Heart Tracks - Releasing Samuel

       One of the promises we love to cling to is that where the Father promises to give us "the desires of our heart."  We hear this, read this, and most often receive this as a kind of blank check that we can present at His throne and have a guarantee that what we ask for, He's duty bound to give us.  I'm not going to use this space to explore just how wrong that line of thinking is, but more, what our response is when He indeed does give us "the desire of our heart."  Case in point; Hannah, the mother of Samuel the prophet.

      Hannah was the beloved wife of Elkanah, but she was childless.  This to her, was a cause of deep and bitter grief.  More than anything, she desired a son.  Each year they traveled to Shiloh to worship the Lord.  Many trips had been made, and each time, Hannah pleaded with the Father to give her a son.  One such time, as she prayed, she was so deeply burdened with this desire, that Eli the priest believed her to be drunk, and rebuked her.  She then told him she wasn't drunk, but was crying out to the Lord in her desire for a son.  Eli then spoke words of encouragement to her, and she went away rejoicing that her prayer had been heard.  As scripture relates, "in due time," the Father gave her the son she longed for, and she named him Samuel.  In her prayers to the Father, she had promised Him that if He would give her a son, she would dedicate him, literally give him to Him.  Not just with words, but in fact.  At the proper time, she journeyed to Shiloh to do just that.  I Samuel 1:27 relates her words to Eli upon that return; "I asked the Lord to give me this child, and He has given me my request.  Now I am giving Him to the Lord and he will belong to the Lord his whole life."  The conclusion of verse 28 reads, "And they worshiped the Lord there."

     I'm sharing this story with you because I was impacted by something Watchman Nee said concerning the acts of Hannah.  Nee writes, "The sum total of her request was for this child.  Yet now, when she had received all she craved, she gave all back to the Giver. And as Samuel passed out of her hands, we are told, 'They worshiped the Lord there.' "  After reading this, I wrote in the margin, "We are so easily able to ask Him to give us the desires of our hearts, but can we give those very desires, every aspect of them, back into His hands?"  Can we release to Him, surrendering all claim to, the deepest desire, the greatest gift, the most yearned for answer to prayer?  Can we especially do this when He has answered that desire by giving it?  Nee writes, "When the day comes for me, as it came for Hannah, that my Samuel, in whom all my hopes are centered, passes out of my hands into God's, then I shall know what it really means to worship Him."
     Who, what, is yours and my "Samuel?"  What is that we have yearned for, pleaded for, treasured in our hearts, and rejoiced over in our lives That we know beyond any doubt was given us by Him?  Can we give, with nothing held back, that gift, that answer, that treasure, completely into His hands.  Not still clutching it, he, she, with our own, but letting go, giving up, surrendering that fully met desire, to Him?  Hannah could, and did.  Can we?  Will we?  Have we?  

     It comes to me as I close, that it may be that many of us still find ourselves in the place of crying out to Him for a desire that like Hannah's, has not yet been met.  It may be that it has not yet come to be the "due time" of God.  Dare we however  ask ourselves, could it possibly be because we have not been willing, as Hannah was, to give Him the ultimate act of worship and surrender that treasured desire, all of it, to Him?  Can we make that offering of worship?

Blessings,

Pastor O