Many of you have prayed all year for God to take away the miscarriage and infertility that has troubled you and give you your own child. Low sperm count may have been an issue that has troubled you and stopped you from having your own child. You may have done all you know to do in the physical yet have no answer to your problems. It looks like God has forsaken you. It looks like heaven has become brass in your case. In times like these what can I do? You may ask?
Today I want us to visit the Bible and see someone who faced the problem of unanswered prayer and how she finally overcame it.
In the book of 1 Samue1- 1:11, I found an unanswered prayer. A woman named Hannah was offering this prayer. It becomes obvious upon close observation that she had been praying this prayer for a long time. If you will notice, her prayer is not unscriptural It is simply unanswered. All she wants is a child. However, no child is born. Day and night she cried out to God to bless her womb and enable her become pregnant with her own child, but nothing happened.
The Bible tells us that Hannah is a faithful child of the Most High God. She and her husband go to Shiloh and worship God each time there is a feast. During those pilgrimages they always make the proper sacrifices and give generously to the work of the Lord in Shiloh.
Since we know that Hannah is a faithful worshiper of Almighty God, it is only reasonable to believe she is also a woman of prayer. Because of her great desire to have a son, we know she is constantly praying to conceive. No doubt she rises early every morning with this special prayer request, "Oh, God, give me a Son!"
Like so many out there she keeps at it, Lord, take away this miscarriage, take away this infertility from my life! Visit my womb with a child. Surely she continues to call out to the Lord Almighty every single day yet nothing seemed to be happening.
Everyone in the house knows her prayer by heart. I am sure she has asked all her family and neighbours again and again to agree with her that she will become pregnant. All the angels of heaven know her desire. To put it bluntly, everyone in heaven and earth seems to have heard her prayer - that is, everyone except God. Here we see the most heart-breaking kind of prayer. It is an unanswered prayer!
The Bible tells us that sorrow over her unanswered petition finally causes her to stop eating, "In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the LORD".
At this point she makes a radical change in the way she prays. Driven by desperation, she makes one last, violent attempt to move God's hand. Thank God, she has the sense to throw tradition to the wind and boldly take hold of that which is rightfully hers! Child of God, don't be turned off by the thought of taking violent action in prayer, for the violent leap of faith almost always brings deliverance, especially when your heaven has turned to brass.
We can see the desperation in Hannah's heart in the unusual way she forms her prayer. Her approach to God totally disregards tradition. The words she speaks can be described only as spiritual violence. It did not matter to her any more what anybody had to say.
Hannah's new way of praying swiftly moves God's mighty hand to her point of need. The Bible tells us that within hours of praying, she becomes pregnant. Take a moment, and read her most unusual prayer. (Continue reading in Part 2)
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