Faith: Trusting God Through Prayer 1 Samuel 1:7-20

I feel like the story of Hannah is one I connect with. Not because she and I have suffered the exact same situation, but because I feel a connection to her heart, to her longing.  I get this image in my mind that we would have been friends if we lived in the same time and place.
Sooo.... Here's the passage (with Verse 6 included because it reads differently in the NIV than it does in the translation on the app):

6 And because the LORD had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. 7 This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the LORD, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. 8 Elkanah her husband would say to her, "Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?" 9 Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the LORD's temple. 10 In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD. 11 And she made a vow, saying, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head." 12 As she kept on praying to the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. 13 Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk 14 and said to her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine." 15 "Not so, my lord," Hannah replied, "I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the LORD. 16 Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief." 17 Eli answered, "Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him." 18 She said, "May your servant find favor in your eyes." Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast. 19 Early the next morning they arose and worshiped before the LORD and then went back to their home at Ramah. Elkanah lay with Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her. 20 So in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, "Because I asked the LORD for him."
 

I think the thing that sticks out to me the most is the attitude change that Hannah underwent after praying.  Before, she was bitter in her soul, filled with anguish and longing,so much so, that she wouldn't even eat the portions her husband gave her. She is so troubled in her spirit that the priest did not consider her behavior normal. :-) But after she poured her heart out to God,  Scripture says that she went away, ate something, and that her face was no longer downcast. 

That's the thing that just stuck out to me best.  Hannah's faith in God changed her attitude toward her circumstances.  She did not continue to dwell on what broke her heart, but instead walked away in good spirits, and she did so without a promise that she would recieve what she asked for. Perhaps there is a link between faith an attitude?

Genesis 22:1-14 Faith: Trusting God with Everything

Okay, This is going to have to be quick (hopefully) because I have to get some sleep before work. But I started this 30 day Bible Reading Plan that has different topics. I chose the topic of Faith, because I started reading a new book yesterday called When You Don't See His Plan: The Nadine Hennesey Story by Nadine Hennesey with Rebecca Baker.  I got through the first chapter while waiting for my clothes to dry and I found myself longing to have a faith like the faith I was reading about, just in that first chapter. 

I imagine that my faith has always been rather small, and I don't want it to be that way anymore.  Lack of faith immobilizes people, not just to do God's work, but in many areas of their life.  Say I never leave my current job because I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life, I'm not struggling to make ends meet. I finally have a savings account, I'm helping my parents out... I'm supporting myself quite well.... But my job is not where I want to be permanently.  Will I ever be able to leave this job?  Not if I don't have the faith that God can and will take care of me no matter where I am. You get the point.  I want to increase my faith.  Through Prayer and Study, It will happen.

So... onto Genesis 22:1-14

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”“Here I am,” he replied.
² Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. ⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵ He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
⁶ Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, ⁷ Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
⁸ Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
⁹ When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
¹² “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
¹³ Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
 

I wanted to post the passage for easy reference. :-)  So I was reading through this and there were a few things that stuck out to me.  Since I seem to have a good memory for Scripture... or maybe it is just from my Bible Quizzing days... I recalled a few things from other parts of Scripture that I want to mention.  For Example:

There seems to be a bit of problem with Gods instructions to Abraham because just a chapter earlier, God said this to Abraham:

But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. (Genesis 21:12)
 

Dead men dont give offspring... do they? (Well, maybe with todays technology it might be possible) But the point is: this would have been something that set off an alarm in my mind.  I imagine myself even arguing with God, "But God, You SAID!"  But Abraham doesn't do that.  Actually, Scripture doesn't tell us what Abrahams thoughts were, at least not in this passage (more on that in a moment). It simply says that Abraham left early the next morning to carry out God's request. 

What was Abraham thinking? This was his son!  The same same born to him and Sarah in their old age, whom God had promised that through him would become a great nation. Had God changed his mind? His plans?  Was he incapable? Was he a liar? No. Was Abraham submitting to the idea that God gives and God takes away, and for some reason God had decided to take Isaac away?   No, I don't think that's it either.   We get the bigger picture to know that God was testing Abraham, but what must have been going on in Abrahams mind?

I think we find our answer to this question in the faith hall of fame: Hebrews 11:17-19

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, ¹⁸ even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned ¹⁹ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death
 

 This is a faith beyond the idea that God would raise his son, but a faith that God would still hold true to his previous promises enabled him to believe God would raise his son.

