Abounding Grace

Pastor Ed Taylor: There are times in our lives when we're met with great spiritual crisis, and they're always good. Now, we don't think they're good, and the circumstances themselves may not be good, but the circumstance of crisis—we don't want them, but they're good because God uses them.

They're a place where we come to what you could call a spiritual fork in the road, a point of decision, a place of monumental decision. We are brought to a place in crisis to the end of ourselves. We don't see the good in much of it, if at all, from our side of eternity. But from heaven's perspective, as you saw recently here this last weekend, the Potter is fashioning the clay.

Guest (Male): We are delighted to share the next half hour together with you. Welcome to Abounding Grace. If you're not experiencing a crisis yourself, I'm sure you can think of someone who is. It's something we all go through. But today, we'll see that crisis can actually be God's tool to develop us into something beautiful, much like a potter fashioning the clay. An example of this is Hannah, and you'll hear her story in First Samuel chapters one and two. Here is Pastor Ed Taylor.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Let's take our Bibles and open them if you would to First Samuel chapter one. We're going to continue on in our study. We didn't finish, remember, if you were with us in the last study. We didn't have a chance. We had some other guests there as well, so we just really allowed the Holy Spirit to take us as far as we could. So we didn't finish the chapter.

When I got back, I had a choice of just lopping what I had in the end of the message and just putting it to the next message and reworking that. That's certainly an option because it's from the Lord; it's what God has given me. But what He's put on my heart is to add and formulate a message so that chapter one becomes a two-part. So let's go back and review a little bit of where we're at in chapter one and jump into chapter two.

Hannah is the person that the focus of Scripture is on. We're looking at Hannah. God has used Hannah and is going to use Hannah and deep trial in her life to bring about a man, a baby who will grow up into being a man that will be a leader that God will use to bring great stability to the children of Israel and to the nation of Israel. You'll recall during the time of the judges, instability and weak leadership had done great damage to the nation. God needed to intervene, and He wanted to intervene. And it's through Hannah that He'll do that.

Now we meet Hannah in a miserable place of desperation. I can't underscore the word miserable enough. She is in a hard spot. She's barren. It was a tragedy for a woman in that day and is painful and oftentimes tragic now. She's married to a man who's married to another woman. She's in a home where sadness and sorrow and anguish has gripped her heart. She's misunderstood. She's desperate. She's being taunted and made fun of.

She has to live in a condition where every day the desire of her heart is not given to her. And while the desire of her heart is not given to her, her faith continues to grow and she's crying out to God, but she also sees the other children in the home. She's in a bad spot. It's not to be missed in the story. Out of Hannah's broken desperation comes a place of deep dedication and surrender like she's never had before.

Now, I have to say as you're looking at Hannah's life, it's easier to study it in someone else. It's easier to go through this while you're looking at it in Hannah's life and say, "Yeah, I can see Hannah and I can see how messed up she is." But when you're living it, I mean, it would be better just to study it in someone else's life. I'd rather be able to say, "Yeah, I can see it in Hannah's life. I really have never experienced that kind of desperation or that kind of pain."

But I have to say that if you're walking with Jesus, the spiritual warfare that you face and the difficulty and sinfulness of this life and the sinfulness of man—it may not be the same circumstances, but the trials of life will bring you to a place of miserable desperation as well. Let's be honest that most of us believe that we can have a life of deep dedication without pain. And most of us believe that we can have a life of deep dedication without trials and agony.

If we don't believe that we can, we certainly want it. I don't blame you for that, and neither does God. Which one of us when we're writing out our plans—you know, some folks in the business world like to teach you to have a three-year plan. If you go in for an interview, they're going to ask you, "What's your five-year plan?" You can't really tell them because your five-year plan is to have their job. You think, "Well, you know, in five years, I think I'll be sitting in your desk." Get out of here!

But you're kind of conditioned to think ahead, and I don't know that it's a completely bad thing to look ahead. You don't want to depend on your plan. You want to learn if you're following Jesus; you want to write your five-year plan in pencil so you can erase it. You just know that God's going to do some things. But if you were given the chance and we had a little exercise here today of homework and said, "Well, go ahead and write your five-year plan," if trials and pain are in there, it certainly won't be more than a few moments.

