Ancient Prayers, Present Power | Hannah’s Prayer (Kirk Giles)

Good morning again. Take your Bibles, turn to the

book of First Samuel, chapter one, First Samuel chapter 1 and

1 Samuel 1 · chapter mention

that is on page 233. If you are using one of the

Bibles in the seats around you for Samuel chapter 1.

And if you weren't here with us last Sunday, let me just kind of

bring you up to speed with what we are doing this summer.

This summer we are talking about ancient prayers and present

power. This idea of how do we take our

prayer life and go beyond a, a, a list of things that we just

ask God for and check off the list or a list of things we're

thanking God for and just check off the list, but go deeper in

prayer with the Lord. And we're doing by looking at

various prayers throughout the scriptures so we can learn from

how God's people prayed in the Bible and how that applies to

our lives today. Today, as we get started, I want

you to think about the one thing that could possibly be your

greatest pain point in life. The one thing that you know just

gives you so much of A burden. The one thing that makes you

feel overwhelmed, the thing that makes you feel stressed the

most. The the thing that you know is

completely outside of your ability to fix or to resolve.

Now, when you're in that kind of a spot, how do you usually pray

when you're experiencing something like that?

If you're like me, it's usually something like, oh, God, would

you just please take away this problem, Just fix this and make

it go away soon. But I, I've noticed something.

We can pray those kinds of prayers and say, God, would you

just take this away? We can pray it and there's

usually two things that happen. One, we still don't have an

answer to the prayer. When we're done praying, the

problem still isn't fixed. You ever noticed that it still

kind of hangs around over and over again?

And the second thing that happens is we tend to still be

just as stressed at the end of the prayer as we were at the

beginning of the prayer. We're still worried, we're still

fearful, we're still feeling whatever emotion we're feeling

at the end of the prayer. Here's the big idea I want you

to think about today in your most difficult moments of life.

Prayer is the way to experience peace, even if you don't know if

the problem will be fixed. I want to take you through this

story. In First Samuel chapter 1, we're

1 Samuel 1 · chapter mention

introduced to a guy by the name of Alcana.

Alcana is in a polygamous marriage.

He has two wives, Hannah and Pnina.

Now, before you get the idea that the Bible's endorsing more

than one spouse, I just want to, like clear the air on this.

The Bible does not endorse having more than one spouse, OK?

Just because people in the Bible decided to do things does not

mean that God is saying it's OK to do those things.

This is a historical record of real life of what happened.

And there's a brewing problem in Alcana's family.

Jewish tradition said that Pnina had ten sons, and the Bible

tells us that Hannah was not able to have any children.

I want to stop there for a minute as well.

I know, but this reality of not being able to have any children

is a pain that many of you have experienced.

In fact, there are a lot of people in our church community

who have lived or are living with the reality of not being

able to have any children. And you know, and you can put

yourself in Hannah's shoes, you know that deep down inside

there's something in your heart that just longs for a child.

You see other people having babies and it wrecks you because

you're thinking to yourself, why do they get to have children but

we don't? In Canada, this is a growing

reality. One in six couples in our

country are experiencing infertility right now.

Now for Hannah, this is a multi layered problem.

It's not simply about the pain of wanting a child.

Yeah, there is that deep desire, but for her, there's also this

real deep sense of failure and shame.

As a woman, she she lives in the sense of I'm actually failing in

fulfilling my duties as a woman. Society expected women to have

children, and she's not able to live up to the expectations of

society. In addition to that, children

were quite often how families built their economic prosperity.

The more kids you have, the bigger the family business could

be. And so now she's failing her

family because she's not able to provide children for the family

business. But it's not just the sense of

shame that she would be experiencing.

There's also could be this fear of what might happen as well.

You see, not having children had a lot of potential consequences

in the culture that Hannah lived in.

You could lose your social status in the community.

You could be isolated by people who want nothing to do with you

because you aren't living up to the standards of a woman you.

You could even give your husband a reason to divorce you in that

time simply because you weren't providing a child for the

family. So she could have had all kinds

of fears building up inside of her.

But then in addition to all of that, there are all kinds of

religious and family dynamics that are at play for her as

well. In verses three to seven, we're

told this that every year Al Canada would go up to worship

God and make sacrifices at a place called Shiloh.

Shiloh was the primary spiritual Center for Jews in that day

before the temple was ever built in Jerusalem.