So I've been pondering this faith.  How does someone come to have such faith?   I reasoned it out this way:  Faith comes from trust. Abraham trusted God. We trust because we believe we are loved, and when we believe we are loved we those who love us hold good intentions toward us.  Love comes from knowing God.  Knowing God comes from having a relationship with Him. Our Faith is expressed through obedience.


I'd like to explore this more, and maybe even write out a small group lesson or Bible study guide on it, but, I'll have to ponder this more later, because I'm now looking at 6 hours of sleep.  So that's all for now.

We live like we don't need God.

I have no desire to be here (at Bethel). I have no desire to finish my degree. But it's not just a lack of desire, I desire to be somewhere else. I desire to be doing something besides what I'm doing right now.

What's to be said for a change of heart? If I stay at Bethel I what do I gain? If I leave, what do I lose? On the other hand... What do I gain by leaving? What do I lose by staying?

Here we go again.

What is gained if my ministry stays in the church? What is lost? Doing youth ministry doesn't necessarily mean that I have to do ministry in the walls of a building... but I wonder how much more effective ministry would be if I just did life with people... The way Halter and Smay describe it in The Tangible Kingdom.

No programs. No agenda. Just life.

I want that.

What purposelessness overtakes my present plan. Why?

I want to live spontaneously. I want to live the daring adventure of being totally sold out for Christ. I want to be radical, off the wall, fully committed to the God I love.

I don't want to have a back up plan...

You know what breaks my heart? We... as Christians, or American Christians... or I don't even know... don't have it in us to live radically.

Is it a faith issue?

Why are we so addicted to security?

I'm not seeking that we should be irresponsible, only that we should live in radical dependence on God, and we don't.

If Scripture says:

"Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26)

Then:

Why do we have savings accounts? Why do we have emergency funds? Why do we have life insurance? Why do we save up for retirement?

If Scripture says:

"Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)

Then:

Why is it that we don't even try to heal the sick or to cast out demons or move mountains? Jesus goes on to say, right after this very passage: "I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it." (John 14:13-14)

If Scripture says:

"Jesus answered him, 'You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above...'" (John 19:11)

Then:
Why are we so flippin' worried and horrified that Obama is going to be our next president? Even if another Hitler should rise up, what is that to us? If we know Christ then we know what we ought to do. We need to pray for our leaders. We need to pray for our country. We need to share the love of Christ with the world.

You know... Sometimes God doesn't seem real to me. Sometimes, at best, he seems absent and univolved. But I think that's because I live as though I don't need him. He is the genie who might grant my wish if I pray long enough, hard enough, and do the right stuff.

I'm so tired of that kind of living. I want to really, truly live like I need God in my life, because I do, and I wish there were other people who would do the same. I wish there were other people around me who would committ to living radically.

I don't think many people realize that their faith does effect others around them.

I don't know if this blogpost is really going anywhere right now. I just know that something has got to change.

The Secret Message of Jesus

I just finished reading The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren... I don't know what to say about it.   I was fascinated, and challenged.  It was truly a challenging read for me. I felt tension, there was... collision.   I've been processing the book as I've been reading it. That's why it's taken me a few weeks to get through it, but I'm still trying to process it, trying to sort it out... It's not a new message, but I have a new understanding of it. It's a mystery unveiled. 

I've been finding myself rethinking a lot of things; The Kingdom, ministry, my own relationship with God and my role in the kingdom, who I am, who I want to be... gosh, there's so much and it was so overwhelming. I felt like I was going mad these past few weeks!

And then there's a moment of clarity. I don't know that I'm seeing everything yet, or even that I'm seeing what I am seeing as I should, but for the moment, the tension is gone and I have peace.  I don't feel confused or frustrated... I'm actually kind of excited.  I'm excited that the Kingdom of God is not just a future hope, but a present reality and I have the option to be a part of it.  I want to be a part of it. 

I spent some time talking with my mom about what I've been reading and is intrigued.  She put The Secret Message of Jesus on her reading list. 

