Can You Hear Me Now?
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 9/9/2012
There was a little boy who was kneeling by his bed with his mom to say his nighttime prayers. About half way through, he began to shout to the top of his lungs, “Dear God, I’ve been real good this year so please let me get a new bicycle for my birthday.” His mom said, “Son, God’s not deaf; you don’t need to yell.” He said, “God’s not deaf, but Grandma is and she’s in the next room.”
Now, there’s a little boy who knew how to get his prayers heard!
If you’re just joining us, last Sunday I started a brief series that I’m calling Can You Hear Me Now? In it we’re examining the privilege and power of prayer. In Luke 11, which we discussed last week, Jesus’ disciples ask him “Lord, teach us how to pray?” And that’s Jesus does. He gives them a pattern to follow, which we know as the Lord’s Prayer. Then he gives them a parable about persistence in prayer. And finally he promises that if they are persistent in prayer, then they will find the answer—and the answer is not the things of God or a favor from God, but God himself.
Like I said last week, prayer isn’t a secret formula to get things from God; rather, prayer is the secret to experiencing real intimacy with God. Just as the best part of a journey is often the “getting there,” the sweetest part of prayer is the offering of it.
But what happens when your prayers turn sour? What happens when you pray and pray, but life doesn’t seem to be getting any better? What do you do when it feels like God isn’t listening? Or, if he is listening, he just doesn’t care? Now, I know it’s not very “Christian” sounding and you may not want to admit feeling that way, but I think if we’re honest most of us have been there at some point in our lives.
Hannah knows all about that.
Hannah’s story is one of heartache and hopelessness. But God knew that her story could touch the hearts of weary souls a thousand generations later looking toward heaven and wondering, “Can you hear me now?” And so, God tells her story for us in the opening pages of First Samuel. I’d like to invite you to ponder her story, and as you do, perhaps, discover your own. Her story starts off with a problem.
• HER PROBLEM
Life is full of problems, isn’t it? We encounter problems on an almost daily basis. Some of them are easily resolved or overcome, but others can eat away at the very core of our being. That’s the kind of problem that Hannah had.
Hannah was the wife of a man named Elkanah. But she wasn’t his only wife. Elkanah had another wife named Peninnah, which itself poses all kinds of problems. But here’s how Scripture sums up Hannah’s primary problem: “Peninnah had children, but Hannah did not” (1 Samuel 1:3 NLT). Hannah knew that children were a gift from the Lord and more than anything else, Hannah just wanted to know the joys of motherhood.
If you’ve ever struggled to become pregnant or even had to deal with the heartache of losing a baby during pregnancy, I’m sure you can identify. And having to live with Peninnah and her pugnacious progeny only made matters worse. There’s no keener reminder of what she didn’t have than someone else’s swollen belly. And of course, Peninnah insisted on adding insult to injury every chance she had. The Bible says, “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” (1 Samuel 1:6-7 NLT).
Year after year after year. Peninnah would gloat and Hannah would wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Doesn’t God love me? Why would God give children to a mean spirited hag and leave me feeling like my womb—hollow and barren.”
Maybe your problems have nothing to do with children. Maybe your problem is that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t make your marriage work. Maybe your problem is that no matter how much time has passed your heart still breaks when you see an empty place at the table where your loved one use to sit. Maybe your problem is that people who should have loved you didn’t. Maybe your problem is that you try to drown your problems at the bottom of a bottle. Maybe you’re tired of taking pills, tired of doctor’s offices, tired of being tired. Whether it’s bills you can’t pay, people you can’t please, habits you can’t break, failures you can’t forget, or a future you can’t face—we all have problems. And sometimes those problems can kick us in the stomach and knock us to our knees. But, as someone once said, “When life knocks you on your knees… well, that’s the best position in which to pray, isn’t it?”
And that’s just what Hannah did. Let’s take a look at her prayer.
• HER PRAYER
The Bible says that each year Hannah, Elkanah, Peninnah and the whole family would travel to the Tabernacle in Shiloh to worship and make their annual sacrifices. And each year Hannah would pray for a child. One year in particular, this is how it went:
Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord. 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.” (1 Samuel 1:10-11 NLT)
Now, it isn’t so much what she prays for that I think is important to us, but the way that she prays. Right away, you’ll notice that Hannah prayed persistently. “She kept on praying to the Lord,” it says in the next verse (vs. 11). Hannah returned every year with the same request. How often do you suppose she prayed in between? Every week? Every day? Hannah showed the same kind of persistence that Jesus taught his disciples to have. Even though she had gone years thinking, perhaps, that God wasn’t listening, or that God didn’t care, or that she wasn’t worthy—she kept on praying. She never gave up on prayer. She never gave up on God. Neither should you.
Especially when God feels distant or when you feel like giving up; that’s when it’s most important to draw near to God, to seek him in prayer and to do so passionately.
