Relate Community Church
Relate Community Church
Who Told You That | Week 3
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All right, all right, everybody. All right. We'll give it a second to calm down. It gets one more chance. This microphone is about two seconds. Done. MC mic. Here we go. All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to church. Okay, all right, all right. I'm really thrilled to be here with you today, as always. And I'll say, I'll just say if you are new to Relate, it is uh the joy of our lives to be able to do this together. If you're here at home uh this morning and this is your home church, we are so glad that you are back. If you're watching online, uh it's an exciting thing that we get to do every single week to come together with people that we know, people that we don't know, worship the Lord, open God's word, and study and walk in faith together, through small groups, through good times, through bad times, through challenges, through uh wins and losses. God has a journey for all of us, and we are thrilled to be able to do it together. So I'm happy that we're here today. Would you just touch your neighbor and say, I'm glad you're here? There we go. Awesome. Today today we're diving into week number three of a series called Who Told You That? And uh, I love this series because we're we're able to really camp out and just sit on one verse and unpack it and get into an idea. And um, hopefully, we're taking steps of faith and growing in our uh in our trust in the Lord. And today is no different than that. So get your notes out. We are note-taking church. If you don't have your notes, pull out your phone, get something where you can uh engage in the word of God uh beyond just listening. Beyond just listening. So, week number three, today we're looking at Proverbs chapter three, verse five and six. The idea for this series is really this that there are verses that maybe it's your favorite verse. I hope that I've picked your favorite verse. This week is uh the third one, and we've got a couple more in the series, but I hope that whether it's your favorite verse or whether you saw it on your grandmother's wall uh embroidered or uh stitched or knitted into a doily or into a napkin or into a t-shirt or your phone screen. There are things that we adopt these verses as our maybe it might even be something you call your life verse. This is my this is the one you love to quote, but sometimes we miss the real meaning in something just because it feels great or feels cozy. And that's why today I brought this little mug because I thought, you know what? This mug feels cozy. This mug actually has today's verse on it. Let's see, Proverbs chapter 3, verse 5. So I can carry this around and I've adopted this verse, and man, it just makes me feel good. If I feel when I fill this up with coffee, it's got little roses and butterflies, it's just one of those things that it's kind of comfy. Sometimes the verses, sometimes the scriptures, the word of God, get so comfy that we just lose that there is true power in it. It's a little, I'm gonna read it for you today, but um trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In fact, it says that right on this mug. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths. For the last few weeks, uh week number one was Romans chapter 8, 28. We talked about how God's working everything out for us. That's my own translation. But there's more to it than that. Tell somebody next to you there's more to it. Last week we looked at James chapter 4, verse 8. I feel like this is almost a continuation of last week, although we're not in James anymore. It says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And one of the big ideas was we can either follow the culture of heaven. In fact, we backed up into James chapter 3 and we read a whole passage leading from chapter 3 to chapter 4. That we can either follow the wisdom of heaven, or we can follow the wisdom of what comes from below, or this hell up wisdom culture that when we embrace it, it produces the wrong things in our life. It gives us the kind of life that we don't want. It pushes the kind of life that nobody wants on other people around us. And so I thought, what better than to jump right into the greatest uh passages, the greatest nuggets of wisdom that have ever been given in Proverbs. And this is one of those things that if we'll do it, it it will get the promises that if we'll follow this wisdom, it'll give us the greatest life ever. That doesn't mean that everything in life goes perfect, but there is a promise. And this verse trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your on your own understanding, and all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. Listen, this is probably the most um disobeyed verse in the Bible. It's everybody's favorite verse. This is the one we put on coffee mugs, this is the one we put on t-shirts, this is the one we quote all the time. I remember hearing this, this is probably one of the first