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."
This is a tough one. I bore two sons, and have acquired five daughters, another son, several sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, and in March will celebrate the arrival of our fifteenth grandchild! And they are – each and every one – the most precious things in my life. I had no trouble conceiving either of my sons, and I have never wanted anything so badly as I wanted each of them. And I have never loved anyone so much as I love each of them. Although they’re both grown and living their own lives now, I cannot imagine having given one of them up when he was a tiny boy, to send him to live in another city with someone else where I could only see him once a year. It’s difficult enough to let them go when they are grown. The pain of giving them up as children would have been incredible. But that’s exactly what Hannah did. She did it because that is what she promised God she would do if He would only allow her to have him. She made a commitment to God… and she kept it.
The first thing we need to realize is that God is not someone with whom you can negotiate. He doesn’t take bribes. He can’t be bought off. He can’t be cajoled or manipulated or convinced with fancy sales techniques. He is God Almighty. He will do what He will do, and you and I don’t get a vote, much less have any influence on His decisions. What He does for us is through His infinite grace because He loves us more than we can imagine. There is no other reason. But many times we forget that. Many times we turn to God and make promises… promises we can’t keep… or promises we could keep but conveniently forget about the moment our prayers are answered.
Think about how you feel when your child promises to do something if you’ll only do this one thing for him. So you grant his request, and he blithely goes his way, failing to remember his promise. There are many teenagers out there who will be lucky to make it to adulthood because of that very type of behavior! So how do you think God feels when you do the same thing?
The next time you’re tempted to make a promise to God, weigh that promise carefully. Make sure you intend to keep it.
And because the LORD had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. 1 Samuel 1:6 NIV
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?" 1 Samuel 1:8 NIV
Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine." 1 Samuel 1:13-14 NIV
The people around Hannah were a big help. Peninnah, Elkanah’s other wife, was a total pain in the neck, constantly making fun of Hannah for her barrenness. She was jealous of Elkanah’s love for Hannah, probably secretly wishing that Elkanah would exercise his option to divorce Hannah for her barrenness. Her jealously manifested itself in her ridicule of Hannah.
Then there was good old Elkanah. He loved Hannah so much, he even gave her a double portion of the sacrificial meat – a great honor and a sign of his devotion to her. He honestly couldn’t understand her frustration, thinking she should be satisfied with just their relationship.
To top it off, Hannah even had problems with Eli – her priest. Think of him here as the pastor of her church. He totally misunderstood her motives, misread what was going on and accused her of showing up at church drunk!
You would have thought that the three people closest to Hannah would have been her greatest supporters, right? But they were not. Instead, they just compounded her problem… because none of them looked at the situation with God’s eternal eyes. They looked at the outward circumstances and used their human logic to act.
Sadly that’s just how it happens in the real world… even with Christians. We look at our own circumstances and those of our friends with our limited understanding and act accordingly. Sadly, when we are in the middle of a major problem, our closest Christian friends can become our biggest problem, giving us our biggest headaches. Picture this. Everything in your life starts falling apart. You pray for guidance, and are doing exactly what God leads you to do through prayer and His word. Suddenly, every Christian friend you have is in there criticizing you. "You brought this on yourself! The only reason this happened is because you didn’t have enough faith! Have more faith!" "Obviously, there’s some sin in your life that you have not confessed. Get right with God!" "You just don’t know how to pray!" "Do this! You’re not following the rules!” “Get it right, and God will answer your prayer!" And it gets worse before it gets better.
The point is… in the middle of her trial, Hannah turned to the source – God Almighty. And she stuck by Him in spite of what everyone around her said.
The same goes for you and me. Walk down the path Jesus sets for you, and ignore the criticism that may come. If what you are doing is in line with His word and His will, let Him be the one to guide you. People make mistakes. Jesus doesn’t.
But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her, and the LORD had closed her womb. 1 Samuel 1:5 NIV
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." 1 Samuel 1:20 NIV
Hannah was barren. "…the LORD had closed her womb." No matter what she did, she remained barren. Nothing in her life that was "of man" worked. Peninnah ridiculed her. Elkanah couldn’t understand why she was upset. Eli misunderstood her. And her own efforts still left her childless. Every effort was fruitless. Until she turned to God in prayer.
