they line up with God's desires in scriptures, and you don't know why your wish isn't granted.
SPEAKER_00: So in these moments, my question to you is what steps do you take to move towards your goal?
SPEAKER_00: I've known people change their lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: I've known people move, change their friend groups, talk to people close to a situation.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes a simple answer evades us.
SPEAKER_00: And I guess my question to you today is how do you take it to God?
SPEAKER_00: See, we're talking about prayer today.
SPEAKER_00: The first start of this story, we can't help but miss that it starts with a woman praying in deep earnest before her Savior.
SPEAKER_00: You see, not only are we dealing with a woman who has a desire, but we're dealing with a woman who has a desire that she's powerless to do anything about.
SPEAKER_00: She can't control this situation.
SPEAKER_00: So she knows she needs Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But but we sometimes forget that.
SPEAKER_00: She needs God, and she takes it, and at his temple she's saying, Lord, please, please.
SPEAKER_00: But when we're powerless is when God shows up.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, this theme of a woman who desires a child, God loves to use this time and time again in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: He takes women that are seemingly barren, that want a child, that their desire is not being met, and he loves to meet them there to reveal his glory in magnificent ways.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at a few examples.
SPEAKER_00: She was well beyond her childbearing years.
SPEAKER_00: There was no hope in their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And God promised something, and through their faith, he brought to fruition this child through whom thousands of promises were fulfilled and through whom the whole world was eventually blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Because through his lineage we gained our Savior Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: After years of barrenness, Rachel gave birth to Joseph, who saved Israel from famine through his position in Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: And to Elizabeth, God gave John the Baptist, who proclaimed the ministry of Jesus as foretold in Malachi.
SPEAKER_00: There's something that pleases God about bringing hope in the middle of hopelessness, and this picture of a woman who is barren is a great platform for him to reveal his majesty.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not to say that God gives children to any woman who's seeking a child.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's a hard thing to wrestle.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not that God wants you to just ask and then he's going to give you what you want.
SPEAKER_00: But rather, God wants to be the provider of your comfort, whether through giving you your desire or providing another avenue of healing.
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing we got to talk about when we talk about prayer is we see in this story that this woman's wish is granted.
SPEAKER_00: But we see in many other stories that the answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: And so my first thing is when we come to God in prayer, are you ready to hear yes and no?
SPEAKER_00: Either or.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look a little deeper at this, but I want to side note real here.
SPEAKER_00: The point of this is not dealing with issues of infertility.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a subject that when you talk about it, it stirs up feelings in a lot of us that go deep.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to say this if you are here and you or your spouse has struggled with desiring a child or are going through that struggle right now, what I want to encourage you deeply towards is that God cares about your pain, your desires, and what's going on in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to be the bringer of comfort.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no guarantee that that will be with a child, but there is a guarantee that he will meet you where you are, and what he does provide, if you are open to his answers, will be his comfort and a unique way to meet you.
SPEAKER_00: But if we look past just the examples of barren women that play a key role in Scripture, we see that God absolutely loves to take this theme further of bringing hope in the middle of hopelessness.
SPEAKER_00: He loves to bring freedom just when things look like they're at their worst.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: You see that when God's people are without strength, without resources, without hope, without human gimmicks, that is when God delights to step in and reveal to us in a whole new way that we need him and we can't do it without him.
SPEAKER_00: It was true at the flood when God came to Noah and said, build an ark, and he's like, A what?
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna rain.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna what?
SPEAKER_00: And if God had not prepared him for years for this situation, hopelessness would have been washed upon us.
SPEAKER_00: It was only through God's intervention and stepping in and giving directions that made no sense that hope was provided.
SPEAKER_00: When Israel fled Egypt and had to cross the Red Sea, God didn't say, Hey, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Just you go that way, here's your map, here's your path.
SPEAKER_00: When you get to the Red Sea, I'm gonna part it.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't go ahead and tell them his plan in advance.
SPEAKER_00: He waited until they were pushed against the sea, hopeless, with Pharaoh's army bearing down on them the knowledge that they were an untrained people, when the people of war that were behind them were encroaching upon them.
SPEAKER_00: And at that moment, when they saw that they had no power in and of themselves, God said, Watch.
SPEAKER_00: He did it when Israel marched on the impenetrable city of Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't provide them with the strength to take the battle so that they could go, Wow, we did good.
SPEAKER_00: He said, March around it, blow a horn, and shout.
SPEAKER_00: And the walls fell without them lifting a finger.
SPEAKER_00: So that all they could say is, Oh my goodness, he is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: He did it to Daniel in the lion's den.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately he did it when Jesus died for the sins of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is, all of us, no matter what our situation is, we are a people that cannot provide what we need for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why he loves to give us stories like Hannah.
SPEAKER_00: So how do you deal with prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to hear no?
SPEAKER_00: Just because, in this example, God answers her prayer in the way that she wants, it doesn't mean he's always gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the times she had heard no.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think this was the first time that Hannah prayed for a child?
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Well, go back to verse 6, actually.
SPEAKER_00: And because the Lord had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her.
SPEAKER_00: This went on year after year.