verses that I heard as a kid that my mom would quote to us, especially when it as it related to the like lean not into your own understanding. This was like, you don't need to understand. But this is one of the most disobeyed verses, very clear. In fact, pastors love this verse because there's your three points right there. Three easy points. We're gonna unpack them today, but those three easy points that lead, they like give us God's answer to life. It's a blueprint for life. It's it's so easy, it's so laid out. You don't have to, you don't have to dig into it, you don't have to have a revelation. There it is. If you'll do this, trust God, lean not under your own understanding, acknowledge him in all your ways, then he's gonna make everything straight for you. It's so easy and yet so misunderstood and so disobeyed. For something so easy, it's crazy that we just do the opposite so often. Why is it so hard for us to trust? Why is it so hard for us to acknowledge Him and I? Why why is it so hard? Because it's easy to do this part. But why do we disobey it? Why is it so hard? What to trust God with all of our hearts? I think Christians instinctively know we we hear so much about trusting God that we don't say we don't trust God, we just say, oh, this is gonna be a tough one, or um this is something I'm really concerned about. Pastors uh and church people won't say we're worried about something, we'll just say we're very concerned. We need to put this on the prayer request list. Maybe it's bills, maybe it's your scheduling for the month or the week or the year. Maybe it's something that your kids are um it's just weighing on you. And it pushes us out of trusting the Lord with all of our heart, leaning not into our understanding. It makes us take our favorite verse, something that makes us feel so it makes us just walk right away from it. Because whatever that issue is, we it's so heavy, maybe it's your marriage. Well, I was willing to trust God, I was willing to lean not to my own understanding, I was willing to acknowledge God in all my ways until I got to this thing, and then this thing was so big and so massive, and this mountain was so huge. This is something I couldn't get over, so I stopped trusting God. I stopped, I started leaning to my own understanding, and I stopped acknowledging him in all my ways. And sometimes it just takes one thing. Maybe it's I just I'm struggling and I can't catch up. I can't, I can't get to that tipping point where I could just get back to trusting God. Maybe it's somebody else that you're worried about. It's not even your thing, it's like somebody else's thing, and it weighs on you so much, it just pushes you right out of this perfect blueprint for life. I could tell you, I worry plenty. I tell you guys, don't worry, be anxious in nothing, in all things, trust God, just pray about it, believe, and God will answer all answer all of our prayers. And yet, if if I'm set to meet up with Angela or or one of the kids and they're supposed to meet me somewhere and they're late for five minutes, I start thinking, uh-oh. They're probably on the side of the road somewhere. I better check the app. Figure out if they're still moving, figure out if if things have gone terribly bad. All of a sudden, my mind starts into it just pushes us out that fast. Hey, where are you at? Are you okay? Especially if it's late. Sometimes I get to thinking, well, things are just too good, right? That's been a little too long since we had a crash and burn. So I'm just expecting it around every where's the next thing gonna happen? What happened to trusting God, leaning not in my own understanding, acknowledge him in all my ways? The one we love to quote. What you worry about the most often reveals where you trust God the least. The thing that just it just can push you right out of your ultimate trust in God. What is that area? What's that category where you just you can trust God for everybody else, even you can trust God in everything but this one thing. I okay, I was gonna trust God, but this is too big. What's that one thing? Because it's often what you worry about the most. If you could make a ledger of all the things that you worry about, like your checkbook, a check and balance of your thought processes and things you worry about, the thing you trust God with. What's the thing? Because what you worry about most is often the thing you can trust God with the least. We want to trust God, but we get stuck in this one area, and it's the second line of this verse that we love so much. It's the second line where it says, lean not to your own understanding. The thing that most often makes us not trust God is when we just don't understand. Ah, it doesn't add up, God. I I know you're gonna answer my prayer, but I can't see it. It doesn't, it doesn't fit into my brain. I can't wrap my brain around it. So throughout Proverbs, we see this. Um this is where the continuation of last week comes because we talked about wisdom from heaven or wisdom from below. Wisdom