And as they went to make these sacrifices every year, it is

like her reality was being shoved in her face over and over

and over again. You see, if you didn't have a

child, quite often it was seen as God's judgment on you.

Whereas if you did have children, it was seen as God's

favor towards you. So imagine going to church every

single week, or in her case, coming together to offer

sacrifices with her family every year, and you are confronted in

this spiritual environment with a sense of shame and guilt that

you have failed over and over and over and over and over

again. It's being shoved in her face.

And then on top of all that, there's good old Pinina.

Pagina was ruthless. Every year as they would go to

Shiloh together as a family, the Bible says that Pagina would

severely taunt Hannah. Now, some of you are sports

fans. And if you watch sports, you

know that there are some athletes who like to talk smack

about other people. You know that when you get into

sometimes in a game, some people will kind of there's some things

that are coming out of their mouth that may not be the most

godly things coming out of their mouth, may not be the most

encouraging or uplifting things coming out of their mouth.

Some some athletes are ruthless about it.

And that is exactly what the Bible describes Paninas like

towards Hannah. She is ruthlessly mocking Hannah

for not being able to have any children.

She's pushing buttons to try and get a reaction out of her.

And verse 7 tells us this in first Samuel chapter one.

That year after year when Hannah went up to the Lord's house, her

rival would taunt her in this way and Hannah would be so

broken hearted over her reality of not being able to have a

child and all that went with that, that she would weep and

she would not eat anything. That's how great the pain was

every single year for her. Now, side note, we can learn

something. For those of us who maybe are

not in a pain point in our life right now, we can learn

something about what not to do from Eli in Alcana in this

story. OK, first of all, Alcana, he he

sees his wife really hurting and his best answer to her is hey,

like why won't you eat? Aren't I so much better to you

than 10 kids trying? I know you're trying to help,

but trying to make your spouse feel better by saying aren't I

better for you than whatever it is you're upset about is not

helping. OK, Just free relationship

advice for Sunday morning. Eli is supposed to be the

spiritual leader in this story. And.

And Eli sees how upset Hannah is in this moment, and he doesn't

bother to go, hey, is, is everything OK?

Are you OK? Can I help you in some way?

Eli's best answer is, hey, are you drunk?

Like, are you out of your mind? You should maybe get your act

together again, Free relationship advice.

If you see somebody crying and sobbing, don't go up and say,

hey, are you drunk? You should get your life

together. I recognize that many people can

feel the pain that Hannah was feeling because you're living

it. Maybe it's not infertility,

maybe it's health problems that you're experiencing.

Maybe it's the unknown of what's going to happen to your job.

Or maybe it's the unknown of what's going to happen in a

relationship that you're in right now and and the pain that

you're experiencing in that relationship.

Hannah is worn down. She is broken, she is an

emotional wreck and the pain that she's carrying is obvious

to everyone. And there doesn't seem to be any

end insight for this woman. But I want you to notice

something in verse 18 in first Samuel chapter one.

Look at verse 18. By the time we get to verse 18,

we we read at the very end of verse 18.

Then Hannah went on her way. She ate and no longer looked

despondent. How in the world does that

happen? How does someone go from a spot

where they are so broken and overwhelmed and burdened and

stressed out and anxious to I'm good to eat, I got a smile on my

face and life is pretty good. How does that happen?

How does how does her whole demeanor change when her

circumstances have not changed? There's no baby yet.

The weight of her circumstance is still there, but the weight

of her circumstance seems to have lifted from her heart and

soul. Well to understand that we need

to begin reading in verse nine of First Samuel chapter one.

On one occasion, Hannah got up after they ate and drank at

Shiloh. The priest Eli was sitting on a

chair by the doorpost of the Lord's temple.

Deeply hurt, Hannah prayed to the Lord and wept with many

tears. Making a vow, she pleaded.

Lord of Armies, if you will take notice of your servants

affliction, remember and not forget me, and give your servant

a son. I will give him to the Lord all

the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.

And while she continued praying in the Lord's presence, Eli

watched her mouth. Hannah was praying silently, and

though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard.

Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, How long are you

going to be drunk? Get rid of your wine.

No, my Lord, Hannah replied. I'm a woman with a broken heart.

I haven't had any wine or beer. I've been pouring out my heart

before the Lord. Don't think of me as a wicked

woman. I've been praying from the depth

of my anguish and resentment. And Eli responded.

Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant the request that

you've made of him. May your servant find favor with

you, she replied. And then Hannah went on her way.

She ate and no longer looked despondent.

If you are going to find peace without knowing if your problem

is going to be fixed, you are going to have to decide that God

is the best solution for something to change.

In verse 9, when scripture says that Hannah got up, it's written

like this. It means this.

Hannah just had enough. She decides she was going to put

her foot down. Something was going to change.

I'm tired of all that I'm experiencing.

I'm tired of the weight of this. I'm tired and weary of feeling

tired and weary. And she decides that's it.

Enough. Something's got to change.

I'm sick of my story being the same.

Year after year I come to this place and ioffer sacrifices and

year after year I have to deal with the same shame and the same

pain. I'm done with it now.

I know that a lot of us have reached rock bottom at different

points in our life. And you get that feeling.

You understand what it's like to reach that point where you go,

I'm just done. Something has to change.

We get sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

But what do we usually do when we're sick and tired of feeling

sick and tired? We we go and talk to anyone and

everyone about it. We talk to our friends, we we

talk to our counsellors, we ask Google or ChatGPT, we go

searching for a podcast that's going to help us, whatever it

is. But here's what we always end up

doing. We end up in this constant loop

of listening to voices over and over and over again, and we have

no real peace. Hannah does something that would

have been radical in her situation.

She's done listening to all the voices that are around her, both

the ones that are trying to help her and the ones that are trying

to hurt her. She's done with it.

And of all the things that she could have done to address her

pain, she decides the most important thing that she could

do is go to the only one that she knew was capable of doing

something about it, and that was to pray and go to God.

Hey, have you ever heard someone say, well I've tried everything,

so I guess I'll pray about it, right?

How many of you have ever said that before?

I've tried everything, I might as well pray about it.

The reality is praying is the very best thing you can do.

There are times that when you pray, something is going to be

so overwhelming you don't even know that you know how to pray

or even have the right words to say.

And this is what I want you to know.

Prayer is an invitation to bring your raw emotions to God.

Verse 10 tells us this, says Hannah was deeply hurt that she

prayed and wept many tears. Verse 15 says that she had a

broken heart and that she's pouring out her heart before

God. Verse 16 says she's praying from

the depth of her anguish and her resentment.

You can almost feel it. You can almost see it, can't

you? You don't want one of the most

difficult things in life is to see someone who is hurting so

much that they're not just crying, they're weeping.

It's hard to see somebody in that kind of a situation.

Some of us, we, we run away from that kind of like people crying,

get me as far away as possible from the person crying because

we feel uncomfortable. We, we don't know what to say in

the moment when that happens. We, we don't know how to respond

to the person. And Hannah is here, and from the

bottom of her heart, she's praying like this.

You know, for, for me, one of the first times I ever heard

someone praying like Hannah was praying is where I would

experience my mom crying over some of the most deeply painful

moments of her life. And, and at times it would sound

like so much more than crying. At times it it sounded almost

like a literal groan coming from the depths of her soul because

of the pain that she was feeling and experiencing in her life.

And Hannah is the same way. She's telling God everything

she's feeling and experiencing because she's just done.

And the good news about coming to God in prayer like this, it's

this. When life is sucking the life

out of you, you don't need to get everything together before

you go and talk to God. I know sometimes we think I got

to think about all the right words to say.

I've got to just have the sentences all planned out.

Make sure I don't say any heresy in my prayer.

Make sure that I like, you know, I use God's name properly, that

I'm honoring and humble. And we overthink the prayer and

sometimes, sometimes the weight of your circumstances are so

great that you don't need to try and think about what are the

words I'm going to say. You just need to come to God and

pour out your heart to him. The words don't need to make

sense. He is not a God who's going to

run away from you in that moment.

He is not a God who is overwhelmed by your

circumstances. And whatever you bring to him,

it is the exact opposite. He is a God who wants you to

come to Him, the Bible tells us. Cast all, all your cares on Him.

All. Sit in that word for a minute.

All your cares. Cast them on God.

Second Kings chapter 20 tells us that He is a God who sees your

2 Kings 20 · chapter mention

tears and he's a God who hears your prayers.

There are times where you just maybe need to come to God and

you only have one word to say or one sentence to say in a prayer.