SPEAKER_00: This was not Hannah's first prayer.
SPEAKER_00: But she knew that the only place that she would find genuine comfort was in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Year after year.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the other thing, and I want to encourage us to think about prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And Hannah gives us a great example.
SPEAKER_00: Her prayer is so deeply personal.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we sterilize our prayer.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we come to God with prayers that sound clean.
SPEAKER_00: We take the wickedness of our heart, the mix-in of our desires that are messed up, the pain that we carry from past hurts, and we try to act like they don't exist when we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, I cometh to thee today, your humble servant.
SPEAKER_00: And we if we can sound old English, he really grants those prayers, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is a woman weeping bitterly.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't need fancy words.
SPEAKER_00: You could come sobbing, snot dripping from your face, falling on your knees, bawling before your Lord, screaming one word, help, and he loves it.
SPEAKER_00: We try to pretend that somehow he receives our prayer better when they're clean.
SPEAKER_00: But he knows our heart.
SPEAKER_00: And she makes no pretense.
SPEAKER_00: Notice it.
SPEAKER_00: It says, in bitterness of soul, Hannah, we act like we try to act like we shouldn't get upset with God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, like this is a woman who's willing to go, God, I'm upset.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: It makes no sense.
SPEAKER_00: In bitterness of soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord, and she made a vow saying, Oh Lord Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant, but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life.
SPEAKER_00: No razor will ever be used on his head.
SPEAKER_00: And she kept praying to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Eli observed her mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving, but her voice wasn't heard.
SPEAKER_00: Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, How long will you keep on getting drunk?
SPEAKER_00: Get rid of your wine.
SPEAKER_00: She was a mess.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't need to clean you.
SPEAKER_00: When she got accused of being drunk, she said, Not so, my Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a woman who is deeply troubled.
SPEAKER_00: I've not been drinking beer or wine.
SPEAKER_00: I was pouring my soul out to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And my question, you when's the last time you poured your soul out to God?
SPEAKER_00: Have you fallen into a pattern of formulated prayers?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you realize that you have a deeply personal Savior who wants the real you?
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we accidentally spread this myth in the church.
SPEAKER_00: It subtly creeps in because we see how personal it was that God sent his only son in the New Testament, that somehow we can accidentally teach that God was less personal in the Old Testament and became more personal after Jesus came, and it's just hogwash.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, God's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Second of all, you look at the Psalms, you look at Hannah, you look at how many people, Job, you look at the way that they come to God knowing all the dirt and bring it forward, the hardness of their heart, the sadness of their heart, their own sin, God meets them in a very personal way.
SPEAKER_00: And if you sterilize your interactions with him, it's not him that suffers.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been in a relationship where you didn't feel you were safe to let down your guard, you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you find someone, whether it's your spouse or a good friend or whatever, that you can just drop all pretense, it is freeing.
SPEAKER_00: And the creator of the universe wants that relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: So how many times do we seek other ways of obtaining what we want and turn our back on God just because we didn't get the answer we want, or we're afraid?
SPEAKER_00: God wants to meet us.
SPEAKER_00: And we talked about what do we do when he says no?
SPEAKER_00: Are we willing to hear no?
SPEAKER_00: But the question that I want to turn to that comes to mind when you read further in the text that's really amazing to me is what do we do when he says yes?
SPEAKER_00: Because many of us have had many wonderful things given to us by the Lord, and many yeses have come our way, and I think we fail to do with that yes what Hannah did with hers.
SPEAKER_00: And that's be willing to give back to God anything he's put in our hands.
SPEAKER_00: If God gives you what you want, how ready are you to give it back?
SPEAKER_00: Hannah literally gives her son right back to God as soon as he is weaned, because she knows that she wouldn't have Samuel anyway if it weren't for him.
SPEAKER_00: God grants her prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And if you look in verse twenty-one, after the child's born, and it comes time to go up to the temple again, it says, When the man Elkinah went up with his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfill his vow, Hannah did not go.
SPEAKER_00: She said to her husband, After the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the Lord, and he will live there always.
SPEAKER_00: Do what seems best to you, Elkinah her husband, told her, Stay here until you have weaned him, only may the Lord make good his word.
SPEAKER_00: So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him, and after he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an epha of flour, a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh.
SPEAKER_00: When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, As surely as you live, my Lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him, so now I give him to the Lord.
unknown: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: And I begin to look at my life and ask, what are the gifts he's given me?
SPEAKER_00: And am I willing to put them back in his hands?
SPEAKER_00: With the same selflessness that Hannah does.
SPEAKER_00: And when I think of my own kids and what I'd be willing to do with my own kids, it gets hard.
SPEAKER_00: Because we have this protective desire of our kids, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: We want to keep them safe.
SPEAKER_00: As if we can without his help.
SPEAKER_00: But we we we try to hold them close to the nest and shield them from the world and guard them from everything that we can because we don't want them to experience pain the way we have, or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00: And are by doing that, are we really trusting them into the Lord's hands?
SPEAKER_00: She brought him as a freshly weaned child and said, Here you go.