from above, culture from above, or culture from below. Proverbs is full of wisdom from above. Like it doesn't make sense, it doesn't quite fit into our understanding, and yet this is God's wisdom. So if Proverbs is full of this, listen to wisdom or listen to the other uh the other culture, listen to what the world tells you is wisdom. And so I want us to really look at this and imagine this is Solomon writing most of Proverbs, uh, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes. He's writing these uh powerful passages of wisdom, telling us this is what I've learned. And the Bible says that Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. And imagine at the end of his life, he's collected these ideas, these principles, these sayings of wisdom, like for his children. Imagine he's at the end of his life and he's saying, This is what I've learned. If you can follow this, your life will be better. This is the life God wants for you. So I want us to kind of back up at to the beginning of Proverbs chapter 3, and we're gonna read uh a good portion of the passage, although you're not gonna see it's not like he's leading to a point beyond this is wisdom. This is this is what we should live by. He says, My son, do not forget my teachings. In other words, this is these are the best things I've learned. So if you'll take them to heart, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity. If you want your life to go, this this is where we get the idea that this passage is really the distillation of all of this wisdom, and it's like a blueprint for your life. Let love and faithfulness never leave you, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, and then you'll win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. So, this is the context of the passage that there's wisdom for your life. This is almost identical. Um, not phrase for phrase, but the idea, the concept. For uh, this is so close to what James was saying that if you can follow God's wisdom, your life will look a lot different than if you follow the wisdom of the world. We could probably go around the room and talk about what the world thinks is um standard wisdom. Well, this is a smart, this is the smart choice. It says, then we get to our our passage: trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, submit to him, and he'll make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil. He hasn't even started like dropping nuggets of wisdom on us yet. All he's giving us this idea: pay attention to wisdom. Stop being the person that just does what what you like you need to do things intentionally. Embrace this, adopt this culture. Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of your crops, and then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke. What's leading your life? If you can't tell me who you've put in charge of your life, then maybe you don't know who's in charge of your life. And it's probably not wisdom. Because, like we talked about last week, you're not gonna drift closer to God, you're not just gonna accidentally do some wise. Oh, that was pretty wise. I'm gonna surprise myself sometimes. We while you might randomly do something successful, if we want to be successful at life, we need to pursue, chase after, embrace, grab a hold of real wisdom. It says, because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father, the son he delights in. Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. He's really trying to sell us on the idea and show us and prove to us wisdom is the way. This is what we should be doing, this is how we should be living. She is more precious than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand, in her left hand are riches and honor, her ways are pleasant ways, and her paths are peace. She is a tree. I love this part. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, those who hold her fast will be blessed. In other words, if we can do what wisdom says, if we can follow wisdom, if we can take it to heart, and not just put it on a coffee mug. The danger of putting it, the danger of turning God's wisdom into a widget or into a trinket is that we're don't we don't obey it. We don't take it to heart. Well, if I take it to coffee mug, it's a lot easier than taking it to heart. If I put it on my shirt, then I've embraced it. But I'm not actually, I don't actually have to live, I don't have to obey it. So, what does that look like? What does it look like to obey it if we unpack it like right? That first line, trust the Lord with all your heart. This is how I would translate that. Number one, I'm gonna give you three points today. Number one, and then I'm gonna show it to you in the Old Testament. Number one, surrender your whole life to God. And I'm not, I don't want to spend a lot of time here because this is what we've been talking about for the last few weeks. What is what is actually surrendering all of your life, your whole life to God, look like? That's inside, outside the word trust in Hebrew where it says trust