Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): Getting to the place of being thankful in everything, next on Abounding Grace.

Pastor Ed Taylor: I believe a regular prayer life will lead to thankfulness, no matter what struggles we're facing, what testings come our way, or how bad the ups and downs of life might be. Thanksgiving is a key. It's the key for this admonition to pray when he says, "Pray without ceasing."

The idea is to pray not for everything, but to be thankful in everything. You can't be thankful for everything; that's not a realistic view of life, and it's not a realistic view of the reality of pain and suffering. But we step back, and we can be thankful in everything.

Guest (Male): Today on Abounding Grace, we take a look at a touching, heartfelt prayer from Hannah. Her son is about to enter into a life of service to the Lord, and she is truly thankful—not only for what God has done, but for what He's going to do in the future.

You'll find it in 1 Samuel chapter two. It really is a fantastic, encouraging prayer to carefully consider. Let's go to Pastor Ed Taylor and continue our study of 1 Samuel.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Open your Bibles, would you please, to 1 Samuel chapter two. That is where we are. Verse one of chapter two: "And Hannah prayed and said: 'My heart rejoices in the Lord; My horn is exalted in the Lord. I smile at my enemies, because I rejoice in Your salvation. No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none besides You, nor is there any rock like our God.

Talk no more so very proudly; let no arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is the God of knowledge; and by Him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, and those who stumbled are girded with strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, and the hungry have ceased to hunger. Even the barren has borne seven, and she who has many children has become feeble.'"

What a powerful prayer in Hannah's life. It doesn't sound like a typical prayer. I was even paying attention to my own prayer life recently as I was looking at this, and I can say that there is a pattern in my prayers and it usually begins with addressing the Father and being thankful. Is that how you pray?

I'm just so thankful, I'm so thankful. There is nothing wrong with that at all. I think it flows from our heart of thanksgiving. I think true prayer flows through thanksgiving. But you can see that in the pattern of prayer in Hannah's heart, she is praying and just talking out loud to God, reminding herself and talking to God about how her heart rejoices, her horn is exalted, and she's smiling at enemies. She rejoices in salvation.

It was Robert Murray M'Cheyne who said, "What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more." He was making the point of how priceless your prayer life is. It's just beyond what money could buy. It's beyond anything you could trade in for it. I mean, really, what you are—you're struggling in an area, it's directly related to your prayer life.

You find great victory, it's directly related to your prayer life. Standing in strong faith, making progress, or moving backwards—it’s your prayer life. Sometimes when we think of prayer, we get discouraged because whenever we talk about prayer, we all are a little convicted. Maybe not every single person, but which one of us wouldn't be able to say, "My prayer life could use a little improvement"?

I could pray a little bit more, or I could include this, or my prayer life's become stale. Which one of us couldn't say, "I want a passionate prayer"? You could even come to the conclusion that you want a prayer like this. You want a prayer like chapter two here, but you have to understand something: in Hannah's life, the prayer of chapter two did not come without chapter one.

That's what developed in her a deep relationship and deep prayer. It was chapter one, where we spent a lot of time looking at the difficulties in her life, what developed her prayer life, and what taught her the sufficiency of God. Other times we can be discouraged about prayer simply because the answers didn't come the way we were asking.

We're passionately pleading with God and desiring great things from God, and desiring things even that would agree with the Scriptures, where we're not selfish, we're looking at the Scriptures, we're applying the promises of God, and we get discouraged because the answers didn't come the way that we wanted or the way that we anticipated.

We've been praying and praying, year after year, month after month, and day after day. We're praying the same thing because the answer hasn't come through. But today, I want to encourage you through Hannah's life that the answer to prayer comes, even though even in Hannah's life, it was a very painful answer.

There are times when God will just totally blow your mind and give you the desires of your heart right here on earth. You're praying right along with His will. It was a painful process for Hannah and could be a painful process for you, but He gives you right what you're looking for. And she opens up with this heart of thanksgiving, declaring the beauty of God and who He is.

