July 8, 2025 • 42 mins
Hannah’s prayer teaches us that God hears the cries of the afflicted. Her response of worship reminds us to surrender our deepest burdens and praise Him even before the answer comes.
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Good morning again. Take your Bibles, turn to the
book of First Samuel, chapter one, First Samuel chapter 1 and
that is on page 233. If you are using one of the
Bibles in the seats around you for Samuel chapter 1.
And if you weren't here with us last Sunday, let me just kind of
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bring you up to speed with what we are doing this summer.
This summer we are talking aboutancient prayers and present
power. This idea of how do we take our
prayer life and go beyond a, a, a list of things that we just
ask God for and check off the list or a list of things we're
thanking God for and just check off the list, but go deeper in
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prayer with the Lord. And we're doing by looking at
various prayers throughout the scriptures so we can learn from
how God's people prayed in the Bible and how that applies to
our lives today. Today, as we get started, I want
you to think about the one thingthat could possibly be your
greatest pain point in life. The one thing that you know just
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gives you so much of A burden. The one thing that makes you
feel overwhelmed, the thing thatmakes you feel stressed the
most. The the thing that you know is
completely outside of your ability to fix or to resolve.
Now, when you're in that kind ofa spot, how do you usually pray
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when you're experiencing something like that?
If you're like me, it's usually something like, oh, God, would
you just please take away this problem, Just fix this and make
it go away soon. But I, I've noticed something.
We can pray those kinds of prayers and say, God, would you
just take this away? We can pray it and there's
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usually two things that happen. One, we still don't have an
answer to the prayer. When we're done praying, the
problem still isn't fixed. You ever noticed that it still
kind of hangs around over and over again?
And the second thing that happens is we tend to still be
just as stressed at the end of the prayer as we were at the
beginning of the prayer. We're still worried, we're still
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fearful, we're still feeling whatever emotion we're feeling
at the end of the prayer. Here's the big idea I want you
to think about today in your most difficult moments of life.
Prayer is the way to experience peace, even if you don't know if
the problem will be fixed. I want to take you through this
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story. In First Samuel chapter 1, we're
introduced to a guy by the name of Alcana.
Alcana is in a polygamous marriage.
He has two wives, Hannah and Pnina.
Now, before you get the idea that the Bible's endorsing more
than one spouse, I just want to,like clear the air on this.
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The Bible does not endorse having more than one spouse, OK?
Just because people in the Bibledecided to do things does not
mean that God is saying it's OK to do those things.
This is a historical record of real life of what happened.
And there's a brewing problem inAlcana's family.
Jewish tradition said that Pninahad ten sons, and the Bible
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tells us that Hannah was not able to have any children.
I want to stop there for a minute as well.
I know, but this reality of not being able to have any children
is a pain that many of you have experienced.
In fact, there are a lot of people in our church community
who have lived or are living with the reality of not being
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able to have any children. And you know, and you can put
yourself in Hannah's shoes, you know that deep down inside
there's something in your heart that just longs for a child.
You see other people having babies and it wrecks you because
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you're thinking to yourself, whydo they get to have children but
we don't? In Canada, this is a growing
reality. One in six couples in our
country are experiencing infertility right now.
Now for Hannah, this is a multi layered problem.
It's not simply about the pain of wanting a child.
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Yeah, there is that deep desire,but for her, there's also this
real deep sense of failure and shame.
As a woman, she she lives in thesense of I'm actually failing in
fulfilling my duties as a woman.Society expected women to have
children, and she's not able to live up to the expectations of
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society. In addition to that, children
were quite often how families built their economic prosperity.
The more kids you have, the bigger the family business could
be. And so now she's failing her
family because she's not able toprovide children for the family
business. But it's not just the sense of
shame that she would be experiencing.
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There's also could be this fear of what might happen as well.
You see, not having children hada lot of potential consequences
in the culture that Hannah livedin.
You could lose your social status in the community.
You could be isolated by people who want nothing to do with you
because you aren't living up to the standards of a woman you.
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You could even give your husbanda reason to divorce you in that
time simply because you weren't providing a child for the
family. So she could have had all kinds
of fears building up inside of her.
But then in addition to all of that, there are all kinds of
religious and family dynamics that are at play for her as
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well. In verses three to seven, we're
told this that every year Al Canada would go up to worship
God and make sacrifices at a place called Shiloh.
Shiloh was the primary spiritualCenter for Jews in that day
before the temple was ever builtin Jerusalem.
And as they went to make these sacrifices every year, it is
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like her reality was being shoved in her face over and over
and over again. You see, if you didn't have a
child, quite often it was seen as God's judgment on you.
Whereas if you did have children, it was seen as God's
favor towards you. So imagine going to church every
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single week, or in her case, coming together to offer
sacrifices with her family everyyear, and you are confronted in
this spiritual environment with a sense of shame and guilt that
you have failed over and over and over and over and over
again. It's being shoved in her face.
And then on top of all that, there's good old Pinina.
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Pagina was ruthless. Every year as they would go to
Shiloh together as a family, theBible says that Pagina would
severely taunt Hannah. Now, some of you are sports
fans. And if you watch sports, you
know that there are some athletes who like to talk smack
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about other people. You know that when you get into
sometimes in a game, some peoplewill kind of there's some things
that are coming out of their mouth that may not be the most
godly things coming out of theirmouth, may not be the most
encouraging or uplifting things coming out of their mouth.
Some some athletes are ruthless about it.
And that is exactly what the Bible describes Paninas like
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towards Hannah. She is ruthlessly mocking Hannah
for not being able to have any children.
She's pushing buttons to try andget a reaction out of her.
And verse 7 tells us this in first Samuel chapter one.
That year after year when Hannahwent up to the Lord's house, her
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rival would taunt her in this way and Hannah would be so
broken hearted over her reality of not being able to have a
child and all that went with that, that she would weep and
she would not eat anything. That's how great the pain was
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every single year for her. Now, side note, we can learn
something. For those of us who maybe are
not in a pain point in our life right now, we can learn
something about what not to do from Eli in Alcana in this
story. OK, first of all, Alcana, he he
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sees his wife really hurting andhis best answer to her is hey,
like why won't you eat? Aren't I so much better to you
than 10 kids trying? I know you're trying to help,
but trying to make your spouse feel better by saying aren't I
better for you than whatever it is you're upset about is not
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helping. OK, Just free relationship
advice for Sunday morning. Eli is supposed to be the
spiritual leader in this story. And.
And Eli sees how upset Hannah isin this moment, and he doesn't
bother to go, hey, is, is everything OK?
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Are you OK? Can I help you in some way?
Eli's best answer is, hey, are you drunk?