In addition to praying persistently, Hannah also prayed passionately. The Bible says that “Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord” (vs. 10). She didn’t hold back. She poured out her heart to God. She laid everything out on the table. That’s what we need to do when we pray—especially when we’re heartbroken or hopeless. Just tell God how you feel; then, through the pain and prayers, your heart can begin to heal. And I know that it can be difficult to find words to express how you feel at times, but that’s okay.
You can be like the little girl whose dad was walking passed her room at bedtime. He overheard his daughter laying bed with her hands folded saying the alphabet in hushed tones. “What are you doing?” he asked. “I’m praying, daddy,” she said. “But why are you saying the alphabet?” He asked. “Sometimes, I can’t think of the right words, so I just say all the letters and let God put them together however He thinks they should go,” she answered.
God does that for us, you know? The Bible says, “The Holy Spirit helps us with our daily problems and in our praying. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how to pray as we should; but the Holy Spirit prays for us with such feeling that it cannot be expressed in words” (Romans 8:26 TLB).
So whatever your problem is, don’t stop praying about it! As Charles Stanley has said, “The shorted distance between our problems and a solution, is the distance between our knees and the floor." Pray persistently and pray passionately. And as you pray, take comfort in the promises of God. That’s what Hannah did.
• HER PROMISE
Through an almost humorous chain of events, Hannah receives a promise from the Lord. While Hannah was weeping and praying in the Tabernacle, the local priest Eli saw her and she was so overwhelmed emotionally that Eli mistook her for a stumbling drunk. So she replies to Eli, “No, sir, I have not drunk any wine or beer. I am a deeply troubled woman, and I was telling the Lord about all my problems. Don't think I am an evil woman. I have been praying because I have many troubles and am very sad” (1 Samuel 1:15-16 NCV).
Seeing her sincerity, Eli promised that her petition would be granted: “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him” (vs. 17 NIV). Hannah clung to that promise and it changed everything for her. It gave her comfort and hope. She was no longer depressed. He started eating again. And within a year, she was able to hold her first for four children.
While God doesn’t promise to give us everything we pray for, he does make a promise that—if we will cling to it—can change everything for us. As Charles Spurgeon has said, “This is the best promise of life!” It’s found in Romans 8:28 and here’s what it says: “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28 NIV).
This is God’s promise to you.
Problems come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of intensity. Some are mind-numbing and earth-shaking. Others are two-bit trifles; although, sometimes the smaller problems upset us more than the larger ones. I’ve had my share of ups and downs in life; they aren’t over. As long as we’re breathing air, we’re going to have good days and bad days. And sometimes the bad ones are really bad.
But consider this: What if you knew it would all turn out well, whatever you are facing? What if this promise (Romans 8:28) really is more than a cliché? What if it really worked? What if it always worked? What if there were no problems beyond its reach? Would that make a difference to you?
Forty years ago, Joni Earekson Tada became a quadriplegic as a result of a diving accident. Stuck in a hospital in Maryland, Joni would listen for hours as her friends read her stories from the Bible. Her favorite was the story of a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Jesus encountered him lying by the Pool of Bethesda and healed him. Like the man in the story, Joni pictured herself lying on a straw mat by the Pool of Bethesda and she prayed for hours on end that God would heal her as he healed that man twenty centuries earlier. When God didn’t, for a long time she felt like God wasn’t listening or that he didn’t care.
Thirty years later, though, she and her husband Ken took a trip to the Holy Lands and one of the sites that they visited was the Pool of Bethesda. While resting by the guardrails overlooking those now dry, dusty ruins, Joni was struck by the realization that God hadn’t given her the response she was looking for all those years ago; he’d given her one far better. Overwhelmed by emotion, she began to thank God for not healing her. Because if he had, she never would have discovered the secret to intimacy with God, nor would she have an international ministry that has touched the lives of thousands. It was in the prison of her wheelchair that she learned the true power and purpose of prayer.
All things work together for the good of those who love God.
All things. Above and around us God directs a grander story, written by his hand, orchestrated by his will, unveiled according to his calendar. And you are a part of it. That is God’s promise to you. Cling to that promise. Let it change the way you view your problems and never stop praying.
Conclusion:
So what do we do when it feels like God isn’t listening? Let’s determine to do what Hannah did. She told God about all her problems. She prayed persistently and passionately. She clung to the promises of God. In the end, Hannah—like Joni Earekson Tada—discovered something even greater than the answer she was looking for; she discovered God himself. And that’s what God wants for each one of us. Through life’s problems and pain, he wants us to reach out to him and discover that God is not far from each one of us.
Invitation:
I don’t know what you’re going through right now, but whatever your problem is, don’t stop praying about it! Pour out your heart to God and take comfort in the promises of Scripture. If you’d like someone to pray with you or for the whole church to pray for you, then come forward now while stand and sing…