the Lord with all your heart, actually conveys a picture of this. It's if I come before a king and then I don't just kneel down, I don't just bow my head or lower my head, trust in the Hebrew language actually conveys this image of laying prostrate before a king, and that would be like this. And so when we're when we tell God, okay, God, I'm gonna yield to you, I'm gonna trust you, and yet we go from I could take care of my life, and I guess I guess I could yield kneel down a little bit. I guess I could I guess I could yield to God a little, and then we it feels like it takes us time to get from okay, I can put this knee down, and then we have to gradually submit different parts of our life to where we're fully prostrate before God before we can fully initiate the yielding, the trust. I'm gonna ask for a couple of helpers just to really prove this point because I want you to see a picture of this. So, uh, Carrie, would you grab that ladder? And I need a few more helpers, brother Joseph, Dwayne. I need some strong guys. Where are y'all at? Brother BJ, definitely I need BJ. Because I I want to trust y'all, but I don't trust you guys very much. This is a good spot right here. So I want you guys. Yeah. Come on down. I need at least one or two more guys. Eddie? Okay, okay, all right. This is good. This is good. Right here, right here, right here. Right here, right here. Yes. Yep. Right here, Eddie, right here. Thank you, thank you. All right, now this is gonna be pretty easy. I'm gonna climb up on that ladder. And I'm gonna trust Paul. Y'all are gonna catch me. From the top rung. No, no, I'm not going to the top.
SPEAKER_01:We got you.
SPEAKER_00:And this is us trusting God. Yeah, y'all think about it. This is what it looks like, I think, for us to trust God and like, okay, God, I trust you. I trust you all the way with my whole heart, with my whole life. And so I'm gonna I trust you this much. I trust you right here on the second rung. Oh, y'all gotta scoop back just a little. Okay, right there, right there. And this is how much I trust God, right here. Okay, all right. I trusted you, God, yes. But that didn't look like trust, did it? It looked like I I was a little bit worried. And you guys on the end come in a little. And we want to micromanage God's taking care of our life. God, I'll trust you, but you gotta do it the way I want it. God, I trust you, but I let me test it out real quick. Okay, all right. All right, all right, looks good. Nope, I better test it again. Hold on. And that's what we do to God. We just keep, I don't know. Let me touch, let me, before I actually do anything, before I lay flat out before you, God, before I put myself at your mercy, before I put myself into a position where I might fail. I don't know if you can catch me, God. I don't know. I want to trust you. And then we're like, yay, this is me trusting God. Yes. Let me try again. Okay, I'm gonna trust you. This is as high as I'm going. Okay. All right, here we go. All right, all right, good, good, good. All right, thank you guys. I'm not gonna lie, that was a little scarier than I thought it would be. Hey guys, y'all forgot glasses. You might need these. So, what posture have you taken in your trust with God? Are you taking the posture where you're turning around, continuing to double check, continuing to check back, continuing to um look over God's work? This is takes us right back to last week. That's why I don't want to take a lot of time here, because it says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. That the culture that he wants us to embrace is a culture where we've washed our hands, where we have uh where we have initiated a life that is truly trusting and following God. And when we know God wants us to do something, we do it because we trust him, not because we think he's trying to control our lives. When we surrender our lives, it looks like trust and not self, not drifting into self-reliance. So that's the first part. The first part is simply trusting in the Lord with all of our hearts. Number two is to stay the course when I don't understand. Remember, this is this is where we depart from trusting in God because uh no, this doesn't make God, I don't understand why you want me to go up on the second rung or the third rung. God, I don't understand why you want me to fall backwards and not look. I don't, God, I don't understand why you uh why this has to be a financial thing, why this has to be a health thing. I don't understand, God, why you're letting me go through this, or why you're not taking this away from me, or it doesn't make sense, and so I just can't trust you. But how do we lean not on our own understanding when it doesn't make sense? Here's the deal obedience requires us to go against our own logic. Obedience and submission and trust require that we go against our own logic. Listen, when Adam and Eve are in the garden and they have to choose to not take the fruit of the good of not of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life is