Like, are you out of your mind? You should maybe get your act
together again, Free relationship advice.
If you see somebody crying and sobbing, don't go up and say,
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hey, are you drunk? You should get your life
together. I recognize that many people can
feel the pain that Hannah was feeling because you're living
it. Maybe it's not infertility,
maybe it's health problems that you're experiencing.
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Maybe it's the unknown of what'sgoing to happen to your job.
Or maybe it's the unknown of what's going to happen in a
relationship that you're in right now and and the pain that
you're experiencing in that relationship.
Hannah is worn down. She is broken, she is an
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emotional wreck and the pain that she's carrying is obvious
to everyone. And there doesn't seem to be any
end insight for this woman. But I want you to notice
something in verse 18 in first Samuel chapter one.
Look at verse 18. By the time we get to verse 18,
we we read at the very end of verse 18.
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Then Hannah went on her way. She ate and no longer looked
despondent. How in the world does that
happen? How does someone go from a spot
where they are so broken and overwhelmed and burdened and
stressed out and anxious to I'm good to eat, I got a smile on my
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face and life is pretty good. How does that happen?
How does how does her whole demeanor change when her
circumstances have not changed? There's no baby yet.
The weight of her circumstance is still there, but the weight
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of her circumstance seems to have lifted from her heart and
soul. Well to understand that we need
to begin reading in verse nine of First Samuel chapter one.
On one occasion, Hannah got up after they ate and drank at
Shiloh. The priest Eli was sitting on a
chair by the doorpost of the Lord's temple.
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Deeply hurt, Hannah prayed to the Lord and wept with many
tears. Making a vow, she pleaded.
Lord of Armies, if you will takenotice of your servants
affliction, remember and not forget me, and give your servant
a son. I will give him to the Lord all
the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.
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And while she continued praying in the Lord's presence, Eli
watched her mouth. Hannah was praying silently, and
though her lips were moving, hervoice could not be heard.
Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, How long are you
going to be drunk? Get rid of your wine.
No, my Lord, Hannah replied. I'm a woman with a broken heart.
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I haven't had any wine or beer. I've been pouring out my heart
before the Lord. Don't think of me as a wicked
woman. I've been praying from the depth
of my anguish and resentment. And Eli responded.
Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant the request that
you've made of him. May your servant find favor with
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you, she replied. And then Hannah went on her way.
She ate and no longer looked despondent.
If you are going to find peace without knowing if your problem
is going to be fixed, you are going to have to decide that God
is the best solution for something to change.
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In verse 9, when scripture says that Hannah got up, it's written
like this. It means this.
Hannah just had enough. She decides she was going to put
her foot down. Something was going to change.
I'm tired of all that I'm experiencing.
I'm tired of the weight of this.I'm tired and weary of feeling
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tired and weary. And she decides that's it.
Enough. Something's got to change.
I'm sick of my story being the same.
Year after year I come to this place and ioffer sacrifices and
year after year I have to deal with the same shame and the same
pain. I'm done with it now.
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I know that a lot of us have reached rock bottom at different
points in our life. And you get that feeling.
You understand what it's like toreach that point where you go,
I'm just done. Something has to change.
We get sick and tired of feelingsick and tired.
But what do we usually do when we're sick and tired of feeling
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sick and tired? We we go and talk to anyone and
everyone about it. We talk to our friends, we we
talk to our counsellors, we ask Google or ChatGPT, we go
searching for a podcast that's going to help us, whatever it
is. But here's what we always end up
doing. We end up in this constant loop
of listening to voices over and over and over again, and we have
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no real peace. Hannah does something that would
have been radical in her situation.
She's done listening to all the voices that are around her, both
the ones that are trying to helpher and the ones that are trying
to hurt her. She's done with it.
And of all the things that she could have done to address her
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pain, she decides the most important thing that she could
do is go to the only one that she knew was capable of doing
something about it, and that wasto pray and go to God.
Hey, have you ever heard someonesay, well I've tried everything,
so I guess I'll pray about it, right?
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How many of you have ever said that before?
I've tried everything, I might as well pray about it.
The reality is praying is the very best thing you can do.
There are times that when you pray, something is going to be
so overwhelming you don't even know that you know how to pray
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or even have the right words to say.
And this is what I want you to know.
Prayer is an invitation to bringyour raw emotions to God.
Verse 10 tells us this, says Hannah was deeply hurt that she
prayed and wept many tears. Verse 15 says that she had a
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broken heart and that she's pouring out her heart before
God. Verse 16 says she's praying from
the depth of her anguish and herresentment.
You can almost feel it. You can almost see it, can't
you? You don't want one of the most
difficult things in life is to see someone who is hurting so
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much that they're not just crying, they're weeping.
It's hard to see somebody in that kind of a situation.
Some of us, we, we run away fromthat kind of like people crying,
get me as far away as possible from the person crying because
we feel uncomfortable. We, we don't know what to say in
the moment when that happens. We, we don't know how to respond
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to the person. And Hannah is here, and from the
bottom of her heart, she's praying like this.
You know, for, for me, one of the first times I ever heard
someone praying like Hannah was praying is where I would
experience my mom crying over some of the most deeply painful
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moments of her life. And, and at times it would sound
like so much more than crying. At times it it sounded almost
like a literal groan coming fromthe depths of her soul because
of the pain that she was feelingand experiencing in her life.
And Hannah is the same way. She's telling God everything
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she's feeling and experiencing because she's just done.
And the good news about coming to God in prayer like this, it's
this. When life is sucking the life
out of you, you don't need to get everything together before
you go and talk to God. I know sometimes we think I got
to think about all the right words to say.
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I've got to just have the sentences all planned out.
Make sure I don't say any heresyin my prayer.
Make sure that I like, you know,I use God's name properly, that
I'm honoring and humble. And we overthink the prayer and
sometimes, sometimes the weight of your circumstances are so
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great that you don't need to tryand think about what are the
words I'm going to say. You just need to come to God and
pour out your heart to him. The words don't need to make
sense. He is not a God who's going to
run away from you in that moment.
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He is not a God who is overwhelmed by your
circumstances. And whatever you bring to him,
it is the exact opposite. He is a God who wants you to
come to Him, the Bible tells us.Cast all, all your cares on Him.
All. Sit in that word for a minute.
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All your cares. Cast them on God.
Second Kings chapter 20 tells usthat He is a God who sees your
tears and he's a God who hears your prayers.
There are times where you just maybe need to come to God and
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you only have one word to say orone sentence to say in a prayer.
And that one word could be something as simple as just God
help. And that's the best you can come
up with and it's OK. I don't know where you normally
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go to pour out your heart, but Iknow every single one of us go
somewhere to pour out our heartswhen life is stressful.
