Heroine Hannah

I had a great day yesterday, meeting Mark Batterson and hearing about the journey that God's been leading him on in his church and getting inspired to chase some lions on my own. If you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it. Pastor Jeff Leake took some really great notes on the morning and evening session. If you'd like to read it, check out his blog.

At the beginning of his talk, Mark asked if anyone had Bible heroes, people they looked up to in the Bible, identifying with their story and growing from it. Abraham was probably the first person that came to my mind, but a close second would have to be Hannah.

I was reading I Sam. 1-3 earlier this week and I was struck again with the story behind her story.

Hannah had this gut-level desire, this passion on her heart that was at the very core of her being. She wanted a child. A desire that was a good desire, a normal desire, a desire that God placed there. So if He did that, why would He "close her womb?" (I Sam. 1:5)

I really think it had a lot to do with the journey that Hannah had to walk through that's recorded in these first few chapters. After so many years of wrestling with this desire, she prays this prayer. "God, if you give me a son, then 'I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life.'" Pretty crazy prayer. Honestly, it never made sense to me. You spend all this time praying for a son, and then if you finally get him, you take him to the temple at a very young age to live for the rest of his life?!? Doesn't seem like a great solution to me. Why would Hannah do that?

I think through her journey, God brought Hannah to the point of brokenness, that place where you have to be brutally honest about how you feel, what you think, who you are. That place where you aren't afraid to tell God exactly what you think about where you are (and maybe even the apparent lack of concern or presence on His part). I don't think that's something done lightly, but I do think it's something that needs to be done. If we don't, we're really just living in a state of denial, carrying around this burden of doubt and fear and despair. Once it's honestly acknowledged, we can be free of this baggage. We can lay it all out there and then let God take it away and move on.

So when Hannah did that at the Temple that day, she realized that her desire for a child was so much more than a child. Sure, it's a natural maternal thing to desire a child not to mention that not having a child at that time in her culture made her a freakish pariah with a stigma of sin on her (as well as a very unpleasant living situation). I really think that once she got past the point of brokenness, however, she realized that this desire for a child was far more than a temporal solution to these problems. Only God could heal those holes in her heart. She desired a child as a way that she could bless God and glorify Him. Her prayer changed from asking God for a solution for her problems to asking for an opportunity to be part of the solution for God's problems.

So when He granted her a son, and she gave him back to God, she was truly delighted because that child was the living picture of all she had dreamed. She could give him back to God because that's what she truly desired to do. And isn't it cool how God continued to bless her beyond what she could have imagined, taking care of all those other "problems" with another 5 kids after Samuel?!?

So many of the desires that we have, those for a significant job, relationship, family . . . they're all great things, natural desires that I really think that God places on our hearts. Too many times, however, I get more caught up in a desire and what its fulfillment could do for me rather than asking God what He wants to do through me. I pray He really would give me the desires of His heart and fulfill them in a way that glorifies and magnifies Him.