trusting God. It's believing and just taking a hold of God's truth, even if it doesn't make sense, until it does make sense. Because it eventually does make sense. Here's the deal when you first start trusting God, and when you're fur when you're standing in the the the wisdom of the world, when you're standing in um the culture of the world and you look over at God's wisdom, guess what? God's wisdom is weird. Uh no, no, that's weird. I'm not I'm not doing that. Guess what? Almost every time God asks for something, he says, No, it's it's almost like he's saying, Um, yeah, we want to do that. We want to end with that, but I don't want to get there the way that you would get there. So all the ways you think that God is gonna answer your prayer, he says, No, I'm gonna take care of you in the end. Think about week one. All things are gonna work out for your good, but we're not gonna get there where we're not gonna do it the way you want us to do it. How about whenever the children of Israel will go, he said, I'm gonna give you the promised land, I'm gonna give you a land to call your own, but no, I'm not just gonna let the city uh surrender to you. I want you to march around the city seven times, and then the walls are gonna fall down. What about a uh he's gonna send a savior, a baby will be born, a messiah, let's do it with a virgin. Let's let it, let's let this baby be born of a virgin. A couple weeks ago, we talked about how Elijah challenged all of the prophets of Baal to a uh a showdown on top of the mountain. We're gonna call down fire from heaven, and God says, Okay, I'll send fire down from heaven, but go ahead and soak the whole thing with water first. Or when he feeds 5,000, he doesn't just he doesn't just cause a whole bunch of food. No, no, no, let's let's just do it with uh let's say two fish and five loaves. He comes up with some weird way, and I'm not trying to be uh disrespectful to the word of God. I'm telling you that when you look at what God wants to do in your life, it's often gonna be it's like, uh, I don't think so, God. That's weird. If he told you the plan ahead of time, you'd say, No, I don't I don't think so. That's weird. That's why you got to trust him. That's why you have to say, Okay, God, you want to do something weird, I'm gonna follow you. Isaiah 55 says this that my thoughts are not your thoughts. My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts, says the Lord, and my ways are far beyond anything you can imagine. He says, just my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. Just as the heavens are above the earth, and our heart, our understanding of the world, our understanding of life, it it first of all, our feelings will tell us this doesn't make sense. I don't I don't like this. Jeremiah 17 9 says that the heart is deceitful above all things, the heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? And so when we're following our own understanding or our thought, uh the thoughts in our own head, they'll take us the wrong way. Matthew 15. Jesus talks about how out of the heart come evil thoughts. Those the it's because our hearts resonate with the with the wisdom of the world and and says, That seems right, go that way. No, no, no, that's not right. Not good. That's why 2 Corinthians 5 says, We walk by faith and not by sight. We walk by faith and not by sight. We're we're attuned to the wisdom of heaven, we're attuned to things that are above our own understanding. God, I need to follow you, but uh, it's almost like we're not capable of thinking his way until we get there and we think, oh, that was perfect, God, you did it. I don't know why I ever why I ever questioned. That's why, because our feelings and our heart and the wisdom of this world pressure us, and the people around us pressure us. That's why we can't follow our heart. That's why we can't follow our feelings, that's why we can't follow conventional wisdom, we can't follow what the world says, we can't follow the TikTok trends, we can't follow what social media says. This is the best thing to do. We have to look back and say, what does God's wisdom say that I should do? Write this down. Our feelings can be an indicator, but not a dictator. You can look at your feelings, listen to your heart, but you don't obey your heart. I think that's one of the most important things about worship service and time in worship and our devotions with God and opening up Proverbs is incredible that you can read one every day and start over every month. Read a chapter every day, start over every month, and continue to just put the wisdom of God in my heart so I can follow it. Number three, give God glory. No matter what. Acknowledge God in all of your ways. Acknowledge him in all your ways, and he'll make your path straight. Number three is this give God glory no matter what. That's good times. We love to praise God. Things are going well. He answered my prayer. This is uh a testimony time. But what about the bad times? You still giving God glory in that? What