You might have friends, you might have a counsellor, maybe
you're just passive aggressive and you go and take your
frustrations out on a video gameor whatever your favorite hobby
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is. Maybe you have a journal where
you put all of your thoughts down and none of those things
are inherently bad or wrong places to go for some of you.
You pour out your heart over andover again to yourself.
You can't stop thinking about your pain.
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It swirls in your mind and you keep pouring your heart out over
and over and over again. But I know because you're human,
you will go somewhere with whatever it is that's stressing
you out. But here's the thing, of all the
things and all the places and all the people that you could
pour your heart out to, there isonly one who is all powerful,
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and it's God. And so when you pray, pray a
declaration of who has the greatest power.
One one of the things we see in the Bible over and over again is
that when it comes to prayer, how many times prayers start by
focusing our attention on how great God is.
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Jesus taught us this when he taught us the Lord's Prayer.
He he says, Hey, when you pray, start by saying our Father who
art in heaven hallowed be your name.
The whole focus, the whole starting point of prayer is
focusing on the greatness of whoGod is.
Hannah starts her prayer in muchthe same way she starts her
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prayer by pleading to the Lord of armies.
Don't skip over that. She pleads to the Lord of
armies. And here's what she's declaring
at the beginning of her prayer. She is declaring that you are
the God who has every power. You have sovereign control over
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everything, every dominion, every force, everything God.
You've got sovereign control over it all.
When she says Lord of Armies, she is saying God.
You are a God who has infinite resources.
There is nothing I could come toyou and ask you for that is
greater than the resources that are at your disposal, God.
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There is nothing that I could come and ask you for that is
greater than your power. God.
That's what she's declaring whenshe says Lord of Armies.
In other words, Hannah praised this truth about God.
God, my inability to have a child is not a match for your
sovereignty and power. I, I don't know everything that
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you're facing today, but I know this, that God's resources and
God's power is greater. In fact, if you were to take
every problem that all of us in this room have and every person
who's online and every person inour region, in our province, our
country and our world, and you were to take all of our
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problems. You were to bundle them all
together into one giant problem.That one giant problem is not
greater than God. God's power is greater than
anything. A friend of mine used to always
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say like this to me, said Kirk, stop telling God how big your
problems are and start telling your problems how big your God
is. Prayer is where we take our eyes
off of our problem. We fix our eyes on the One who
has everything needed to deal with the problem.
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So if you're here today and you are facing a big problem where
you just need God's power to show up, start by calling out to
the Lord of armies. If you're facing a big problem
where you need God's wisdom, remind yourself in prayer and
declare that He is the all knowing God who wants to give
wisdom. One of the reasons why it's so
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important for you and I to continue to learn more and more
about who God is, to learn more about theology and doctrine and
things like that, is, is becausewe need to understand what God
is like in order to be able to pray effectively.
But it's not just about an intellectual exercise.
It frames how we approach him inprayer.
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Now, let me ask you this question.
If God is really all powerful, and I would say probably pretty
much everyone in this room wouldsay, yeah, of course God's all
powerful. If God is really all powerful,
if God has infinite resources and power, why do you still
sometimes try to tell God how toanswer your prayer?
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Like, hey, God, I I need you to fix this pain point in my life.
Here's how I'd like you to do it.
Go ahead and do it this way. You're the all powerful God.
You've got every resource at your disposal.
So here's what I need you to do.And this is where we often get
tripped up and where we remain stressed out or anxious even
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after we pray because in our minds, we already have the best
way for God to answer our prayer.
We've already got it all figuredout, and we're just trying to
bring God up to speed on the things God needs to do.
And when God doesn't do it the way that we want or give the
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exact answer that we want, we'vegot no peace because we think
we've got a better solution thanGod does.
And So what Hannah also teaches us is that the prayers that lead
to peace are filled with surrender.
In verse 11, two times Hannah calls herself a servant of the
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Lord. In verse 18, when talking to
Eli, she calls herself a servant.
Again, Hannah has no sense of entitlement.
She she has just humility. She has no sense that God owes
her anything, that God has to answer prayer in a certain way,
or that she can somehow manipulate God to doing what she
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wants. Hannah merely says, you are God
and I have an inability to fix this problem, and I'm coming to
you. But then she does something that
on the surface seems like she's striking a deal with God.
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She says if you'll give me a son, I'll give him back to you
all the days of his life. You ever done that before?
God, if you'll just do this, then I'll do this.
God, if, if you just answer my prayer this way, I promise you
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I'll be the best person ever. I I've done it before, not
always in ways that I'm proud of.
God, if you would just let the Toronto Blue Jays win a game, I
promise I'll serve you more. And suddenly they're winning all
these games. So now I got to serve God even
more, right? Maybe it's like, God, if you
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just give me this job, I'll giveyou more money.
God, if you just give me this house, I'll use this house to
serve you in some way. I think most of us have done
something like that. Maybe you've said, God, if
you'll just fix my spouse, I promise I'll be a better spouse.
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I don't think Hannah is strikinga deal with God here.
I don't think that's what's going on.
Hannah's surrendering to God. That's what she's doing here.
See, on behalf of her son, Hannah's making what's called
the Nazarite vow. It's the kind of vow, if you're
familiar with Old Testament stories, it's the kind of vow
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that Samson made in the Old Testament.
It's this deep vow of commitmentto God, and it's this promise to
be set apart for service to God.And what Hannah is saying is
that if God gives her a son, shewill literally give him back to
God instead of keeping the childfor herself.
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There is no net gain for Hannah in this.
She's praying for something thatcan only bring glory to God.
She is surrendering her deepest desire to God.
She's saying I'm your servant and all I want is what you want.
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Paul Tripp put it this way. He said rather than attaching a
happy life to the fulfillment ofher own desires, she finds life
in the success of God's Kingdom.And this is what allows Hannah
to not look despondent anymore. It's what allows her to be at
peace. Because in this moment, Hannah
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has made the decision that she'sno longer going to be defined by
what other people say. She's no longer going to be
defined by what society thinks of her.
She's no longer even going to bedefined by her greatest heart's
desire. The thing she's going to be
defined by is God himself. She's living and surrender to
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him. All that she wants is whatever
God wants. Now, this is easily one of the
most challenging things to do inprayer because every one of us
is a human being that has normaldesires, normal dreams of how we
want things to go. And what Hannah's teaching us is
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that prayer can lead to peace when we surrender the need to
have our prayers answered in a certain way.
Maybe you said this before. If I only had blank, I'd be
happy. Here's the truth.