According to chapter one, verse 28 of 1 Samuel, this is a prayer of worship. It's an act of worship on her part. In it, she rejoices, she declares God's exaltation, and the bittersweetness of the whole situation. As you follow the life of Hannah in summary, she goes from barrenness to baby, but from baby to emptiness because what does she end up doing? She ends up dedicating him to the Lord, just like she said.

It wasn't like a baby dedication on the stage; it was full-on, "I'm going to give you my kid. I gave you God, I said I would give him to you, and I dropped him off at the temple." She trusted Eli, the people that are in charge there, to raise him. She trusted You, God, even despite Eli and Eli's kids and the bad example. She trusted God because she was going to keep her word.

She didn't let the circumstances dictate how she acted; she followed through. So when we read, "I dedicate my kid to you," it would be easy to read that as, "I dedicate my son or my daughter to you in the ministry, and I will just continue to pray for her and whatever she does in this world, it's unto you." That's a great prayer and a great dedication.

But Hannah was much deeper than that. When she said she's dedicating her kid, she meant it. "Here you are." And to this day in ministry, we have not had anyone drop their kid off and say, "Raise him in the ways of the Lord." This is a uniqueness. This is a unique situation. It's a very beautiful picture of what would happen in the life of Jesus as His life was dedicated to fulfilling the Father's will.

So she went from barrenness to baby, from baby to emptiness; she dropped him off. She goes from sorrow to rejoicing, to even smiling at the enemy. Did you see that? Do you think that was a little bit of insight in her prayer life, that she was smiling at the enemy? We know who her enemy was: it was Peninnah taunting her and making fun of her.

The prayer really reminds me of what Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica in chapter five, where he said, "Rejoice always," in verse 16. "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." I believe a regular prayer life will lead to thankfulness, no matter what struggles we're facing, what testings come our way, or how bad the ups and downs of life might be.

Thanksgiving is a key. It's the key for this admonition to pray when he says, "Pray without ceasing." The idea is to pray not for everything, but to be thankful in everything. You can't be thankful for everything. That's not a realistic view of life, and it's not a realistic view of the reality of pain and suffering. But we step back, and we can be thankful in everything.

Psalm 145, verse nine, says, "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works." And what she says in her prayer in verse three is, "Talk no more so very proudly. Let no arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is the God of knowledge; and by Him the actions are weighed." That's a good reminder, isn't it?

It's a good thing to say in your prayers, just to be reminded that our actions are weighed by God. It's not so much what you did, but why you did it. It's not so much the action, the outward action that might impress men. We can actually do things that are good with bad motives, for the wrong reasons. We can do good things for the wrong reasons.

It's really an encouraging thing to be reminded that really our actions are not first and foremost before man; they're first and foremost before God, who weighs the heart. He knows the motives, not just the actions. And so she says in verse four, "The bows of the mighty men are broken, and those who stumbled are girded with strength."

She's just looking at her life, how hard it was, how difficult. Now, the strength of God. Verse five: "Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, and those who were hungry have ceased to hunger." The tables have been turned, she's praying. The tables have been turned. Even the barren—look at the blessing of God. Hannah crying out in desperation for kids; even the barren has borne seven, and she who has many children has become feeble.

"The Lord kills," verse six, "and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes the poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and He has set the world upon them."

As she's praying, she seems to have this increase in faith. She becomes more encouraged in the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God. His power, His rulership over our lives. You have to think this prayer is hard to pray while you're barren, when you want a baby. We don't know—it's really an encouraging thing to see that God shares with us her prayer of victory, but not when she was mistakenly thought to be drunk at the temple when she was passionately praying.

We don't know what she said there. We kind of know the direction of her prayers, but we don't have the exact words. But now that God has come through, we see what was in her heart. We see really what's being drawn out from her. Where that was there, the presence of God, the sovereignty of God. When you and I heard the gospel and we responded to the good news that Jesus Christ died for us, that we accept the blood that was shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins, we accepted it as the pastor shared with us or someone was sharing the gospel in our front room or out on the street.

