Desire, Discipline, Delight part 3

Hannah had reached the place of saying, “Lord this request is for Your glory. Please hear my prayer and give me a son so that he can bring glory to You all the days of his life.” Once it was God she began to delight in, He gave her the very desire that had started this whole process of prayer. 1 Samuel 1:20 “It came about in due time, after Hannah had conceived, that she gave birth to a son; and she named him Samuel, saying, ‘Because I have asked him of the Lord.’”
 

This begins to explain why there were all those years of unanswered prayer in her life. Those were years of pruning, sifting and discipline. Out of those years and experiences there came a new woman, a woman with her vision broadened, her spirit mellowed, and a strength that could come no other way. God brought her to the place of sacrifice: she had to come to the place of giving up her dearest personal pleasure for the world-wide purposes of God. She gave her son to a lost world.   
 

Hannah’s original desire was for a son; but it was not until she proved her desire by being willing to pay the price of discipline (which ultimately brought her to the place of delighting in God Himself) that she got the thing she desired. “Delight yourself in God and He will give you the desire of your heart.” (Did you notice that it was still “in due time” that she conceived, indicating that this might not have happened right away?)
 

Motives

Have you ever considered the motives behind your prayers for the lost? I wonder if we pray amiss when our love for our lost loved ones supersedes our love for God. Subsequently we pray for them for their sake rather than for God’s sake. It’s not just that they are on their way to hell if they don’t ask Jesus to be their Lord; it’s that the Son of God died for them and He is worthy of their salvation and worthy of their praise.
 

The thing I took away from what I read from what Missionary Frank Leonette preached (wrote) is that this is all about Jesus. A full prayer room is all about Jesus; our reading through the Bible in a year (or following the SOAP process) is all about Jesus; every conversation we have with the lost needs to be handled in a way that we ultimately bring praise and glory to Jesus through it, even if we don’t actually mention His Name.
 

What is there that is not to be about Jesus? I wonder if we are not a lot more like Hannah was than we want to admit. I believe she first started praying out of self-pity: “God, please answer my prayer. Look at how I’m suffering.” Or it might be, “God, please answer my prayer: look at how much they need You!” Neither of those requests seems bad until you compare yourself and your needs to who Jesus is and the price He paid for our sins.

Continued tomorrow