Hannah’s Prayer Teaches Moms Three Things About Praying For Our Children
Praying For Our Children
Right now, I am teaching a Praying Moms class, and I am a part of a praying moms prayer group at my church. Over the past thirty-three years of motherhood, I learned the importance of praying for our children no matter what stage of life. When my children were little, I prayed for them. Now that they are grown and out of the house, I still pray for them.
Almost every day that I talk to my ninety-three-year-old mother, she tells me how she is praying for me and my children. What a ministry she has to her family! Thank You Jesus for giving me a praying mom!
Today I want to look at a biblical story about another praying mom named Hannah from 1 Samuel 1.
Hannah’s Story
Hannah wanted to be a mom more than anything else, but for years Hannah couldn’t get pregnant. At the point when we see Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 1, Hannah had become desperate.
I wrote about her desperation in a past blog post, Do You Have Unfulfilled Desires And Feel Like God Isn’t Listening?.
One commonality between our points of desperation and praying for our children, is the fact that desperation and our children will both get us on our knees. And so often as a mom our desperation and our most desperate prayers usually point to our children. Praying for our children out of those moments of desperation is natural and to be expected, but we don’t want desperation to be the sum of our prayer life.
In reality, we can’t expect to show up in times of crisis only and have an effective and powerful prayer life. On the other hand, I don’t want to diminish the fact that God often uses moments of desperation or a crisis to teach us and grow us in our prayer life. But ultimately, we need a daily relationship with Jesus where we consistently show up and pray through the small and daily issues in our children’s lives.
3 Lessons For Praying Moms From Hannah’s Prayer
Lesson # 1 – Pray And Trust God Fully
In Hannah’s prayer of desperation, she prayed for a child. However, she also committed to devote her child to the Lord all the days of his life if He blessed her with a child. We need to view her situation from her day and time rather than our own. In her culture, being a mother held stronger implications to a woman’s significance, purpose, and value. This isn’t about what is right or wrong, just simply the reality in that time in history.
Another cultural element unrelatable in our current culture is how having children impacted a mother’s personal provision and their family’s degree of wealth. The more children born in a family meant more hands to work and provide food for a family directly affecting a family’s prosperity. Which points to how much Hannah trusted God for her personal provision by trusting Him with her son.
Lesson # 2 – Dedicate Your Child To God
“Then she made a vow and said, "O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head."
1 Samuel 1:11
Once Hannah birthed and weaned Samuel, she followed through with her commitment and Samuel became one of the greatest prophets.
The most important prayer and commitment we can pray and make to the Lord regarding our children is a true dedicating their lives to God. This means a full entrusting God with every element of their lives. Otherwise, instead of trusting God for their outcome, we create pain and misery for ourselves and our children in the parenting process. Because ultimately, we then parent out of fear and a need to control. Having to be in total control as a parent never works out for any of our best. I know from experience.
Sadly, I must confess that I parented more out of fear while my children were growing up than I did out of fully trusting God. However, in God’s love and mercy He taught me of His trustworthiness. God brought me to a place of dedicating the daily details and the outcome of my three adult daughter’s lives to Him. You see, not only is God trustworthy, but He is true to His word. So when I dedicate my daughter’s outcome to God, I base my confidence in His promise.
“Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work
in you (in my children) will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;”
Philippians 1:6
Lesson # 3 – Pray Until You Get Your Answer
Prayer is what will get us through the hard stuff in life whether we are talking about ourselves or our children. We need a real prayer life where we connect and communicate with God. A real prayer life sets us up to see God work in our lives and our children’s lives. In a genuine relationship with God, we will see Him respond to our prayers and we will see miracles. I know this from experience as well.
But, as it went with Hannah, our answers and our miracles may not happen instantly. Hannah’s story in 1 Samuel tells us that she prayed for years before God answered her prayers for a child, but she did not give up. While the story doesn’t specifically tell us God’s purpose in her waiting season, we can know that God is purposeful even when we wait.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about this in my blog post, Dear Sister, Are You Waiting On God To Fulfill His Promise?
When we don’t see God working in response to our prayers, that doesn’t mean He isn’t listening or working. We need to remember that God sees the big picture. He sees what we can’t see and He works all things together for our good. So that is where fully trusting God based on His goodness comes in.
Quite possibly the growth of the relationship with us personally may very well be His priority. Because, as we walk with Him, we learn more of His love and goodness that positions us to fully trust Him and totally relinquish control as parents. God loves our children and wants the best for our children even more than we do.
Always remember, when your love for your children, wells up in your heart and you feel an all-consuming love for them, God, the perfect parent loves them more. In those moments of discipline, when your greatest desire is for your children to experience their best life possible, cling to the reality that God wants the best for them so much more.
Dear Sister in Christ, learn from Hannah. Pray, trust God fully, dedicate your most precious and valuable children to the Lord, and keep praying until you get your prayers answered. Your children will be a true testament to the power of prayer and the love, goodness, and faithfulness of our great God.