Dangerous Faith

So thoughts have invaded my mind relentlessly. There have a been a few really good things that have happened today. In a sense I feel relieved, but at the same time, I feel a little... well, restless I guess. I realized something today, and now I feel like I simply don't know what to do with what I've realized, so I'll just talk about it here I guess and see if anyone has any thoughts... or sympathies. I mean, I guess I really don't need advise or anything because I know I'm strong and capable of working through pretty much anything (well, not me, but God in me), so yeah, maybe what I really need is just to 'blog' about it where I know people can read it and understand or something.... I don't know what I want.
Anyway, when I got home today I went to my room to think because I needed to process a few things, and one of the things I started thinking about was how much having this internship this summer has impacted my theology, my relationships, my ministry... really my entire life. I have a sense of knowing that I am not the same person now that I was when I came into this. It's like there has been something in me that has been lying dormant, something in me that has been oppressed and repressed, shot down, crushed, destroyed and taken from me. Something that my heart has been crying out for since I came to the faith. Something feirce and untamed (barbaric, haha). Something I couldn't fully understand or comprehend until I saw it and experienced it. But now that something in me... it's been set free.
To explain what happened next is going to require me to backtrack a little and explain exactly what I was doing. When I came back to my room. I was tired, fatigued, exhausted, but my mind was active and racing. I was actually talking to God when I was thinking. I started out talking to God about something that is actually just between me and another person so I won't go into that, but then I started thinking about other things and I found myself asking questions, going over what I did understand, begging God to soften my stubborn heart and give me a little clarity. While I was doing this though I was laying in my bed, if anyone walked in they probably would have thought I was sleeping, but I wasn't. I was fully awake, probably more praying in the Spirit than anything.
What happened next scared me a little. So (being fully awake) an image, a picture, like a clip from a movie flashed in my mind and it was really short, like a second, but that's not what scared me, it's what I saw, what I experienced in what I saw that scared me. Its funny how words could not have done for me what seeing did... Anyway, I saw myself, well, it was more like I was actually there, I didn't see myself, I was seeing through my perspective and I was flying and there was someone or something with me, I don't know who it was I just had a sense that it was with me. But I was up there in the air looking down, there were green trees and feilds as far as I could see, and there was a long train. And then I suddenly realized that I was flying, there was nothing around me, nothing holding me up, nothing to keep me from falling, but I wasn't falling, there was a sense of glorious, uninhibited freedom, but I panicked. Yeah, I saw all of this in a matter of a single second. But when it ended I knew immediately why I panicked. I had nothing tangible that I could hold on to and I desperately wanted the comfort of walking on solid ground. The freedom to fly was too much, too new, too fast, and I wanted the limitations back. I wanted what I'd always known up to that point. It was comfortable.
And then I realized that what I saw was speaking directly to what I was feeling about being set free, the feelings I could not explain when people would ask me what was wrong, that I didn't know how to tell people what it was... that something crying out deep within my spirit. It broke free! Answers... Clarity... Freedom... And that's scary. If you're really honest with yourself. That is scary.
Knowing deep within you that theres something higher and bigger than yourself out there and it's so important. Having a sense that something is not right with the way things are. Desperately chasing it, feeling like it's just out of your grasp, you don't understand it. You want it, you need it. It's just important. It's so so important. And then suddenly, it's like God says Okay. It's time for you to understand, it's time for you to see, it's time for you to know.
And then it's like too, much too, soon poured out, trying to take it all in, comprehend it, organize it, process it, make it make sense, and then respond to it. But then you get stuck, scared. Whoa, God this is too big for me, I'm so small. But you know... you know in your heart this is right, this is real, this matters. This is what you have been waiting for and it's here.
It pushed you out of your comfort zone, in a sense, it has the capacity to make you feel as though you've been alienated from those who have not reached this point because they don't understand. You want the comfort of walking on solid ground, but you don't want to go back to those limitations. You look ahead but you can't see what's ahead of you. You look behind you and know you can't go back to it. So you push ahead knowing that you can't just stand there, knowing that you have to trust something outside of yourself to guide you. Knowing that the only choice that makes sense is to trust God so wholely and completely that it drives you mad! Knowing that now that you are here your life is on a dangerous path... but also having that sense of peace knowing that you have surrendered to, that you are completely sold out to the most important thing in existence and not life, nor death or anything else in this world matters except what matters to your King.

Wow...maybe some of you think i'm an idiot, but this is it, these jumbled thoughts, this is the awakening to something greater. It's different than the process of coming to know Christ, I already know Christ.... this is just different, deeper, dangerous. I dont expect you all to understand, but maybe some of you will. I don't know. Someone just tell me what your thoughts are.