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Whatever you put in that blank has some level of control over
your heart and your emotions andyour soul.
It's going to shape your emotions.
It's going to shape your decisions.
Friends, you are only ever goingto find peace in this life when
you decide to surrender control and trust in the all powerful,
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all knowing and good God who also happens to love you.
The invitation of God is to cometo Him and surrender your
deepest burdens to His loving care and to find life in Him
instead of wherever you're goingto try to find life.
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Now, one of the things that I'velearned about prayer is that God
doesn't always answer all of ourprayers at once, even when He
does answer our prayers. Quite often God's answers to
prayer are more of a story that's unfolding than it is a
moment of glory. And that's what happens to
Hannah in verse 20. The Bible says after some time
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she gave birth to Samuel. We have no idea how long that
was from the time that she prayed to the time that Samuel
was born. But then after weaning and
raising and weaning the child, she does what's promised.
She brings Samuel to live with Eli.
She had a baby and she literallygave her child to the Lord.
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We do that symbolically as parents.
We talk about like, hey, I'm, I am committing, surrendering,
dedicating my child to the Lord,and we do it symbolically.
Put yourself in Hannah's shoes. She gives birth to this child
and then she goes, I'm going to go and I'm going to leave this
child to be raised in Shiloh with Eli, and I'm going to go
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back home. But she still kept coming back
every year, every year to make sacrifices with the rest of the
family. And so every year it's still in
her face. I had a child, but I gave the
child up to the Lord. I had a child, but I don't get
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to raise that child. In some ways, Hannah ends up
right back where she started. Her circumstances had not really
changed. And yet Hannah teaches US1 more
thing. The prayers that lead to peace
are filled with worship. See, prayer is not only a place
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where we go and ask God for things.
Prayer is a place for us to reset our hearts and our minds
and focus thing, focusing them on God and worshiping Him.
Sometimes we think worship is just what we do with music, but
there's so much more to worship than music.
You can worship God in your prayers.
Hannah does that in chapter 2. Again, her circumstances are not
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fixed yet, but but look at what happens in chapter 2, beginning
of verse one. It says Hannah prayed.
My heart rejoices in the Lord. My horn is lifted up by the
Lord. My mouth boasts over my enemies
because I rejoice in your salvation.
There's no one holy like the Lord.
There's no one besides you. There's no rock like our God.
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Don't boast so proudly or let arrogant words come out of your
mouth. For the Lord is a God of
knowledge, and actions are weighed by Him.
Sometimes we just need to praiseGod for the little ways we've
seen Him answering prayers even when the whole story is not yet
been revealed. That's what Hannah's doing in
these first few verses. She's worshipping and praising
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God. She continues on in verses 4 to
8 by celebrating and worshippinga God who is capable of
reversing the fortunes of any human being.
She says the mighty are broken by this God and the feeble are
given strength. Those who have food end up
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scrambling for food and those who are hungry, hungry no more.
That he's the God who can reverse the fortune of families,
and he's the God who can reversethe fortune of those who want a
family. He's the God who can bring both
life and death. He is the God who raises the
poor from the dust and gives them a throne of honor.
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He is a God who reverses the fortune of people.
But she doesn't end there. She looks to the future and
worships a God for all the promises that He has given to
her for the future. In verses 9 and 10, she praises
God for her future hope. He guards those who are
faithful, while those who opposethe Lord will be shattered.
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If you're here today and you areexploring the Christian faith, I
want you to understand something.
There is a way for you to find peace no matter how hard your
life is. The Bible teaches us that right
now anyone who is a believer, who is not a believer and
follower of Jesus is like a person who opposes the Lord.
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You want to do life your own way.
You don't want anyone to be Lordand God of your life.
You want life to be on your terms.
And the Bible tells us that whenyou are in that place, the end
result is you will encounter thejudgement of God.
God always gets the final say, but the good news is that your
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story doesn't need to end like that.
God loves you and God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on a
cross and take the judgement in your place.
And if you turn from your way oflife and you put your faith in
Jesus, you surrender your life to Jesus.
Your entire status before God changes.
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Instead of God opposing you, He is now the God who is for you.
When you become when you put your faith in Jesus, you become
a child of God and he's your father.
And if you're here today and you've already put your faith in
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Jesus, I want you to understand this with absolute confidence.
Even though you might be in the waiting and you've got all kinds
of pain going on and you've tried to surrender it all to
God, here's one thing you can beabsolutely confident about
because you are God's child. God will pay attention to your
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needs. Look down in verse 21 of chapter
2. After all this time, all this
waiting, all this praying, all of this worshipping, we finally
get to a place where it says theLord paid attention to Hannah's
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need and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two
daughters. I can't promise you how God's
going to meet your need. I, I don't know He's going to
meet your need the way he did for Hannah.
But I can promise you this. If you are one of his children,
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He will meet your need. He knows what your need is even
more than you know what your need is.
He's a God who has promised to meet all of our needs.
You can count on that. You can take it to the bank, and
one of the greatest needs that all of us have is peace.
We, we live in a world that is filled with so much anxiety, so
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much stress, so much fear and concern.
You know, I, I usually eight sermons where people turn
Christianity into a formula. I'm not a fan of if you just do
this and this and this and this,then everything's going to turn
out all right and we'll all livehappily ever after because we
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all know that that's typically not how things work out.
OK, But what I'm talking about today, it's not a formula, it's
a promise. I'm going to put a verse up on
the screen from the book of Philippians chapter 4.
Paul, through the inspiration ofthe Holy Spirit, God himself is
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telling us this. Don't worry about anything but
in everything. Through prayer and petition with
Thanksgiving that that word Thanksgiving is not just a
checking something off the list of saying I'm thankful to God.
It it represents this idea from the bottom of your heart like
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you're worshipping God with Thanksgiving present your
request to God. That's what God calls us to do.
And now comes his promise and the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding. Will, will, will guard your
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hearts and minds in Christ Jesusin your most difficult moments.
Prayer is the way to experience peace, even if you don't know if
the problem will be fixed. I'm going to ask you to close
your eyes. I know that today in this room
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right now, there are people who you're feeling the weight of the
world just like Hannah was. And just here in this moment and
just in a couple minutes, I'm going to be quiet.
I'm just going to give you space.
I just want you to quietly pray and pour out your heart before
God, knowing that He's a God whosees you and He hears you.
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If you're here today and you don't have that going on in your
life, but you know someone who does, I want you to pray for
them right now that they would know and experience the peace of
God in their hearts. Not just a theory, but it would
be reality for them. Let's take the next minute in
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the presence of the Lord of Armies and pray to Him.