And that one word could be something as simple as just God

help. And that's the best you can come

up with and it's OK. I don't know where you normally

go to pour out your heart, but I know every single one of us go

somewhere to pour out our hearts when life is stressful.

You might have friends, you might have a counsellor, maybe

you're just passive aggressive and you go and take your

frustrations out on a video game or whatever your favorite hobby

is. Maybe you have a journal where

you put all of your thoughts down and none of those things

are inherently bad or wrong places to go for some of you.

You pour out your heart over and over again to yourself.

You can't stop thinking about your pain.

It swirls in your mind and you keep pouring your heart out over

and over and over again. But I know because you're human,

you will go somewhere with whatever it is that's stressing

you out. But here's the thing, of all the

things and all the places and all the people that you could

pour your heart out to, there is only one who is all powerful,

and it's God. And so when you pray, pray a

declaration of who has the greatest power.

One one of the things we see in the Bible over and over again is

that when it comes to prayer, how many times prayers start by

focusing our attention on how great God is.

Jesus taught us this when he taught us the Lord's Prayer.

He he says, Hey, when you pray, start by saying our Father who

art in heaven hallowed be your name.

The whole focus, the whole starting point of prayer is

focusing on the greatness of who God is.

Hannah starts her prayer in much the same way she starts her

prayer by pleading to the Lord of armies.

Don't skip over that. She pleads to the Lord of

armies. And here's what she's declaring

at the beginning of her prayer. She is declaring that you are

the God who has every power. You have sovereign control over

everything, every dominion, every force, everything God.

You've got sovereign control over it all.

When she says Lord of Armies, she is saying God.

You are a God who has infinite resources.

There is nothing I could come to you and ask you for that is

greater than the resources that are at your disposal, God.

There is nothing that I could come and ask you for that is

greater than your power. God.

That's what she's declaring when she says Lord of Armies.

In other words, Hannah praised this truth about God.

God, my inability to have a child is not a match for your

sovereignty and power. I, I don't know everything that

you're facing today, but I know this, that God's resources and

God's power is greater. In fact, if you were to take

every problem that all of us in this room have and every person

who's online and every person in our region, in our province, our

country and our world, and you were to take all of our

problems. You were to bundle them all

together into one giant problem. That one giant problem is not

greater than God. God's power is greater than

anything. A friend of mine used to always

say like this to me, said Kirk, stop telling God how big your

problems are and start telling your problems how big your God

is. Prayer is where we take our eyes

off of our problem. We fix our eyes on the One who

has everything needed to deal with the problem.

So if you're here today and you are facing a big problem where

you just need God's power to show up, start by calling out to

the Lord of armies. If you're facing a big problem

where you need God's wisdom, remind yourself in prayer and

declare that He is the all knowing God who wants to give

wisdom. One of the reasons why it's so

important for you and I to continue to learn more and more

about who God is, to learn more about theology and doctrine and

things like that, is, is because we need to understand what God

is like in order to be able to pray effectively.

But it's not just about an intellectual exercise.

It frames how we approach him in prayer.

Now, let me ask you this question.

If God is really all powerful, and I would say probably pretty

much everyone in this room would say, yeah, of course God's all

powerful. If God is really all powerful,

if God has infinite resources and power, why do you still

sometimes try to tell God how to answer your prayer?

Like, hey, God, I I need you to fix this pain point in my life.

Here's how I'd like you to do it.

Go ahead and do it this way. You're the all powerful God.

You've got every resource at your disposal.

So here's what I need you to do. And this is where we often get

tripped up and where we remain stressed out or anxious even

after we pray because in our minds, we already have the best

way for God to answer our prayer.

We've already got it all figured out, and we're just trying to

bring God up to speed on the things God needs to do.

And when God doesn't do it the way that we want or give the

exact answer that we want, we've got no peace because we think

we've got a better solution than God does.

And So what Hannah also teaches us is that the prayers that lead

to peace are filled with surrender.

In verse 11, two times Hannah calls herself a servant of the

Lord. In verse 18, when talking to

Eli, she calls herself a servant.

Again, Hannah has no sense of entitlement.

She she has just humility. She has no sense that God owes

her anything, that God has to answer prayer in a certain way,

or that she can somehow manipulate God to doing what she

wants. Hannah merely says, you are God

and I have an inability to fix this problem, and I'm coming to

you. But then she does something that

on the surface seems like she's striking a deal with God.

