PRAYER… The HEART of The Matter

Rend your heart and not your garments. (Joel 2:13)

Praying Through Deficits

1 Samuel 1

Deficiency | Lack | Disadvantage | Loss

Peninnah would taunt Hannah and make fun of her because the LORD had kept her from having children. Year after year it was the same—Peninnah would taunt Hannah as they went to the Tabernacle. Each time, Hannah would be reduced to tears and would not even eat.

And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb.

Year after year it was the same.

Hannah would be reduced to tears and would not even eat. Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the LORD. As she was praying to the LORD, Eli watched her. Seeing her lips moving but hearing no sound, he thought she had been drinking.

“For I have been praying out of great anguish and sorrow. I am very discouraged.”

‘The LORD had closed her womb.’

Where is God in relation to our deficits?

And she made this vow: “O LORD of Heaven’s Armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be yours for his entire lifetime, and as a sign that he has been dedicated to the LORD, his hair will never be cut.”

You cannot divorce the commitment Hannah made from the deficit she experienced – nor the passion of her praying.

“Go in peace! May the God of Israel grant the request you have asked of him.”

Then she went back and began to eat again, and she was no longer sad.

Everything changes when we hear the Holy Spirit.

Before they returned home, Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, “May the LORD give you other children to take the place of this one she gave to the LORD.” And the LORD blessed Hannah, and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, Samuel grew up in the presence of the LORD.

• Now in those days messages from the LORD were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon.
• Word from the LORD was rare in those days; revelatory visions were infrequent.
• In those days the word of the LORD was rare and prophetic visions were not widespread.

This is where two deficits collided. Hannah needed a son. God needed a national prophet. By meeting Hannah’s deficit, God gets his prophet. God uses one deficit to fulfil another deficit.

What is God up to in my deficit?

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the ones who see things differently, they change things.  They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.” – Steve Jobs

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” Exodus 3:1-3

So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

• I will now turn aside
• I must turn aside
• Let me turn aside
• I will go over
• I must go see it

So he thought, “Why isn’t this bush burning up? I must go over there and see this strange sight.”

I must go over there.

A CHANGE OF POSITIONS

‘THERE’ represents something beyond ‘HERE.’

That risk was discovering something new that called him out of and beyond the life routine he had settled into.

Arresting the attention of Moses

“Please send someone else.”

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified… Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” Luke 2:8-14

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

The crucial moment was when everything returned to the way it was before the angels appeared.

‘The shepherds said to one another.’ By our conversation, we affirm or talk ourselves out of what we just experienced.

“Let’s go to Bethlehem.”

“…and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

This is the critical moment. It is not when we hear; it is the conversation that follows what we heard, and the willingness inspired by faith to leave where we are in favour of where what we heard is taking us.

I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return.

Entrust to God all THAT IS while moving forward to all THAT IS NOT YET.