Instead, if we had control of our lives, we would choose an easier way. Yet isn't it true it's times of distress that develop great faith? And it's times of great difficulty that develop great prayer lives? And it's times of great agony that God develops great men and great women who completely devote themselves in an eternal way? You know how our hearts warm when we read the Scriptures and we hear Jesus say, "Seek first the kingdom of God." We say, "Yes, God, that's why I live. I want to seek Your kingdom above all things. I want to walk in the Spirit."

Jesus would say it this way in the New Living Translation, "So don't worry about having enough food or drink or clothing. Why be like the pagans who are so deeply concerned about these things? Your heavenly Father already knows all of your needs, and He'll give you all that you need from day to day if you live for Him and make the kingdom of God your primary concern." That's another way of saying seek first the kingdom of God: make the kingdom of God your primary concern.

But there's a battle between the flesh and the spirit. And while the spirit would want to seek the things of the kingdom of God, the flesh loves comfort and ease. The flesh loves things to go our way. We really don't know, and I suggest this to you to consider in your own life, we really don't know how much our flesh rules our lives until we're faced with a challenge, until we're faced with a temptation, a difficulty, a crisis. That's where we see Hannah.

God's giving us a glimpse of what it looks like. God's showing us what it looks like of Hannah expressing herself and recognizing that deep desperation will bring deep dedication. She's in a crisis. She's gone just about as far as she can go in her worship and her desire and her prayer. We left off in the section where her pain leads her to the temple. Do you remember that? She's misunderstood by her husband in verse eight. Hannah, Elkanah her husband says to her, "Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?"

She's totally misunderstood by the man she's devoted her life to. He hasn't helped her or supported her. I sense some sincerity in there. I mean, those are hard words. I don't think Elkanah is completely ignorant of the difficulty of his wife here, but I also think that he lacks a sensitivity to the sweetness of how he could serve his wife. His wife doesn't want ten of him. His wife wants a kid. She's barren. She's being taunted. She wants a boy. She wants a baby.

So what does she do in verse nine but arise? They finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, and Eli the priest was there. And she was there in verse ten in bitterness of soul. She prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. She made a vow. She made a vow. "O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me and not forget Your maidservant but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I'll give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head."

This is a deep commitment here. She isn't referring to a baby dedication like you might see here on the stage where you allow me for a few brief moments to hold your precious child. And if they cooperate, I will get to hold them. And I'll be able to hold that precious baby of yours with your great trust in me and we'll be able to pray and dedicate that child's life to the following of Jesus. We dedicate that child's life that one day that child will recognize God's great love and commit their life completely and wholly.

We pray that God will reveal a ministry to them. And we pray for your family that even in tough times and if your kid ends up backsliding, you raised your child in the ways of the Lord, and when he is old, he won't depart. We pray. It's not that kind of dedication. That's a great dedication. If you have kids, you should dedicate your kids to the Lord. You can do it here, you can do it in your home, but you just lay your hands and we'll lay hands on your child. We will dedicate your children to the Lord. They belong to Him, whether you realize it or not.

That's not what she's praying. That's not what she means here. Don't let that be the frame of reference here. She's not thinking of a ceremony or a service. She means it. She is so desperate for a baby that her heart is so knit together with God, she will take whatever she can get. And when it's ready, we know. See, one of the things that you have to remember is that we have read ahead. Hannah hasn't. She's living this in real time.

And her heart is knit together: "If I can just have a baby, if I can just have a baby in the womb, if I can just hold that baby, when it's time, I'm giving him back to You and he will make a vow, a Nazirite vow, and he will belong to You." And that's her heart. It came out of desperation. As it continued, it says in verse 12 that she was praying before the Lord. Eli watched her mouth. And Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.

Therefore, Eli, being the great leader that he was, thought she was drunk. And so not only is she misunderstood by her husband, but she's now misunderstood by another man in a place of authority in her life, a spiritual man. A man that's supposed to be representing God. But the condition of the world, the condition of the children of Israel because of what happened during the judges, is just producing horrible spiritual leadership.

Because here's what happens: horrible spiritual leaders reproduce other horrible spiritual leaders. And that's what's happening. He's the product of a whole line of disobedient, selfish spiritual leaders. And he did the same thing with his kids. And God's going to have none of it. He's going to make it right. But may the Lord protect us that we might be men and women that reproduce godly men and women, both in our church and also in our homes.

