Year 2 Day 175

Year 2 Day 175

Pray (ACts)

Read - 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Message - Alan Burke

As we focus on Hannah here once more, notice the change that there has been in her from when we were first introduced to her in chapter 1. There Hannah had been provoked and tormented to the point where she was could no longer eat and she wept bitterly. With no where else to turn, she turned to the Lord, praying, her lips moved but her voice was not heard for she was praying in silence (1:13). There she had come weighted down in her great anguish and grief (1:16). This time as she prays, it is different, her prayer is one of praise where her heart is overflowing in song, thanking God and rejoicing in him. 

But I want you to notice something, look at Hannah’s prayer here in chapter 2, for all of it is God centred. In its entirety, her prayer to God is not focused on herself but on the Lord God. Hannah focuses not on the blessing that she has received in the gift of a son, rather this prayer is focused is on the praise of the Lord God, on the Creator not on the created. Yes Hannah’s prayer had been answered, she had many reasons to rejoice but she understood that the Lord is her chief glory, not what she has, or has been given. Throughout as her heart overflowed in praise, it is because of who the Lord God will ever be, powerful and holy, marvelling in the character of God. Hannah was able to praise the Lord God powerful and holy as her heart overflowed. 

This prayer sets an example to us. Maybe in the past, right now, or in the future, it’s not praise that has left or will leave your lips, but nothing. You lament to God in the silence, broken from the disappointment that you have experienced. You like Hannah have longed for the Lord to work, but nothing happened, things got worse, and then you here how Hannah’s payer was answered and its like rubbing salt in the wound, its like a slap in the face. 

There are times that we can pray, like Hannah, we weep and pour our heart out to the Lord, and the Lord seems silent, that prayer we have been praying for years for a loved one to come to salvation seems to have fallen on deaf ears, the prayer for that child who is ill and it seems to go unanswered, it could be for what ever reason and it seems that God doesn’t care, that you are left disappointed by God, but God does hear and answer, he does not promise to answer the way we want it, the way we think he should do it, but only only according to his purposes. Yet the Lord is at work, he is the Lord God, powerful and Holy, and we like Hannah have reason to praise, not in what we have or have been given by God but in Jesus, for the salvation that we have received though faith, the hope that we have in the midst of the brokenness of this life. 

Pray (acTS)

Sing

WSC
Q59 Which day of the seven hath God appointed to be the weekly Sabbath? 
From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath; and the first day of the week ever since, to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath. (Gen. 2:2–3, 1 Cor. 16:1–2, Acts 20:7)