Prayer Principles
“For this child I prayed.”
1 Samuel 1:27 (ESV)
My women’s Bible study group is focusing this week on Hannah, a mom with a heart for prayer. Most of us are familiar with Hannah’s story: her years of infertility; an unbearable family situation living in the same home with her husband’s other wife and children; her desperate prayer request for a son; a vow to give her son back to God; and her willingness to actually give Samuel back to the Lord following his birth.
What we don’t usually focus on is Hannah’s second prayer found in 1 Samuel 2:1-11. Hannah begins her prayer with “My heart rejoices in the Lord” and “I delight in your deliverance.” Read that prayer and you’ll find that Hannah’s focus is completely on Who God is and What He has done. Hannah references God twelve times in just ten verses, but she doesn’t even mention her son Samuel. The Giver is so much more important to Hannah than God’s gift. Hannah’s prayer of praise gives us a window into her heart. With her initial prayer, Hannah was desperate and dependent. With her second prayer, Hannah is delivered and delighted. Deliverance demands praise and her second prayer is full of praise.
Sinclair Ferguson writing in Devoted to God suggests that we should always pay attention to the prepositions of God’s grace. Hannah’s heart, and not just her prayer, is:
Desperate for God
Dependent on God
Delivered by God and
Delighted in God
Most of us use prayer as a crisis management tool. We face a difficult situation, pray a desperate prayer, hope for a quick and easy answer, and return to pre-crisis mode as soon as possible. If we are honest, we’re not even sure how to pray or what to pray most of the time. Even the Apostle Paul struggled with how to best pray (Romans 8:26). That’s why I love to use scripture to frame my prayers for my family. My favorite “go to” prayer for my children is Psalm 20. It is truly a prayer for all ages and stages of life:
May the LORD answer you when you are in distress;
May the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
May He send you help…and grant you support.
May He remember all your sacrifices and accept your offerings
May He give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.
We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.
May the Lord grant all your requests….
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God…
O LORD, save… Answer us when we call!
King David’s words penned some 3000 years ago have seen our family through CPA exams; minor league baseball batting slumps; college scholarship interviews; job searches; multiple miscarriages; grandchildren’s births; residential placement, and James Bruce’s death. Those petitions aren’t a prosperity driven “name it and claim it” gimmick. They are instead a desperate plea asking God to hear us when we cry out in distress and to do what only God can do: save us!
The book of Psalms is Israel’s book of prayers. The same desperate/dependent/delivered and delighted prayer paradigm that we see in Hannah’s life is found throughout the Psalms, especially in Psalm 18, 34, 56, 116, 119, and 126.
The best reason to pray is because God is there to hear us. He knows our hearts (1 Samuel 2:3) and He knows our needs (Matthew 6:32). He is a good, good heavenly Father and a much more God (Matthew 7:11) who tells us to pray (Matthew 7:7).
Tim Keller writes, “God always answers your prayers in precisely the way you want them answered if you knew everything he knew.”
Our job is to ask; His job is to answer. As you ask, don’t forget the one prayer that never fails : “Thy will be done!” (Matthew 6:10)