about when things are not going right, which is a good portion of life, right? We got trouble, we got struggle in that. Are we still praising God? When you're bleeding and broken and feeling like everything's going in the wrong direction and God hasn't answered your prayer yet. And things are, uh I don't know if I'm gonna be able to keep my job or pay my bills or take care of my kids. Am I still willing to say, God, I acknowledge you in this moment. This moment belongs to you. Colossians 3 17 says, Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, we're saying it, we're doing it, we're writing it on our coffee cup, and we're living it out. Do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. I'd love to go around and ask God. Angel and I read the prayer requests every week and and um we look at what's what's the struggle, what are you carrying? What can we believe God for? What uh what where can God step into your life and we can have this opportunity for a miracle to take place? It's the it's the place where it's hard to trust God though, right? And I know that every person around the room has like this weight, something that you're carrying, something that is um an issue, something that's heavy. There were days um during the first year of the church where I was I was like, God, you want us to start this church, and I don't know if we're gonna be here next week. Until I finally realized, wait, this is your church, God. You asked us to do that. I'm right where you asked me to be. I'm gonna acknowledge you right in the moment. And that was like nothing changed. The situation was still the same the very next week, but my heart was so much lighter. My heart, I when I started trusting God and acknowledging Him in the what looked like failure, God, this is where you took me, this is where we are, this is your deal. This is my life is your life, so whatever happens, it's all yours. What a freeing! I can just tell you from the bottom of my heart what a freeing moment that was. That I can be responsible for uh duties and things that I want to take care of, and I have expectations in life. But what's far more important to me than that is what God's expectations are. I just have to be obedient. All right, so how do we live out those three principles and live in a way that God will make our path straight? Here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to jump over, and with those same principles in mind, I want us to look at it in the Old Testament where someone actually is living in a place where they're not fulfilled. They're living in a place where uh this doesn't look like a straight path, Lord. So this is Hannah's story, and I think if we can follow it, if we can uh follow her example, it will change our lives. 1 Samuel chapter 1, verse 2. 1 Samuel chapter 1, verse 2. It says, El Kanah had two wives, Hannah and Panina. Panina had children, but Hannah did not. So based on the story, we know that Hannah was his first wife. Hannah was uh El Kana's first wife. And it's pretty customary in those days if if you had a wife that did not was not able to produce children, if she was barren, if she if she couldn't bring an heir to the family to continue a legacy, then you'd get a second wife so that you could have children, so your family could live on. And he likely married another, uh, had a second wife so that he could have a legacy. In those days, it uh was much different from today's culture where it was the expectation of the wife to have children, to take care of the home, to take care of the kids. This was the culture of those days. And so if if a woman did not have kids, and this was the case for Hannah, it was it was the expectation, it was almost like God is not pleased with your life, and so he hasn't given you a kid. Like you haven't been able to do what you were made for, which was to have kids. And so this must be God's punishment or God's curse on you, and he's closed your womb. And so she's carrying around um this shame. She's carrying around what is i for everyone else to see. Oh, you don't have kids. Oh, I'm sorry. That's that's sad. But this is the point in our story where El Kana takes his his family and his wives um to a festival, and we see something that uh the dynamic in the family is that Pinina, the second wife, is just like a uh uh we have a really bad case of mean girl where she is just ugly to her sister wife, she's ugly to the the first wife Hannah. Maybe she resents her, or maybe she just well, for whatever reason, she picks on her, and that's where we uh pick up in verse six. First Samuel chapter one, verse six says, So Pinina would taunt Hannah and make fun of her because the Lord had kept her from having children. Can you imagine? It's almost something that we wouldn't put up with today. It says year after year, it was the same. Panina would taunt Hannah as they went to the tabernacle. Each time Hannah would be reduced to tears and would not even eat. So we have this immense shame. This actually, this story, if you really