SPEAKER_00: Can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: But this ability to let our kids go to God or not, it plays into so many aspects of our lives, ones that we don't want to think about, ones that we miss.
SPEAKER_00: What about their skills?
SPEAKER_00: We want our children to be talented, well-liked, developed, smart, all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And so we sometimes let things go, whether it's sports, music, drama, or any other things that they're doing, whatever they strive to be good at, we want them to be good at.
SPEAKER_00: So we as parents can be tempted to let things slide that we shouldn't because we want them to be good at what they do.
SPEAKER_00: And sports, sometimes we allow them to drop commitment to God because they have to practice to get as much experience as they can now if they're ever going to be good enough to compete.
SPEAKER_00: Or when it comes to being liked, we sometimes turn a blind eye to the way our child behaves or dresses because we say to ourselves, you know, all the kids are doing this, and I don't want them to get picked on or stand out.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want them to know that pain.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a thousand ways that we control things instead of really releasing them into God's plans.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth is this goes well beyond our kids.
SPEAKER_00: Just because Hannah's doing it with a kid doesn't mean that's where the application stops.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, everything that we have in any capacity is his gift.
SPEAKER_00: So now we open the door to all sorts of things that make us uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: What about our finances?
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we see our paycheck as something that we earned, and therefore we should be able to buy ourselves whatever we want.
SPEAKER_00: After all, we deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: But God is actually the one who blesses us with the job and the skills to be able to work it.
SPEAKER_00: And what we should be asking ourselves if there's anything that we can do with this paycheck that would honor him by giving it back to him, how do we do it?
SPEAKER_00: But it goes beyond that.
SPEAKER_00: What about our giftings, our talents?
SPEAKER_00: God's given you skills and talents in a thousand ways.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's musical giftedness, maybe it's public speaking, maybe it's ability to relate well with other people who are hurting.
SPEAKER_00: How do you take any gift that he's given you and turn it into the hands of him?
SPEAKER_00: Instead of propping up our own prestige and popularity and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: How do we submit it all?
SPEAKER_00: I hate to tell you this, but sometimes we expect a sermon to send us home with answers, and I don't want to do that today.
SPEAKER_00: I want to send you home with questions.
SPEAKER_00: Because I think the real work comes not in just hearing this here in this room.
SPEAKER_00: It comes before you taking this home and seeking God.
SPEAKER_00: So some questions that I'd love for us all to ask are things like this.
SPEAKER_00: One, do we recognize the freedom we have to interface with God in a very personal way, and are we taking advantage of that?
SPEAKER_00: Or is there something in our prayer life that we've closed the door to by making it a formula?
SPEAKER_00: Do we bear our soul to our Savior?
SPEAKER_00: Do we take heartache, pain, and struggle without pretense?
SPEAKER_00: Because I think I think until we begin to embrace that even just a little bit, we hinder what can happen further down the line.
SPEAKER_00: And as we take our desires to God, do we do we come with a willingness to accept his yeses and his noes?
SPEAKER_00: Hard as they may be.
SPEAKER_00: As much as I desire my buddy to know Christ, for whatever reason, that's not happened.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen his brother accept Christ, and his brother has joined me in praying for him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God's answer is still no with him.
SPEAKER_00: Do we accept his yeses and his no's?
SPEAKER_00: And then whatever God has given us, the yeses that we have received, the gifts, the talents, the position.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's position, material goods, relationships, or gifting, are we willing to submit it to him?
SPEAKER_00: Now today's gonna get busy.
SPEAKER_00: Real quick.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna leave here and we're gonna have a great soup lunch.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna move towards a Super Bowl, and our brain's gonna think about all the things that really matter on the football field, right?
SPEAKER_00: Which is the Broncos winning.
SPEAKER_00: And life's gonna roll.
SPEAKER_00: But I would encourage you not to let this opportunity to think deeper on these things pass by.
SPEAKER_00: If it means writing it into your planner, setting alarm on your phone for later tonight when you know the game's gonna be over, or later this week, I would beg of you spend some time before your Savior asking these questions.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself if you realize the deeply personal way he wants to meet you.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself if you're willing to honor him in his yeses and his no's.
SPEAKER_00: And ask yourself if there's areas of your life that you've decided are yours to hold for yourself that you're not releasing into his hands.
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to give back what he gives to you?
SPEAKER_00: I think there could be some value in this time.
SPEAKER_00: So today we're gonna end just a little differently.
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna close with a hymn.
SPEAKER_00: We're simply gonna pray and then go eat some soup.
SPEAKER_00: I want to thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, when we appreciate who you are and how you've revealed yourself in Scripture, we thank you for these stories of real people dealing with real issues, some of which we ourselves have fought.
SPEAKER_00: And we thank you for the way it reveals your character and your care and your power and your desire to provide when we cannot provide for ourselves, and your desire for us to realize that we cannot do it on our own.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that that mirrors your gospel and what you did and send in your son, and we ask that through these things you would inspire us to see your glory in a greater way and to submit and trust you in the midst of difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do that, as we give of ourselves, we ask that you would draw others' attention to your glory, the way that your glory was made known to us through Hannah's story.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.