Good morning again. Take your Bibles, turn to the
book of First Samuel, chapter one, First Samuel chapter 1 and
that is on page 233. If you are using one of the
Bibles in the seats around you for Samuel chapter 1.
And if you weren't here with us last Sunday, let me just kind of
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bring you up to speed with what we are doing this summer.
This summer we are talking aboutancient prayers and present
power. This idea of how do we take our
prayer life and go beyond a, a, a list of things that we just
ask God for and check off the list or a list of things we're
thanking God for and just check off the list, but go deeper in
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prayer with the Lord. And we're doing by looking at
various prayers throughout the scriptures so we can learn from
how God's people prayed in the Bible and how that applies to
our lives today. Today, as we get started, I want
you to think about the one thingthat could possibly be your
greatest pain point in life. The one thing that you know just
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gives you so much of A burden. The one thing that makes you
feel overwhelmed, the thing thatmakes you feel stressed the
most. The the thing that you know is
completely outside of your ability to fix or to resolve.
Now, when you're in that kind ofa spot, how do you usually pray
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when you're experiencing something like that?
If you're like me, it's usually something like, oh, God, would
you just please take away this problem, Just fix this and make
it go away soon. But I, I've noticed something.
We can pray those kinds of prayers and say, God, would you
just take this away? We can pray it and there's
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usually two things that happen. One, we still don't have an
answer to the prayer. When we're done praying, the
problem still isn't fixed. You ever noticed that it still
kind of hangs around over and over again?
And the second thing that happens is we tend to still be
just as stressed at the end of the prayer as we were at the
beginning of the prayer. We're still worried, we're still
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fearful, we're still feeling whatever emotion we're feeling
at the end of the prayer. Here's the big idea I want you
to think about today in your most difficult moments of life.
Prayer is the way to experience peace, even if you don't know if
the problem will be fixed. I want to take you through this
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story. In First Samuel chapter 1, we're
introduced to a guy by the name of Alcana.
Alcana is in a polygamous marriage.
He has two wives, Hannah and Pnina.
Now, before you get the idea that the Bible's endorsing more
than one spouse, I just want to,like clear the air on this.
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The Bible does not endorse having more than one spouse, OK?
Just because people in the Bibledecided to do things does not
mean that God is saying it's OK to do those things.
This is a historical record of real life of what happened.
And there's a brewing problem inAlcana's family.
Jewish tradition said that Pninahad ten sons, and the Bible
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tells us that Hannah was not able to have any children.
I want to stop there for a minute as well.
I know, but this reality of not being able to have any children
is a pain that many of you have experienced.
In fact, there are a lot of people in our church community
who have lived or are living with the reality of not being
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able to have any children. And you know, and you can put
yourself in Hannah's shoes, you know that deep down inside
there's something in your heart that just longs for a child.
You see other people having babies and it wrecks you because
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you're thinking to yourself, whydo they get to have children but
we don't? In Canada, this is a growing
reality. One in six couples in our
country are experiencing infertility right now.
Now for Hannah, this is a multi layered problem.
It's not simply about the pain of wanting a child.
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Yeah, there is that deep desire,but for her, there's also this
real deep sense of failure and shame.
As a woman, she she lives in thesense of I'm actually failing in
fulfilling my duties as a woman.Society expected women to have
children, and she's not able to live up to the expectations of
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society. In addition to that, children
were quite often how families built their economic prosperity.
The more kids you have, the bigger the family business could
be. And so now she's failing her
family because she's not able toprovide children for the family
business. But it's not just the sense of
shame that she would be experiencing.
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There's also could be this fear of what might happen as well.
You see, not having children hada lot of potential consequences
in the culture that Hannah livedin.
You could lose your social status in the community.
You could be isolated by people who want nothing to do with you
because you aren't living up to the standards of a woman you.
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You could even give your husbanda reason to divorce you in that
time simply because you weren't providing a child for the
family. So she could have had all kinds
of fears building up inside of her.
But then in addition to all of that, there are all kinds of
religious and family dynamics that are at play for her as
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well. In verses three to seven, we're
told this that every year Al Canada would go up to worship
God and make sacrifices at a place called Shiloh.
Shiloh was the primary spiritualCenter for Jews in that day
before the temple was ever builtin Jerusalem.
And as they went to make these sacrifices every year, it is
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like her reality was being shoved in her face over and over
and over again. You see, if you didn't have a
child, quite often it was seen as God's judgment on you.
Whereas if you did have children, it was seen as God's
favor towards you. So imagine going to church every
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single week, or in her case, coming together to offer
sacrifices with her family everyyear, and you are confronted in
this spiritual environment with a sense of shame and guilt that
you have failed over and over and over and over and over
again. It's being shoved in her face.
And then on top of all that, there's good old Pinina.
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Pagina was ruthless. Every year as they would go to
Shiloh together as a family, theBible says that Pagina would
severely taunt Hannah. Now, some of you are sports
fans. And if you watch sports, you
know that there are some athletes who like to talk smack
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about other people. You know that when you get into
sometimes in a game, some peoplewill kind of there's some things
that are coming out of their mouth that may not be the most
godly things coming out of theirmouth, may not be the most
encouraging or uplifting things coming out of their mouth.
Some some athletes are ruthless about it.
And that is exactly what the Bible describes Paninas like
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towards Hannah. She is ruthlessly mocking Hannah
for not being able to have any children.
She's pushing buttons to try andget a reaction out of her.
And verse 7 tells us this in first Samuel chapter one.
That year after year when Hannahwent up to the Lord's house, her
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rival would taunt her in this way and Hannah would be so
broken hearted over her reality of not being able to have a
child and all that went with that, that she would weep and
she would not eat anything. That's how great the pain was
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every single year for her. Now, side note, we can learn
something. For those of us who maybe are
not in a pain point in our life right now, we can learn
something about what not to do from Eli in Alcana in this
story. OK, first of all, Alcana, he he
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sees his wife really hurting andhis best answer to her is hey,
like why won't you eat? Aren't I so much better to you
than 10 kids trying? I know you're trying to help,
but trying to make your spouse feel better by saying aren't I
better for you than whatever it is you're upset about is not
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helping. OK, Just free relationship
advice for Sunday morning. Eli is supposed to be the
spiritual leader in this story. And.
And Eli sees how upset Hannah isin this moment, and he doesn't
bother to go, hey, is, is everything OK?
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Are you OK? Can I help you in some way?
Eli's best answer is, hey, are you drunk?
Like, are you out of your mind? You should maybe get your act
together again, Free relationship advice.
If you see somebody crying and sobbing, don't go up and say,
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hey, are you drunk? You should get your life
together. I recognize that many people can
feel the pain that Hannah was feeling because you're living
it. Maybe it's not infertility,
maybe it's health problems that you're experiencing.
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Maybe it's the unknown of what'sgoing to happen to your job.
Or maybe it's the unknown of what's going to happen in a
relationship that you're in right now and and the pain that
you're experiencing in that relationship.
Hannah is worn down. She is broken, she is an
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emotional wreck and the pain that she's carrying is obvious
to everyone. And there doesn't seem to be any
end insight for this woman. But I want you to notice
something in verse 18 in first Samuel chapter one.
Look at verse 18. By the time we get to verse 18,
we we read at the very end of verse 18.
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Then Hannah went on her way. She ate and no longer looked
despondent. How in the world does that
happen? How does someone go from a spot
where they are so broken and overwhelmed and burdened and
stressed out and anxious to I'm good to eat, I got a smile on my
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face and life is pretty good. How does that happen?
How does how does her whole demeanor change when her
circumstances have not changed? There's no baby yet.
The weight of her circumstance is still there, but the weight
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of her circumstance seems to have lifted from her heart and
soul. Well to understand that we need
to begin reading in verse nine of First Samuel chapter one.
On one occasion, Hannah got up after they ate and drank at
Shiloh. The priest Eli was sitting on a
chair by the doorpost of the Lord's temple.
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Deeply hurt, Hannah prayed to the Lord and wept with many
tears. Making a vow, she pleaded.
Lord of Armies, if you will takenotice of your servants
affliction, remember and not forget me, and give your servant
a son. I will give him to the Lord all
the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.
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And while she continued praying in the Lord's presence, Eli
watched her mouth. Hannah was praying silently, and
though her lips were moving, hervoice could not be heard.
Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, How long are you
going to be drunk? Get rid of your wine.
No, my Lord, Hannah replied. I'm a woman with a broken heart.
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I haven't had any wine or beer. I've been pouring out my heart
before the Lord. Don't think of me as a wicked
woman. I've been praying from the depth
of my anguish and resentment. And Eli responded.
Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant the request that
you've made of him. May your servant find favor with
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you, she replied. And then Hannah went on her way.
She ate and no longer looked despondent.
If you are going to find peace without knowing if your problem
is going to be fixed, you are going to have to decide that God
is the best solution for something to change.
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In verse 9, when scripture says that Hannah got up, it's written
like this. It means this.
Hannah just had enough. She decides she was going to put
her foot down. Something was going to change.
I'm tired of all that I'm experiencing.
I'm tired of the weight of this.I'm tired and weary of feeling
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tired and weary. And she decides that's it.
Enough. Something's got to change.
I'm sick of my story being the same.
Year after year I come to this place and ioffer sacrifices and
year after year I have to deal with the same shame and the same
pain. I'm done with it now.
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I know that a lot of us have reached rock bottom at different
points in our life. And you get that feeling.
You understand what it's like toreach that point where you go,
I'm just done. Something has to change.
We get sick and tired of feelingsick and tired.
But what do we usually do when we're sick and tired of feeling
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sick and tired? We we go and talk to anyone and
everyone about it. We talk to our friends, we we
talk to our counsellors, we ask Google or ChatGPT, we go
searching for a podcast that's going to help us, whatever it
is. But here's what we always end up
doing. We end up in this constant loop
of listening to voices over and over and over again, and we have
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no real peace. Hannah does something that would
have been radical in her situation.
She's done listening to all the voices that are around her, both
the ones that are trying to helpher and the ones that are trying
to hurt her. She's done with it.
And of all the things that she could have done to address her
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pain, she decides the most important thing that she could
do is go to the only one that she knew was capable of doing
something about it, and that wasto pray and go to God.
Hey, have you ever heard someonesay, well I've tried everything,
so I guess I'll pray about it, right?
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How many of you have ever said that before?
I've tried everything, I might as well pray about it.
The reality is praying is the very best thing you can do.
There are times that when you pray, something is going to be
so overwhelming you don't even know that you know how to pray
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or even have the right words to say.
And this is what I want you to know.
Prayer is an invitation to bringyour raw emotions to God.
Verse 10 tells us this, says Hannah was deeply hurt that she
prayed and wept many tears. Verse 15 says that she had a
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broken heart and that she's pouring out her heart before
God. Verse 16 says she's praying from
the depth of her anguish and herresentment.
You can almost feel it. You can almost see it, can't
you? You don't want one of the most
difficult things in life is to see someone who is hurting so
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much that they're not just crying, they're weeping.
It's hard to see somebody in that kind of a situation.
Some of us, we, we run away fromthat kind of like people crying,
get me as far away as possible from the person crying because
we feel uncomfortable. We, we don't know what to say in
the moment when that happens. We, we don't know how to respond
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to the person. And Hannah is here, and from the
bottom of her heart, she's praying like this.
You know, for, for me, one of the first times I ever heard
someone praying like Hannah was praying is where I would
experience my mom crying over some of the most deeply painful
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moments of her life. And, and at times it would sound
like so much more than crying. At times it it sounded almost
like a literal groan coming fromthe depths of her soul because
of the pain that she was feelingand experiencing in her life.
And Hannah is the same way. She's telling God everything
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she's feeling and experiencing because she's just done.
And the good news about coming to God in prayer like this, it's
this. When life is sucking the life
out of you, you don't need to get everything together before
you go and talk to God. I know sometimes we think I got
to think about all the right words to say.
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I've got to just have the sentences all planned out.
Make sure I don't say any heresyin my prayer.
Make sure that I like, you know,I use God's name properly, that
I'm honoring and humble. And we overthink the prayer and
sometimes, sometimes the weight of your circumstances are so
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great that you don't need to tryand think about what are the
words I'm going to say. You just need to come to God and
pour out your heart to him. The words don't need to make
sense. He is not a God who's going to
run away from you in that moment.
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He is not a God who is overwhelmed by your
circumstances. And whatever you bring to him,
it is the exact opposite. He is a God who wants you to
come to Him, the Bible tells us.Cast all, all your cares on Him.
All. Sit in that word for a minute.
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All your cares. Cast them on God.
Second Kings chapter 20 tells usthat He is a God who sees your
tears and he's a God who hears your prayers.
There are times where you just maybe need to come to God and
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you only have one word to say orone sentence to say in a prayer.
And that one word could be something as simple as just God
help. And that's the best you can come
up with and it's OK. I don't know where you normally
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go to pour out your heart, but Iknow every single one of us go
somewhere to pour out our heartswhen life is stressful.
You might have friends, you might have a counsellor, maybe
you're just passive aggressive and you go and take your
frustrations out on a video gameor whatever your favorite hobby
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is. Maybe you have a journal where
you put all of your thoughts down and none of those things
are inherently bad or wrong places to go for some of you.
You pour out your heart over andover again to yourself.
You can't stop thinking about your pain.
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It swirls in your mind and you keep pouring your heart out over
and over and over again. But I know because you're human,
you will go somewhere with whatever it is that's stressing
you out. But here's the thing, of all the
things and all the places and all the people that you could
pour your heart out to, there isonly one who is all powerful,
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and it's God. And so when you pray, pray a
declaration of who has the greatest power.
One one of the things we see in the Bible over and over again is
that when it comes to prayer, how many times prayers start by
focusing our attention on how great God is.
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Jesus taught us this when he taught us the Lord's Prayer.
He he says, Hey, when you pray, start by saying our Father who
art in heaven hallowed be your name.
The whole focus, the whole starting point of prayer is
focusing on the greatness of whoGod is.
Hannah starts her prayer in muchthe same way she starts her
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prayer by pleading to the Lord of armies.
Don't skip over that. She pleads to the Lord of
armies. And here's what she's declaring
at the beginning of her prayer. She is declaring that you are
the God who has every power. You have sovereign control over
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everything, every dominion, every force, everything God.
You've got sovereign control over it all.
When she says Lord of Armies, she is saying God.
You are a God who has infinite resources.
There is nothing I could come toyou and ask you for that is
greater than the resources that are at your disposal, God.
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There is nothing that I could come and ask you for that is
greater than your power. God.
That's what she's declaring whenshe says Lord of Armies.
In other words, Hannah praised this truth about God.
God, my inability to have a child is not a match for your
sovereignty and power. I, I don't know everything that
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you're facing today, but I know this, that God's resources and
God's power is greater. In fact, if you were to take
every problem that all of us in this room have and every person
who's online and every person inour region, in our province, our
country and our world, and you were to take all of our
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problems. You were to bundle them all
together into one giant problem.That one giant problem is not
greater than God. God's power is greater than
anything. A friend of mine used to always
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say like this to me, said Kirk, stop telling God how big your
problems are and start telling your problems how big your God
is. Prayer is where we take our eyes
off of our problem. We fix our eyes on the One who
has everything needed to deal with the problem.
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So if you're here today and you are facing a big problem where
you just need God's power to show up, start by calling out to
the Lord of armies. If you're facing a big problem
where you need God's wisdom, remind yourself in prayer and
declare that He is the all knowing God who wants to give
wisdom. One of the reasons why it's so
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important for you and I to continue to learn more and more
about who God is, to learn more about theology and doctrine and
things like that, is, is becausewe need to understand what God
is like in order to be able to pray effectively.
But it's not just about an intellectual exercise.
It frames how we approach him inprayer.
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Now, let me ask you this question.
If God is really all powerful, and I would say probably pretty
much everyone in this room wouldsay, yeah, of course God's all
powerful. If God is really all powerful,
if God has infinite resources and power, why do you still
sometimes try to tell God how toanswer your prayer?
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Like, hey, God, I I need you to fix this pain point in my life.
Here's how I'd like you to do it.
Go ahead and do it this way. You're the all powerful God.
You've got every resource at your disposal.
So here's what I need you to do.And this is where we often get
tripped up and where we remain stressed out or anxious even
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after we pray because in our minds, we already have the best
way for God to answer our prayer.
We've already got it all figuredout, and we're just trying to
bring God up to speed on the things God needs to do.
And when God doesn't do it the way that we want or give the
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exact answer that we want, we'vegot no peace because we think
we've got a better solution thanGod does.
And So what Hannah also teaches us is that the prayers that lead
to peace are filled with surrender.
In verse 11, two times Hannah calls herself a servant of the
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Lord. In verse 18, when talking to
Eli, she calls herself a servant.
Again, Hannah has no sense of entitlement.
She she has just humility. She has no sense that God owes
her anything, that God has to answer prayer in a certain way,
or that she can somehow manipulate God to doing what she
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wants. Hannah merely says, you are God
and I have an inability to fix this problem, and I'm coming to
you. But then she does something that
on the surface seems like she's striking a deal with God.
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She says if you'll give me a son, I'll give him back to you
all the days of his life. You ever done that before?
God, if you'll just do this, then I'll do this.
God, if, if you just answer my prayer this way, I promise you
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I'll be the best person ever. I I've done it before, not
always in ways that I'm proud of.
God, if you would just let the Toronto Blue Jays win a game, I
promise I'll serve you more. And suddenly they're winning all
these games. So now I got to serve God even
more, right? Maybe it's like, God, if you
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just give me this job, I'll giveyou more money.
God, if you just give me this house, I'll use this house to
serve you in some way. I think most of us have done
something like that. Maybe you've said, God, if
you'll just fix my spouse, I promise I'll be a better spouse.
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I don't think Hannah is strikinga deal with God here.
I don't think that's what's going on.
Hannah's surrendering to God. That's what she's doing here.
See, on behalf of her son, Hannah's making what's called
the Nazarite vow. It's the kind of vow, if you're
familiar with Old Testament stories, it's the kind of vow
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that Samson made in the Old Testament.
It's this deep vow of commitmentto God, and it's this promise to
be set apart for service to God.And what Hannah is saying is
that if God gives her a son, shewill literally give him back to
God instead of keeping the childfor herself.
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There is no net gain for Hannah in this.
She's praying for something thatcan only bring glory to God.
She is surrendering her deepest desire to God.
She's saying I'm your servant and all I want is what you want.
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Paul Tripp put it this way. He said rather than attaching a
happy life to the fulfillment ofher own desires, she finds life
in the success of God's Kingdom.And this is what allows Hannah
to not look despondent anymore. It's what allows her to be at
peace. Because in this moment, Hannah
(30:09):
has made the decision that she'sno longer going to be defined by
what other people say. She's no longer going to be
defined by what society thinks of her.
She's no longer even going to bedefined by her greatest heart's
desire. The thing she's going to be
defined by is God himself. She's living and surrender to
(30:31):
him. All that she wants is whatever
God wants. Now, this is easily one of the
most challenging things to do inprayer because every one of us
is a human being that has normaldesires, normal dreams of how we
want things to go. And what Hannah's teaching us is
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that prayer can lead to peace when we surrender the need to
have our prayers answered in a certain way.
Maybe you said this before. If I only had blank, I'd be
happy. Here's the truth.
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Whatever you put in that blank has some level of control over
your heart and your emotions andyour soul.
It's going to shape your emotions.
It's going to shape your decisions.
Friends, you are only ever goingto find peace in this life when
you decide to surrender control and trust in the all powerful,
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all knowing and good God who also happens to love you.
The invitation of God is to cometo Him and surrender your
deepest burdens to His loving care and to find life in Him
instead of wherever you're goingto try to find life.
(32:02):
Now, one of the things that I'velearned about prayer is that God
doesn't always answer all of ourprayers at once, even when He
does answer our prayers. Quite often God's answers to
prayer are more of a story that's unfolding than it is a
moment of glory. And that's what happens to
Hannah in verse 20. The Bible says after some time
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she gave birth to Samuel. We have no idea how long that
was from the time that she prayed to the time that Samuel
was born. But then after weaning and
raising and weaning the child, she does what's promised.
She brings Samuel to live with Eli.
She had a baby and she literallygave her child to the Lord.
(32:46):
We do that symbolically as parents.
We talk about like, hey, I'm, I am committing, surrendering,
dedicating my child to the Lord,and we do it symbolically.
Put yourself in Hannah's shoes. She gives birth to this child
and then she goes, I'm going to go and I'm going to leave this
child to be raised in Shiloh with Eli, and I'm going to go
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back home. But she still kept coming back
every year, every year to make sacrifices with the rest of the
family. And so every year it's still in
her face. I had a child, but I gave the
child up to the Lord. I had a child, but I don't get
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to raise that child. In some ways, Hannah ends up
right back where she started. Her circumstances had not really
changed. And yet Hannah teaches US1 more
thing. The prayers that lead to peace
are filled with worship. See, prayer is not only a place
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where we go and ask God for things.
Prayer is a place for us to reset our hearts and our minds
and focus thing, focusing them on God and worshiping Him.
Sometimes we think worship is just what we do with music, but
there's so much more to worship than music.
You can worship God in your prayers.
Hannah does that in chapter 2. Again, her circumstances are not
(34:15):
fixed yet, but but look at what happens in chapter 2, beginning
of verse one. It says Hannah prayed.
My heart rejoices in the Lord. My horn is lifted up by the
Lord. My mouth boasts over my enemies
because I rejoice in your salvation.
There's no one holy like the Lord.
There's no one besides you. There's no rock like our God.
(34:39):
Don't boast so proudly or let arrogant words come out of your
mouth. For the Lord is a God of
knowledge, and actions are weighed by Him.
Sometimes we just need to praiseGod for the little ways we've
seen Him answering prayers even when the whole story is not yet
been revealed. That's what Hannah's doing in
these first few verses. She's worshipping and praising
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God. She continues on in verses 4 to
8 by celebrating and worshippinga God who is capable of
reversing the fortunes of any human being.
She says the mighty are broken by this God and the feeble are
given strength. Those who have food end up
(35:22):
scrambling for food and those who are hungry, hungry no more.
That he's the God who can reverse the fortune of families,
and he's the God who can reversethe fortune of those who want a
family. He's the God who can bring both
life and death. He is the God who raises the
poor from the dust and gives them a throne of honor.
(35:45):
He is a God who reverses the fortune of people.
But she doesn't end there. She looks to the future and
worships a God for all the promises that He has given to
her for the future. In verses 9 and 10, she praises
God for her future hope. He guards those who are
faithful, while those who opposethe Lord will be shattered.
(36:11):
If you're here today and you areexploring the Christian faith, I
want you to understand something.
There is a way for you to find peace no matter how hard your
life is. The Bible teaches us that right
now anyone who is a believer, who is not a believer and
follower of Jesus is like a person who opposes the Lord.
(36:33):
You want to do life your own way.
You don't want anyone to be Lordand God of your life.
You want life to be on your terms.
And the Bible tells us that whenyou are in that place, the end
result is you will encounter thejudgement of God.
God always gets the final say, but the good news is that your
(36:56):
story doesn't need to end like that.
God loves you and God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on a
cross and take the judgement in your place.
And if you turn from your way oflife and you put your faith in
Jesus, you surrender your life to Jesus.
Your entire status before God changes.
(37:18):
Instead of God opposing you, He is now the God who is for you.
When you become when you put your faith in Jesus, you become
a child of God and he's your father.
And if you're here today and you've already put your faith in
(37:38):
Jesus, I want you to understand this with absolute confidence.
Even though you might be in the waiting and you've got all kinds
of pain going on and you've tried to surrender it all to
God, here's one thing you can beabsolutely confident about
because you are God's child. God will pay attention to your
(38:00):
needs. Look down in verse 21 of chapter
2. After all this time, all this
waiting, all this praying, all of this worshipping, we finally
get to a place where it says theLord paid attention to Hannah's
(38:23):
need and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two
daughters. I can't promise you how God's
going to meet your need. I, I don't know He's going to
meet your need the way he did for Hannah.
But I can promise you this. If you are one of his children,
(38:46):
He will meet your need. He knows what your need is even
more than you know what your need is.
He's a God who has promised to meet all of our needs.
You can count on that. You can take it to the bank, and
one of the greatest needs that all of us have is peace.
We, we live in a world that is filled with so much anxiety, so
(39:10):
much stress, so much fear and concern.
You know, I, I usually eight sermons where people turn
Christianity into a formula. I'm not a fan of if you just do
this and this and this and this,then everything's going to turn
out all right and we'll all livehappily ever after because we
(39:32):
all know that that's typically not how things work out.
OK, But what I'm talking about today, it's not a formula, it's
a promise. I'm going to put a verse up on
the screen from the book of Philippians chapter 4.
Paul, through the inspiration ofthe Holy Spirit, God himself is
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telling us this. Don't worry about anything but
in everything. Through prayer and petition with
Thanksgiving that that word Thanksgiving is not just a
checking something off the list of saying I'm thankful to God.
It it represents this idea from the bottom of your heart like
(40:14):
you're worshipping God with Thanksgiving present your
request to God. That's what God calls us to do.
And now comes his promise and the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding. Will, will, will guard your
(40:39):
hearts and minds in Christ Jesusin your most difficult moments.
Prayer is the way to experience peace, even if you don't know if
the problem will be fixed. I'm going to ask you to close
your eyes. I know that today in this room
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right now, there are people who you're feeling the weight of the
world just like Hannah was. And just here in this moment and
just in a couple minutes, I'm going to be quiet.
I'm just going to give you space.
I just want you to quietly pray and pour out your heart before
God, knowing that He's a God whosees you and He hears you.
(41:30):
If you're here today and you don't have that going on in your
life, but you know someone who does, I want you to pray for
them right now that they would know and experience the peace of
God in their hearts. Not just a theory, but it would
be reality for them. Let's take the next minute in
(41:52):
the presence of the Lord of Armies and pray to Him.
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