So many times you and I feel like we’re at a standstill. We’re doing everything we can to make things happen, but we’re at a dead end. Nothing works, no matter what we try. We feel like we ought to be covered with bruises from all the brick walls we keep running into. Even in ministry for the Lord this can happen. A person you’ve prayed for and witnessed to for years seems not to have moved an inch in the Lord’s direction. A ministry you’re absolutely certain that God called you to seems to be stymied and has not grown an inch.
What did Hannah do? She turned to the Lord with sincere and honest prayer. She poured her heart out to Him. In fact, her prayer was so fervent, Eli thought she was drunk! But that prayer opened the door for Hannah to have the child she longed for so desperately. Sincere communication with God Almighty was the key to ending her childless days. You should notice that she did not return to Ramathaim and suddenly find herself pregnant. The scripture says that "… in the course of time…" she conceived and bore Samuel.
The point is – our God wants your prayers. He wants to hear from you daily on a sincere and personal level. He wants you to come to Him with all your thoughts, all your desires, all your needs – and especially, with all your love. Not just when you have a problem… with all things… at all times… in sincerity and honesty and love and a willingness to accept His will. You never know… It could be - just as it was with Hannah - that may be all He is waiting for.
Hannah was in a frustrating position. She lived in a time when a woman’s ability to bear children was essential – so essential, it was legal for a man to divorce a barren woman… an divorced, barren woman could look forward to a life of destitution. She was totally undesirable, unneeded and unwanted. But Hannah was married to Elkanah, a man who loved her so much that he didn’t care whether she had children or not. Even so, Hannah was frustrated… and angry… and bitter. She could look around and see all the other women with their children, and her heart cried out to have a child of her own. We don’t know how old Hannah was when she gave birth to Samuel, but the account states that "year after year" they went up to Shiloh to offer sacrifices, so she was well past the time most women started having children. In her eyes, the time for her to have children was years earlier – long before it actually happened. Frustrating as it was for Hannah, God chose to postpone Hannah’s childbearing years until it fit into His eternal schedule. So, Hannah had to wait.
In our lives, many times we are faced with the same type of frustration. We want things to happen, and we want them right now! Logic says that we should be able to solve every problem instantly. After all, we’re Christians. We have God on our side. We should never have to deal with things like unemployment, or financial problems, or difficult teenagers, or divorce, or illness. We should be able to instantly zap our problems into outer space, right? Wrong. God does not wear a watch. Yes, He knows what time it is and what day and year and month it is. But He has an eternal timetable… a plan that He keeps that has nothing to do with the order of events you and I try to arrange for Him. Every once in a while, He allows us to understand His timing, giving us a clear picture of just why He waited weeks or months or even years to answer a specific prayer.
I once knew a man who lost his job as President of national sales for a large company. There was no apparent reason for the firing. He just went in one morning as usual, and they let him go. He and his family went through a very difficult year while he looked for work. The whole time, that family continually questioned why God would cause him to lose that wonderful job that he loved so much. A year later, all of the top executives of that company came under federal indictment for fraud – even some who were innocent. Had that man remained in that company one week longer, he would have been one of the ones indicted! When he thought God had been causing him and his family pain, in reality God was protecting him from an even greater pain!
If you’re frustrated right now with God’s timing in your life, remember His eternal schedule – and rejoice that He is planning ahead for you!
The foreman replied, "She is the Moabitess who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She went into the field and has worked steadily from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter." Ruth 2:6-7 NIV
Then Naomi said, "Wait, my daughter, until you find out what happens. For the man will not rest until the matter is settled today." Ruth 3:18 NIV
When Boaz noticed Ruth and asked his servants about her, the servants had nothing but kind things to say. She had demonstrated her character by her actions, and they were impressed. What they said about her impressed Boaz. Obviously, he had noticed her because she was a stranger… and perhaps because she was pretty. But it was her character that really impressed him. Her reputation preceded her.
When Ruth told Naomi the results of her meeting with Boaz, Naomi said, "… the man will not rest until the matter is settled today." Obviously, Boaz had a reputation for being a man of action and a man of his word. Naomi knew that he would do what he said, because he always did. His reputation preceded him.
