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Pour It Out
Contributed by David Dunn on Oct 20, 2025 (message contributor)
Summary: Faith grows strongest when poured out honestly. God meets the raw heart with peace before the answer and compassion after pain.
Introduction — When Words Run Out
There are moments when life squeezes you so hard that words just stop working.
You go to pray, but the sentences fall apart halfway through.
You move your lips, but no sound comes out.
That’s Hannah’s story.
1 Samuel says she prayed silently—only her lips moved—and Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk.
But Hannah wasn’t intoxicated; she was heartbroken.
Her prayer wasn’t polished; it was poured out.
And that is often where real faith begins—not in composure, but in surrender.
We clean up our prayers for public consumption. We choose tidy words and polite tones. But the God who formed our hearts already knows the mess inside them.
And He says: Bring it. Pour it out.
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I. It Wasn’t a Bargain — It Was a Breakdown
As children, we’re told not to make deals with God.
“Lord, if You just do this for me, I promise I’ll…”
We imagine Hannah doing the same—offering God a deal for a son. But look closer: her vow isn’t a contract; it’s the language of desperation.
She doesn’t approach God as a negotiator. She comes as a woman unraveling—pouring out her soul before the Lord.
Everyone around her misunderstood.
Peninnah mocked her.
Elkanah minimized her pain.
Eli scolded her.
But Hannah just kept praying.
She had no audience but God, no plan but honesty, no eloquence but tears.
That’s not bargaining. That’s trust.
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II. Peace Before Provision
Then comes the turning point—verse 18.
> “She went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.”
Pause there. Nothing in her world had changed.
She wasn’t pregnant yet. She had no sign, no proof.
But she had peace.
Something shifted inside her heart.
She had handed over what she could no longer carry.
She had released the weight into hands strong enough to hold it.
This is one of Scripture’s quiet miracles: peace arriving before the answer.
That’s what prayer does—it doesn’t just move the hand of God; it steadies the heart of the believer.
Hannah’s face was no longer sad because she had met Presence, not because she had received a promise.
Sometimes, the miracle you need most is not the one you asked for—it’s the one that happens inside you while you wait.
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III. Don’t Be an Eli
Now let’s look at Eli for a moment.
The old priest, seasoned in ritual but out of touch with grace, mistakes Hannah’s prayer for drunkenness.
He scolds her in the sanctuary:
“How long will you make a spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine!”
He doesn’t see lament; he sees disorder.
He doesn’t hear pain; he hears noise.
It’s possible to be so religious that we lose the ability to recognize real faith when it weeps in front of us.
Church, let’s not be Eli.
Let’s never shame what we don’t understand.
Let’s not confuse reverence with restraint, or quietness with faith.
When someone’s grief shows up in the sanctuary, we are not their critic—we are their cover.
Our job is to say, “You are safe here. God can handle your tears.”
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IV. When Theology Meets Tears
There’s a strange theology we sometimes practice—the one that says faith and sadness can’t occupy the same heart.
That once you really trust God, you’ll never feel despair.
But the Bible doesn’t support that version of faith.
Read the Psalms. Walk with Jeremiah. Watch Jesus in Gethsemane.
Faith doesn’t erase sorrow—it sanctifies it.
Hannah’s prayer teaches that lament isn’t the opposite of faith—it’s faith refusing to let go.
She doesn’t say, “I’m fine.”
She says, “I’m vexed. I’m anxious. I’m undone.”
And somehow, God calls that worship.
If you’ve ever been too tired to pray polite prayers, too angry to sing, too broken to fake a smile—congratulations. You’re in Hannah’s company.
You’re still in the presence of God.
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V. The Breaking That Opens the Heart
When God finally gives Hannah her son, she doesn’t forget her pain.
Her song in chapter two isn’t shallow celebration—it’s deep theology.
> “The Lord raises the poor from the dust,
lifts the needy from the ash heap,
and seats them with princes.”
That’s not the song of a spoiled favorite. That’s the anthem of a survivor.
She’s the first in Scripture to sing about God’s mercy for the broken, the forgotten, the humiliated.
And centuries later, Mary of Nazareth will echo her tune:
> “My soul magnifies the Lord… He has lifted up the humble.”
Both women knew what it meant to have God meet them in weakness.
Both discovered that broken hearts can become instruments of grace.
Hannah’s heartbreak cracked her open to compassion for all who suffer.
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VI. Under the Branches
Let me tell you a picture that stays with me.
A teenage girl once said that when her house was filled with sickness and sorrow, she would run to the churchyard, climb a big old tree, and sit there in the branches.