{This is Part 4 in a series on the Life of Hannah.
For the past three weeks we have been gleaning truth about God from the life of a woman with serious problems.
Hannah is a woman with serious problems whose joy was ultimately in the Lord.
Hannah knew the Lord sovereignly governs over all and providentially guides all circumstances. She also knew God graciously gives all things and we see that Hannah entrusted her son to her Provider.
God desires our hearts to be fully devoted to Him.
Hannah has earnestly poured out her soul and promised her son. Eli, first misunderstanding her, stands corrected, and tells her “Go in peace, and let the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.”
Hannah, the woman of grace, replies, “Let your servant find favor in your eyes.”
Hannah knows God will pour out His grace. Her circumstances have not yet changed, but she went her way and ate and her face was no longer sad.
They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord. They return to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife and the Lord remembered her: she conceived and bore a son and called his name Samuel. She said, “I have asked for Him from the LORD”
She sees how God graciously provides and she trusts in His faithfulness to be able to keep her vow.
For all these years she wanted a son. He granted her petition and she would give him back to the Lord. He had given her a son; she could trust Him to secure her future.
Hannah doesn’t hold too tightly to what the Lord gives her. She enjoys the Provider more than the provision.
In the joy of the Lord, Hannah finds strength to move forward in what God had purposed for her: to give her son back to God.
Taking her focus off her problems and fixing her gaze on the Lord, Hannah trusts in the God who pours out His grace.
Do you remember these words?
“He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father's full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit, His grace has no measure;Hannah knows God’s grace.
His power no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.”
Hannah takes her son to minister to the Lord in a place where the priests—the two sons of Eli--were worthless men that did not know the Lord, doing evil things and their sin was very great in the sight of the Lord: they treated the offering of the Lord with contempt and they “lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting”.
And this was where her boy Samuel would grow in the presence of the Lord.
Although this was the vow Hannah had made to the Lord, Elkanah went along with it telling her “to do what seems best to you.”
So after Samuel was weaned, Hannah brings him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh and presents him there along with her offering. She has come back with an apparent peace offering and she presents the offering. She, who has known the peace—the wholeness of the Lord—, partakes of the feast now with praise and thanksgiving.
Hannah, a woman with serious problems, loves the Lord, surrenders herself to Him and He pours out His grace in her life and she finds peace and joy in Him.
God continually and graciously gives us all things to demonstrate that He is good and only in Him will our hearts truly find rest.
Take time this week and consider God’s grace in your life and come back next when we will conclude looking at the life of Hannah—a woman with serious problems.
{Continue to Part 5 here.}
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