You and I know what kind of person someone is, not by what he says, but by what his actions demonstrate. And likewise, others know us by what our actions demonstrate. The thing we need to keep in mind is that, as Christians, ours is not the only reputation at stake… Jesus’ reputation is at stake in us. We are His representatives, and our reputations precede us.
As you go through each day, remember that you may be the first or only contact someone has with Jesus. You may be the only Bible some people ever read.
So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
"As it turned out…" If you’re in any way familiar with the way the Lord works, you’ll know that it was no accident that Ruth married her first husband. It was no accident that he died. It was no accident that Ruth had the kind of character she did so that she would return to Bethlehem with Naomi. It was no accident that she was the kind of person to take the initiative in difficult situations. And it was definitely no accident that she "found herself" gleaning in the fields owned by Boaz. God guided her footsteps every moment, making sure not only that she ended up in the right place at the right time, but that she had grown into the type of person she needed to be in order to fulfill God’s purpose for her. God made Ruth and Boaz for each other, and in His divine wisdom He made sure to get them together. When you think about it, getting those two together was virtually impossible by human standards. By all rights, they should never have met, much less married. But if God was capable of creating the universe, it’s an easy matter for Him to arrange a divine appointment, no matter how remote the possibility looks to you and me.
About 30 years ago, I became friends with a woman when she took a job as a secretary in my office. She and her husband had been traveling across country to Dallas to look for work, but they ended up stranded in the city where I lived without enough money to repair their car. She and I remained friends, even though I moved to Houston about a year after we met. Several years later, the Lord allowed me to lead that woman to Him. Her car broke down because she had a divine appointment to meet me. I was working in a job that I hated because I had a divine appointment with her. Until that night in her living room, I had never thought about God arranging for us to meet. Now I know He did.
I can look back over my life and see so many times that I met someone at exactly the time God wanted us to meet…. the man who led me to Jesus was on a four-hour layover between flights and "found himself" at an antique automobile auction. He later told me he had no idea why he felt compelled to go into that building until he ran into me. It was then he knew that the Spirit had urged him to be at the most important divine appointment of my life! And there is also the man who is now my husband. Looking back, we both know that our meeting was planned by God. All we had to do was show up for our divine appointment, even though neither of us suspected what God had in mind for us that day.
In everything that happens in your life, remember that there are no accidents. God has a purpose and a plan… Be open to His divine appointments – and make sure you show up!
And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, "Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor." Naomi said to her, "Go ahead, my daughter." So she went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.
Ruth didn’t sit back and wait for Naomi to come up with a solution to their mutual problem. She didn’t sit back and wait for the Lord to drop manna from heaven, either. She took the initiative. She saw the problem, saw what needed to be done, and she did it. Never mind that the solution was demeaning to her. Never mind that it was hard work. Never mind that this had nothing to do with her hopes and dreams. She was willing to take the initiative and get on with the problem at hand. She didn’t say, "Okay, I did the right thing. I came with Naomi to this strange land. This God I’ve sworn to follow is supposed to do miracles. I’m going to sit back and wait for Him to drop a major miracle in my lap!"
Sound familiar? How about, "I wish the Lord would hurry up and bless me. I’m trying to be good and follow His laws. But I hate my job. I hate my life. I’m so bored. I’m so lonely. I’m so depressed. I’m so tired of the rat race. How long do I have to wait before He does something?" Every one of us has said some of the above at one time or another. But where you are right now is where God wants you to be right now… for His eternal purpose. The lowly task you are being asked to perform might be preparation for a greater task He has for you down the road. And perhaps… just perhaps… He’s just waiting for you to get up and do something about the situation… to take the initiative to illustrate how badly you want something. Perhaps He is waiting for you to take a step of faith.
Jesus set the example for us. He called you and me; we didn’t call Him. He sought us out first, or we would never have known who He was. By doing it first, He illustrated what it means to take the initiative.
If you’re in a miserable situation right now, take a close look at it. Look for ways you can serve God and glorify Him through your situation. And look for ways you can take the initiative to solve the problem at hand. God will bless your efforts… perhaps not in the way you expect, but He will bless you. And His blessings are always so much better than what we thought we wanted. Ruth wasn’t looking for a husband. She was looking for food… and by taking the initiative, she became one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ.