I don’t enjoy holiday sermons, in fact I generally avoid them. For the last two weeks I could not get Hannah off my mind or out of my heart. I resisted the notion of preaching on Hannah on Mother’s Day because, well, as I already said I just don’t like holiday themed sermons. The more I prepared and the more I prayed the more I realized that I had to talk about Hannah’s life. Finally, as I was attempting to prepare this sermon I got an email from our prayer pastor that moved my soul. One of the last lines read “Without struggle and without intercession we would never get to see the wonders of God.” I suddenly was aware of what God had been trying to speak to me and what He wanted me to share with you. His desire was not that we rust through Hannah’s story so we could celebrate the miraculous birth of Samuel, it was that we understand His role in her struggle, her devotion to intercession and the final outcome of the wonders of God not just for Hannah but for an entire nation.
Israel was far from God. Judges says that they simple did what was right in their own eyes, I Samuel 3 says that the “word of the LORD was rare”. They were a people that had rejected God’s voice again; they were sheep that were fleeing the shepherd, children that refused discipline. In all of God’s mercy He worked to change Israel’s plight and He did it through closing Hannah’s womb.
The story of Hannah is not about a woman and her struggle with barrenness, it is about a nations need for God’s voice and how far He will go to bring redemption and restoration. Our struggle, if we are in Christ, is not punishment or judgement, it is purposed and planned, it is for God’s glory and it is for the redemption of the world around us. Hannah placed her barrenness before God and then she made Him a vow, if He would work through her and for her she would glorify Him with the gift. If He would give her a son she would give that son back to God for his entire life. Suddenly, in the midst of her struggle Hannah’s prayers become the intercession a nation needs and the vow of obedience that God has desired. I believe that there are times in which God creates desperation within us so that He can reveal His desires and meet the needs of those around us. What if God withheld the one thing that we wanted so that He could give us and the world around us the one thing we needed?
I pray today that we will not merely struggle but that we will embrace our struggle through intercession, that we will understand and believe that God is for us and as such He is working in our struggles, even ordering them so that He can reveal His great love and bring redemption to those that are yet far from Him. You are not being forsaken you are being trusted; you are not being forgotten you are being used; you are not being punished you are being increased far greater than you could have ever asked or imagined. All Hannah wanted was a son, through her prayers she received the vessel that God would use to return a nation to His voice. Trust God’s love, embrace the struggle, live in intercession and be amazed by the wonders of God!