We accepted in that moment the reality that God saves, that He alone is God, that He is the God of the universe, that He, out of His loving care for man who was hopelessly lost, dead in their sins and trespasses—every single one of us—that because of His love, He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for us. Some of you need to make this decision today. If we would just humble ourselves and admit that we've sinned—we don't even have to be convinced of our sin; we know that sin...

You may not call it sin in your life. This is one way to think of it: when somebody starts talking about your life and maybe has isolated a mistake or something you said, and you get really defensive and you say, "Well, I'm not perfect." That's an admission of sin. Yes, we know you're not perfect. You know that I'm not perfect. And what makes us imperfect—the Bible word for that is sin.

I don't know why people get uptight talking about sin and how it's so offensive, because you'll hear it a thousand times, "I'm not perfect. Not everybody's perfect." Yes, I know. And what makes you and me imperfect is our sin, both being born into it as imperfect beings, imperfect humans, not as God intended. We inherited sin from our great-great-great-great grandfather all the way back in creation, from Adam.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, they sinned and they plunged all of humanity after them into sin. Why? Because you have Adam, a sinful man, and Eve, a sinful woman, and when they came together and created a baby, that baby was sinful. The sin nature was passed down. So not only are we sinful by nature, we're also sinful by action. We're guilty.

And so a lot of times that's expressed because the Bible says that God has put eternity in every human's heart. There's a longing in your life to be right with your Creator. That's the depth. When you really face your emptiness and your loneliness, as believers, that's something where we need to come back to our sufficiency and our fullness in God.

But for those that don't believe in God, that emptiness is a lack of God Himself in your life. You're not living the way you were made to live, and things are backwards. So God, in order to make things in order for you, sacrificed His own Son to make it right. There's such a big gap between you and God, and in order to bridge that gap, God took care of it Himself. He built the bridge Himself by sending the eternal Son of God so that you could cross over—not in your efforts and not in your energy, but in His.

Whenever that moment was—were you a little kiddo or were you an adult—when you finally surrendered, you bowed the knee. Because the Bible says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The beautiful thing about that is now that you know that, you can bow the knee today willingly and openly and out of desperation for relationship, and God will save you.

Or if you refuse and you battle your whole life, you will bow the knee to God, but it will be a bowing of the knee to God in submission, but the opportunity to be saved is over. So when you were born again, when you confessed with your mouth and believed in your heart, let me tell you what you agreed to, just very simply. There are a lot of things you agreed to, but the one thing you agreed to was God's absolute, complete sovereignty over your life and over this world in which you live.

I bet you didn't know you did that. "Nobody told me about the sovereignty of God." You learn it over time. You can't learn everything in a moment. We're all growing up. When you were born again, you became a baby and you were just sucking milk in those early days, just "God loves me." Yes. "He cares for me." Yes. It's wonderful. You live on love for a long time, and then God begins to show you His justice and His mercy. He begins to show you His grace. He begins to show you the price that was paid, and then one day it hits you: the sovereignty of God.

And a great way to remember the sovereignty of God is just this: God is God, and there is no other. And He rules, and He reigns. I see this in her prayer. God is sovereign. Look at these: "He kills and makes alive." Yes. Well, how could He do that? Because He's God. "He brings to the grave, and He brings up through the resurrection." How? Because He's God.

He makes poor, and He makes rich. He brings low, He lifts up. Verse eight: "He raises the poor from the dust, the beggar from the ash heap. He sets them among princes." It says in verse eight, "For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and He has set the world upon them." Sovereign, sovereign, in control. He even controls her womb. He's the helper of the humble, the author of life.

Another thing I see here is not just her acknowledgment of His sovereignty, but the necessity of humility. Humility. It's a very important part of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Humility is not to be minimized or ignored. Humility is a must before God because He knows—He knows us and He knows all. And He will humble the proud.

Sometimes that humbling of the proud is known as humility and humiliation because the proud resist God, and God resists the proud. Humility is important. The Bible says in James chapter four, verse six, that God gives grace to the humble. He gives more grace. Therefore He says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Micah chapter six, verse eight: "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" And this is just flowing from Hannah's heart. And remember, chapter two doesn't come without chapter one. In the midst of her desperation, she believed these things.