So we were only glossing over this because we looked at this in depth last time. But now she's met with another misunderstanding. And Eli tells her, "You know, why are you drunk? Put your wine away from me." But Hannah very respectfully says, "No, my lord, I'm a woman of sorrowful spirit. I've drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but I've poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and my grief I've spoken."

And Eli answered and said, "Go in peace, and the God of Israel will grant your petition which you've asked of Him." And she said, "Let your maidservant find favor in your sight." So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. She is in a time of real offering of herself to the Lord. Even though she's met with an unspiritual, uncaring, insensitive spiritual leader, and this is just after having to deal with the insensitivity of her husband, the pain and the loneliness she's feeling.

She doesn't know the end, but we do. Listen, you don't know the end, but God does. You don't know the end of what's happening in your life right now. You don't know how it's going to end. You don't know what's up ahead. You don't have a clue really, truly, how God is going to work all things together for the good. You don't know, but God does. Hannah doesn't know, but we do. But it really doesn't matter that we do because we see it after the fact.

In the midst of Hannah's life, Hannah doesn't know, but God does. Hannah doesn't know. In her deep sorrow and grief, she doesn't know, but God does. And this is a time where we've learned in our last study, too, where she is crying out to the Lord of hosts. It's the Lord of hosts, the Lord of sovereignty, the Lord that is on the throne, the Lord that is in control. And you know there are times in our lives, in all of our lives, when we're met with severe spiritual crisis.

There are times in our lives when we're met with great spiritual crisis, and they're always good. Now, we don't think they're good, and the circumstances themselves may not be good, but the circumstance of crisis—we don't want them, but they're good because God uses them. They're a place where we come to what you could call a spiritual fork in the road, a point of decision, a place of monumental decision. We are brought to a place in crisis to the end of ourselves.

We don't see the good in much of it, if at all, from our side of eternity. But from heaven's perspective, as you saw recently here this last weekend, the Potter is fashioning the clay. It's just a lump. What would you ever think it could become something so beautiful? And then did it—I was watching online. But when you're here, when he's working that thing and he's hugging it and moving it all around, and then it's all beautiful, and then he breaks it. Was there a big gasp in the room?

That's a spiritual crisis. You're like, "Whoa, we've just been watching you, brother, for 45 minutes fashioning that, and you jacked it up at the last minute!" But he did it on purpose, didn't he? He did it on purpose. He ruined it on purpose. He ruined it on purpose in front of you. The Potter ruined the pot on purpose so that He might fashion it again into something that the Potter desired. Does that sound familiar? It's what the Bible says in Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was given the opportunity to go watch it for himself so he could see with his own eyes. God would use it as a picture even as you saw with your own eyes. You see, once in a while God will allow us. They don't happen often. And some have greater crises than others. But God is fashioning the clay. There are times when God is just dealing with us personally, intimately. And He wants us to stop and put everything on the table.

He wants our whole heart committed to Him afresh and anew. He wants us to take us to a whole new level of commitment, a whole new level of dedication, a whole new level of service and readiness and ministry like it wasn't before. He wants to fashion us into something new by using the crisis, by getting our attention, allowing something into our lives so that we might turn our attention toward Him. And we look to this person and that person can't help.

It only makes things worse. And we look to this person and we expect that person would—but no, that person doesn't help. And so what do we find? We find only God. All I have is God. I know all you have is God. God has used this crisis to reveal all you have is God. It's always been that way. And God is using crisis to pull from us and draw from us something that we didn't even know was there.

We didn't even know the depth of spiritual life that God was wanting from us. I think of Abraham. You know, every great man and woman that God has used in the Bible has lived this same story out. I think of Abraham, a man of worship, a man of dedication. You know what he's known for? He's known for building altars. Why? Because he was a man of worship. He loved God. He was committed. He was such a gracious man.

Remember there was a little division between him and Lot? He says, "Man, take whatever you want. I'm satisfied with whatever God gives me. I don't need to choose. I'll let God choose for me." What a gracious man! What a man of worship! What a man of integrity! He loved God, built many altars, a life filled with worship and sacrifice. But then there's that time in this life of worship and sacrifice that God says, "You sacrifice, Abraham. You're a man of sacrifice. You love to worship me. Give me your son."

"Sacrifice your son to me. I want you to do it with your own hand." Abraham took his son and walked toward sacrifice. I mean, what an experience! Such a different worship experience, wouldn't you agree? Such a unique crisis in his life. I could never think of such a thing. And yet through it, God took Abraham farther and farther by revealing to him, "No, no, no, Abraham. It wasn't about sacrifice. It was about me supplying." How would he have ever learned that—the depth of it, not theologically, but the depth of God's supply—until he felt complete total loss?

If God said to sacrifice my son, I'm sacrificing my son, and what a walk up the mountain that must have been. I think of Moses, a man who sensed his calling at a very young age. He's navigating through the circumstances of his life, he senses his calling, and he comes to the place of conclusion where he says, "You know, I know my calling." And he sees a fight taking place. He says, "I'm a deliverer. I'm a rescuer. I'm a protector." All these things God put in Moses.

He didn't make them up. God revealed them in Moses. That's who I am. I'm a deliverer. You won't do that to the children of Israel. God has called me. And what does he do? He takes that Egyptian; he takes him out. He looks to the left, he looks to the right, wipes out the Egyptian. But he forgot to look up because it wasn't God's heart for him to take out that Egyptian. And what happened? Forty years. Forty years on the backside of the desert.

Moses loved God, served Him with his whole heart, really wanting to worship Him and hear God's voice. And yet he came to a place of crisis with the burning bush before him. A point of decision, a point of negotiation in his own heart. He looks at it and it begins to speak. But God is using the situation in his life behind the scenes to fashion a man of deliverance, not for just one Israeli but for the nation, so that God would use the nation to bring Messiah.

"Moses, I want all of you," God says. "Moses, something that you and I have never had before, I want you to trust me. Go and deliver my people." I think of David in his young age. A young boy. He loved God, worshipped God. You can see the depth of his relationship with God through the Psalms. Just the depth of the richness of his entirety of his life. I mean, David's the guy that the Bible says what? He's a man after God's own heart.

Don't you want that written for you? If there was a page in the Bible with your name on it, don't you want somewhere on there, "I got a heart for God"? I know I'm not perfect; David wasn't perfect. I know I'm a man, I know I'm a woman, I know I'm weak, but if you're going to write a page, if you're going to write a Scripture or a paragraph about me, God, there's got to be a sentence that my heart is after You. Do you really want that?

Because through that comes a time of crisis. For David, it happened as a kid. It happened really early. He looks up over the hill. He brings them to a valley. He looks down upon the valley, and there he is, the man from Gath, the giant Goliath. He challenges all that David has ever worshipped. He challenges and blasphemes the God of David and calls them to battle. And you know David already knows he's killed some lions and he's killed some bears, but now he's here facing Goliath on his own, alone, him and God.

And you know what God was doing? He was asking more from David even as a child. He was asking more. He was asking for a depth of commitment. And how did He do it but by crisis? "I want all of you, David, even as a young boy." I think of Joshua. I mean, a close study of the characters in the Bible, you're going to—we could go name after name after name of crises in their lives. I think of Joshua. A man that's been around a lot of military campaigns.

He is a very well-trained military man, a faithful, loyal, successful man in the military. He knows how to fight. He knows how to strategize. He's been involved in a lot of strong, high-level leadership decisions. He's led Israel in many victories. And yet there we find him in Joshua looking over Jericho, afraid and concerned. And there he is in the evening and he's met by the man with the sword, remember? And he says, "Who are you? Who are you for? Are you for them or for us?"

And the man says, the angel of the Lord says, "No, I'm here representing—I'm not on either side. I'm here for the Lord. I'm here for the Lord, Joshua. It's just me and you. I'm not on anyone's side. I'm on God's side." And he stands before him as one sent by God. And here Joshua is that man of worship, a man of faithful integrity. And though his worship had been regular and his worship had been routine, yet there are those times when God wants more.

He uses these times for His purposes. And it's going to be alright, Joshua. Just go and fight. It's going to be alright. You've got this battle, you've got the fear, you've got the concern. I just want you to know the battle is mine. It belongs to me. Just go fight, Joshua. Go do it. It's going to be alright. There's victory in the fight. There's victory. Just go. Don't cower away, don't run away. Go fight. Go forward.

Guest (Male): Well, there are many examples of people in the Bible that experienced a crisis, and it served as God's tool to bring them to a whole new level. He'll do the same for us as we trust Him. This is Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed Taylor. We just heard a message from First Samuel titled "The Crisis is God's Tool to Get More of You." You can hear it again at aboundinggraceradio.com.

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