She says if you'll give me a son, I'll give him back to you

all the days of his life. You ever done that before?

God, if you'll just do this, then I'll do this.

God, if, if you just answer my prayer this way, I promise you

I'll be the best person ever. I I've done it before, not

always in ways that I'm proud of.

God, if you would just let the Toronto Blue Jays win a game, I

promise I'll serve you more. And suddenly they're winning all

these games. So now I got to serve God even

more, right? Maybe it's like, God, if you

just give me this job, I'll give you more money.

God, if you just give me this house, I'll use this house to

serve you in some way. I think most of us have done

something like that. Maybe you've said, God, if

you'll just fix my spouse, I promise I'll be a better spouse.

I don't think Hannah is striking a deal with God here.

I don't think that's what's going on.

Hannah's surrendering to God. That's what she's doing here.

See, on behalf of her son, Hannah's making what's called

the Nazarite vow. It's the kind of vow, if you're

familiar with Old Testament stories, it's the kind of vow

that Samson made in the Old Testament.

It's this deep vow of commitment to God, and it's this promise to

be set apart for service to God. And what Hannah is saying is

that if God gives her a son, she will literally give him back to

God instead of keeping the child for herself.

There is no net gain for Hannah in this.

She's praying for something that can only bring glory to God.

She is surrendering her deepest desire to God.

She's saying I'm your servant and all I want is what you want.

Paul Tripp put it this way. He said rather than attaching a

happy life to the fulfillment of her own desires, she finds life

in the success of God's Kingdom. And this is what allows Hannah

to not look despondent anymore. It's what allows her to be at

peace. Because in this moment, Hannah

has made the decision that she's no longer going to be defined by

what other people say. She's no longer going to be

defined by what society thinks of her.

She's no longer even going to be defined by her greatest heart's

desire. The thing she's going to be

defined by is God himself. She's living and surrender to

him. All that she wants is whatever

God wants. Now, this is easily one of the

most challenging things to do in prayer because every one of us

is a human being that has normal desires, normal dreams of how we

want things to go. And what Hannah's teaching us is

that prayer can lead to peace when we surrender the need to

have our prayers answered in a certain way.

Maybe you said this before. If I only had blank, I'd be

happy. Here's the truth.

Whatever you put in that blank has some level of control over

your heart and your emotions and your soul.

It's going to shape your emotions.

It's going to shape your decisions.

Friends, you are only ever going to find peace in this life when

you decide to surrender control and trust in the all powerful,

all knowing and good God who also happens to love you.

The invitation of God is to come to Him and surrender your

deepest burdens to His loving care and to find life in Him

instead of wherever you're going to try to find life.

Now, one of the things that I've learned about prayer is that God

doesn't always answer all of our prayers at once, even when He

does answer our prayers. Quite often God's answers to

prayer are more of a story that's unfolding than it is a

moment of glory. And that's what happens to

Hannah in verse 20. The Bible says after some time

she gave birth to Samuel. We have no idea how long that

was from the time that she prayed to the time that Samuel

was born. But then after weaning and

raising and weaning the child, she does what's promised.

She brings Samuel to live with Eli.

She had a baby and she literally gave her child to the Lord.

We do that symbolically as parents.

We talk about like, hey, I'm, I am committing, surrendering,

dedicating my child to the Lord, and we do it symbolically.

Put yourself in Hannah's shoes. She gives birth to this child

and then she goes, I'm going to go and I'm going to leave this

child to be raised in Shiloh with Eli, and I'm going to go

back home. But she still kept coming back

every year, every year to make sacrifices with the rest of the

family. And so every year it's still in

her face. I had a child, but I gave the

child up to the Lord. I had a child, but I don't get

to raise that child. In some ways, Hannah ends up

right back where she started. Her circumstances had not really

changed. And yet Hannah teaches US1 more

thing. The prayers that lead to peace

are filled with worship. See, prayer is not only a place

where we go and ask God for things.

Prayer is a place for us to reset our hearts and our minds

and focus thing, focusing them on God and worshiping Him.

Sometimes we think worship is just what we do with music, but

there's so much more to worship than music.

You can worship God in your prayers.

Hannah does that in chapter 2. Again, her circumstances are not

fixed yet, but but look at what happens in chapter 2, beginning

of verse one. It says Hannah prayed.

My heart rejoices in the Lord. My horn is lifted up by the

Lord. My mouth boasts over my enemies

because I rejoice in your salvation.