think about it, hits in a really deep and dark place for most of us because we don't like the idea of shaming someone. We don't like the idea of insulting someone, especially for something that they can't help. Like if I'll just tell you right now that if you and I are friends and you do something stupid that you can help, I might just tell you that's stupid. I might just tell you that was a crazy choice. That was a crazy those shoes, brother. I like your shoes. I'm just playing. But I don't have a problem telling you that. But when you make fun of someone or or insult or make someone feel bad for something that they cannot help, this just hits in a different place. It says year after year, and Hannah's praying for child, year after year, no answer from God. And yet she's getting these passive, aggressive barbs from uh these insults. She's being taunted by someone she lives with, someone who's close to her. She just has to put up with it, she has to bear it. I imagine it's something like this. Oh, Panina probably says things like, Hey, Hannah, just be glad you didn't have to be in Carline today. It was terrible. Or just be thankful that you don't have to take care of kids, because these kids are really wild. Hashtag mom life. Hashtag uh you wouldn't understand because you're not a mom yet. Or maybe that's probably why God didn't give you kids and he gave them to me because he knew I could take care, I could handle it. It's enough to bring her to tears every week. So it's not just this passing comments that strike to her deepest fears and her deepest shame. This is this is a woman who is attacking her, and yet she shows up and she's asking, God, give me a child. She's asked God to heal and deliver, and actually, she's asking for something that God does for everybody else. It's almost like she's the odd one out. How often have you felt like, God, why am I the only one struggling with this? Am I not worthy to for you to hear my prayer? We read on just a little bit more, and I'm just gonna give you fair warning. This uh El Kana, the husband, her husband, he makes a I think a huge mistake, and then he says this. He says, Why are you crying, Hannah? Why aren't you eating? Why be downhearted just because you have no children? You have me. Isn't that better than having 10 sons? Guys in the room? Don't this is the worst answer, okay? Babe, you don't need to worry about this. You prayed, and God answered your prayer with me. You pray, you prayed for a man and you got a miracle, babe. That's sometimes we get so full of ourselves that we can't see someone else's struggle and someone else's pain, the shame that they're carrying, and I don't think that they can see. So not only is she in the deepest shame, she feels like God doesn't care. Year after year, the people she lives with, her family doesn't care. They're just trying to pet her and make it better. You'll be okay, it'll be fine. You got enough, you're so blessed. But what about this pain that I'm carrying? I think that Hannah, and you as we read this and unfold this, you start to see that she, I think she truly decided that she's gonna trust trust on the Lord with all of her heart. She's not gonna lean on it, it doesn't make sense. She's not gonna lean on her understanding, she's gonna acknowledge God in this situation. We see that right here. In verse 9, once after a sacrificial meal at Shiloh, Hannah got up, went to pray. Eli the priest was sitting in his customary place beside the entrance of the tabernacle. Hannah was deep in in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord. She's crying out to God, God, why? Where are you? How come you haven't answered my prayer? I just want a child. It says as she goes on, 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'll give him back to you. She's acknowledging him in this, this is your situation, God. To me, this is how we acknowledge God in every struggle, every trial, everything, every failure and every win. I think this is how we do it. We say, God, this is your moment. This is your situation. This bill that I don't know how to pay, God, this is your bill. Because I'm gonna acknowledge you in the middle of it. I'm gonna put your name on it. I'm gonna put, I'm gonna mark for your kingdom and not just let this be this thing that I'm struggling with. So the priest hears her. And in fact, he it says that he goes up to her at, sees her praying, and says, Listen, go in peace. May your prayer be, may your request be answered. May God grant your request. Then in verse 18, something changes. She says, Okay, oh, thank you, sir. Then she went back and began to eat, and it says she was no longer sad. You know that nothing had changed in the situation. She didn't have a child yet. So she's being taunted for life. She's being minimized and ignored by her husband. And the priest comes along and tells her, Don't worry, you need to trust in God. May God grant your request. And while literally nothing has changed, it says that she was no longer sad. Can I just challenge