They may not have been crystal clear, but they were drawing her to the Father. They were drawing her to the house of worship. They were drawing out of her prayers of anguish. They were drawing out of her patience even when she's misunderstood and mistreated and taunted. And now that God has showed up and answered her prayer—and what a joy.

I know that there are prayers that we pray that God doesn't answer the way that we would like. He does answer them, but not the way that we like. But I also know this: God is so gracious that He will often answer the prayers the way that we like, and we will pray in accordance with His will. We will, like Luke chapter 18, verse one, where the Lord says that men ought always to pray and not cease, not quit, not give up, not throw in the towel.

And to many of those prayers, when we're lined up right with the will of God, and He answers the desires of our hearts, we go, "Yes! This is awesome!" And so much more than just for things—praying for the will of God. And so what does she say in verse nine? "He will guard the feet of His saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness. For by strength no man shall prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces; from heaven He will thunder against them. And the Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed."

Now, her prayer is so in tune with the Lord that she's prophetic here. She's talking about Messiah. She is being used of God right now to prophesy the future. God is speaking through her in just her prayer that's in tune with His Spirit, and right there at the end of verse 10, she's prophesying the coming of the Lord, the coming of Messiah.

God is going to do a work that's going to bless all that will come to know Him. It's amazing, so sweet, so encouraging, so helpful that God would promise in verse nine to guard the feet of His saints, that He would silence the wicked in darkness. Be careful because this is the work of God, not your work and mine.

Why do we know that? Well, because it says that He will do it, but then it says at the end of verse nine, "For by strength no man shall prevail." And it's just a big mistake in our lives to trust in man. Man will disappoint you. I will disappoint you. People that you put your trust in will disappoint you. We need to put our trust in the Lord.

"Some men trust in horses," the Bible says. "Some men trust in chariots." You read that verse and you think, "I don't trust in horses. What are you talking about? Chariots? I haven't even seen a chariot." It's a picture. It's a picture of war. It's a picture of armies. It's a picture of human strength and even strength within the animal kingdom.

Some people trust in those things. Some people put their whole trust in those things, and it becomes a big picture of trusting in someone or something other than the sovereignty and the power of God. Only to find out that horses get tired. Only to find out that chariots' wheels fall off and rust out. Only to find out that you've trusted in man, but man cannot come through for you.

Man did not come through for you. Man misunderstood you. Man didn't get it; they didn't grasp it. That in your relationship, trying to wrestle with the situation, that you came to the conclusion like she did—and it's better just to accept it—by strength no man shall prevail. By strength no man shall prevail. It's only in the strength of the Lord will you find victory.

And it's then in verse 10, the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces. He does that. Later on in the New Testament, what will God say? "Vengeance is yours," says the Lord. He doesn't say that. We misread that. God says, "Vengeance is Mine," says the Lord. It belongs to Him. Heaven—He will thunder against them. The Lord will judge. And we just need to trust in the Lord.

Guest (Male): A good word there for us as we close. Leave it in the hands of God. Vengeance belongs to Him and not us. We're to trust in the Lord when we're treated unjustly and unfairly. This is Abounding Grace. We're in the early stages of a study in 1 and 2 Samuel with Pastor Ed Taylor. Catch a replay when you visit aboundinggraceradio.com or listen wherever you get your podcasts and at oneplace.com.

And if you haven't already downloaded our free mobile app, you can do that. The Calvary Church app is a great way to listen to the very latest content from Pastor Ed. Here in the month of August, we've picked out an excellent book written by Bob Hoekstra called How to Counsel God's Way.

Now, this book is a call for God's people to return to Jesus as our Wonderful Counselor, so that we avoid the pitfalls of following after man's wisdom and trust the Lord Jesus for His reliable riches that are already ours in Christ. We'll send you a copy with our thanks for a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace.

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