There's no one holy like the Lord.

There's no one besides you. There's no rock like our God.

Don't boast so proudly or let arrogant words come out of your

mouth. For the Lord is a God of

knowledge, and actions are weighed by Him.

Sometimes we just need to praise God for the little ways we've

seen Him answering prayers even when the whole story is not yet

been revealed. That's what Hannah's doing in

these first few verses. She's worshipping and praising

God. She continues on in verses 4 to

8 by celebrating and worshipping a God who is capable of

reversing the fortunes of any human being.

She says the mighty are broken by this God and the feeble are

given strength. Those who have food end up

scrambling for food and those who are hungry, hungry no more.

That he's the God who can reverse the fortune of families,

and he's the God who can reverse the fortune of those who want a

family. He's the God who can bring both

life and death. He is the God who raises the

poor from the dust and gives them a throne of honor.

He is a God who reverses the fortune of people.

But she doesn't end there. She looks to the future and

worships a God for all the promises that He has given to

her for the future. In verses 9 and 10, she praises

God for her future hope. He guards those who are

faithful, while those who oppose the Lord will be shattered.

If you're here today and you are exploring the Christian faith, I

want you to understand something.

There is a way for you to find peace no matter how hard your

life is. The Bible teaches us that right

now anyone who is a believer, who is not a believer and

follower of Jesus is like a person who opposes the Lord.

You want to do life your own way.

You don't want anyone to be Lord and God of your life.

You want life to be on your terms.

And the Bible tells us that when you are in that place, the end

result is you will encounter the judgement of God.

God always gets the final say, but the good news is that your

story doesn't need to end like that.

God loves you and God sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on a

cross and take the judgement in your place.

And if you turn from your way of life and you put your faith in

Jesus, you surrender your life to Jesus.

Your entire status before God changes.

Instead of God opposing you, He is now the God who is for you.

When you become when you put your faith in Jesus, you become

a child of God and he's your father.

And if you're here today and you've already put your faith in

Jesus, I want you to understand this with absolute confidence.

Even though you might be in the waiting and you've got all kinds

of pain going on and you've tried to surrender it all to

God, here's one thing you can be absolutely confident about

because you are God's child. God will pay attention to your

needs. Look down in verse 21 of chapter

2. After all this time, all this

waiting, all this praying, all of this worshipping, we finally

get to a place where it says the Lord paid attention to Hannah's

need and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two

daughters. I can't promise you how God's

going to meet your need. I, I don't know He's going to

meet your need the way he did for Hannah.

But I can promise you this. If you are one of his children,

He will meet your need. He knows what your need is even

more than you know what your need is.

He's a God who has promised to meet all of our needs.

You can count on that. You can take it to the bank, and

one of the greatest needs that all of us have is peace.

We, we live in a world that is filled with so much anxiety, so

much stress, so much fear and concern.

You know, I, I usually eight sermons where people turn

Christianity into a formula. I'm not a fan of if you just do

this and this and this and this, then everything's going to turn

out all right and we'll all live happily ever after because we

all know that that's typically not how things work out.

OK, But what I'm talking about today, it's not a formula, it's

a promise. I'm going to put a verse up on

the screen from the book of Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God himself is

telling us this. Don't worry about anything but

in everything. Through prayer and petition with

Thanksgiving that that word Thanksgiving is not just a

checking something off the list of saying I'm thankful to God.

It it represents this idea from the bottom of your heart like

you're worshipping God with Thanksgiving present your

request to God. That's what God calls us to do.

And now comes his promise and the peace of God, which

surpasses all understanding. Will, will, will guard your

hearts and minds in Christ Jesus in your most difficult moments.

Prayer is the way to experience peace, even if you don't know if

the problem will be fixed. I'm going to ask you to close

your eyes. I know that today in this room

right now, there are people who you're feeling the weight of the

world just like Hannah was. And just here in this moment and

just in a couple minutes, I'm going to be quiet.

I'm just going to give you space.

I just want you to quietly pray and pour out your heart before

God, knowing that He's a God who sees you and He hears you.

If you're here today and you don't have that going on in your

life, but you know someone who does, I want you to pray for

them right now that they would know and experience the peace of

God in their hearts. Not just a theory, but it would

be reality for them. Let's take the next minute in

the presence of the Lord of Armies and pray to Him.