you where you are? Maybe year after year after year, you're in a place where your your prayer is not answered. You don't understand, it doesn't make sense, it does not add up, it's not on paper, it there's no answer. You're in the same place as you were years ago, but there comes a moment where you decide or you don't decide. Am I gonna trust the Lord with all my heart? Lean on my own, lean not on my own understanding, and can I acknowledge God in this? The next verse, verse 19, says this. Then the entire family got up early the next morning and went to worship the Lord once more. You want to know why worship is important? Because it's something you can do even when the situation hasn't changed. We think that worship is just, oh well, praise God because it of what he did. Sure, what he did, but what about what he's going to do and hasn't done yet? Nothing outwardly has changed. I can't tell you how many times I've been hit with profound sorrow or even sometimes phone calls on the way to church. Sometimes the worst thing I get terror, I've had terrible news, and I'm sitting over in this room trying to figure out how do I square this? What how how can I go out and stand on stage and bring a message of hope and faith and trust in God, and I'm struggling with this. You know what my answer is? My answer is okay, I've got 10 minutes. I walk out here front row and I just start to praise God. I start to enter into worship. I start to just say, God, I'm gonna trust you with all my heart. I'm gonna I'm gonna give this to you. The thing that doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up in my head, but I'll trust you anyway. This is your moment. Last verse. It says, then they returned home to Ramah when El Kana uh when El Kana slept with Hannah. By the way, I think she forgave him for his uh taking credit earlier. Says the Lord remembered her plea, and in due time she gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, Watch this, I asked the Lord for him. There has to be some things I would suggest the thing you trust him with least. Let that be the mark of the thing that God can show up in. Let that she named him Samuel. She named him Samuel. And Samuel's name means heard by God. She named him, I was heard by God. When no one else would listen to me, when my husband wouldn't listen to me, when I had no children, I was heard by God. I want you to stand up on your feet and I want you to take whatever that thing is that you have had trouble trusting in God with, and you have to rename it instead of it being the uh the unconquerable, un I can't figure this out, God. This is a problem that doesn't make sense. I wish you would just take it away from me. Would you just name it and say, This is the thing where I'm gonna let God show up? It doesn't make sense, I don't know how, but God, I'm gonna trust you right here. Every day that she had to call out that her son's name, Samuel. She had to remember I was heard by God. He listened to my cry. It didn't make sense. I was crying, I was pouring out my heart. Nothing made sense, but he heard me. To me, that's what this verse says: that I'm gonna stand on God's word and take a hold of his wisdom and live by it and proclaim it in every good time and every bad time. So I want us to worship and begin to turn our hearts toward God. When you begin to just name that problem and say, God, this is yours. I acknowledge you in this situation, this relationship, this bill that I can't pay, this job situation, this relational problem, my marriage, my kids, everything, all of it belongs to you, God. Let's worship, and then we're gonna come back and pray together. Not only does this verse give us a a challenge and a blueprint for taking every moment and turning it back toward God, but it also gives us across all of life, we have to bring our lives to Him in submission and follow him. If you've never surrendered your whole life to God and decided that I'm gonna follow, I'm gonna trust in God and give him control of my life. I would invite you to say this prayer with me today and let's just reset our. Let's just take bring ourselves back to a place where maybe I haven't done things up till this moment right, but let's have a fresh start with the Lord today. Would you say this prayer with me? Would you just bow your head and close your eyes and start a relationship with the Heavenly Father today? Would you say these words, dear Heavenly Father? Today I choose to follow you. I choose to put my life in your hands. So I repent and I ask you to forgive me for going the wrong way, making the wrong choices, for following the wisdom of this world. And today I turn toward you. I choose your wisdom. I don't want to follow my own understanding, and I acknowledge you in this moment. So give me a new life, give me a new heart. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Put your hands together for those who said that prayer. Thank you for worshiping with us this morning. I love you guys, and I will see you next week. God bless you.