Who Are You When You Pray?: 8. Hannah

Hannah in 1 Samuel prays one of the hardest prayers that God will ever stir our hearts to pray. She prays, what I have heard it called as, a ‘death prayer’. She prays that at whatever cost to herself, that God may grant her a son. Yet she remains barren until she is prepared to sacrifice her hearts desire and surrender it to God himself.

Hannah desires a son more than anything, but the son she is destined to have also has a destiny – not only as her son but more importantly in his ministry to God. God needs Hannah to be able to let her son go and when she prays that death prayer the prayer that means she must die to her desire to have and keep this son and she offers him all his life as God’s – it is only then that she becomes pregnant. This was the only way forward for Hannah, because if you read on you will see that she has more children after Samuel that stay with her. But only in dying to her desire was life able to come and her greatest dream be granted to her in children she bore after Samuel.

Jesus prayed a similar prayer at Gethsemane, many say that it was here that Jesus died rather than at Calvery because it was here that He resolved to die that others may live, it was here he died to himself, his own flesh desires and fears. It was here that Jesus said your will be done to His Father. Hannah prayed a similar prayer, in dying to herself she brought forth much fruit, in John 12: 24 it says that “unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”

In a similar way sometimes when we pray we have to pray death prayers over areas of our lives. Where through prayer we put to death our sin and selfishness and in doing so, just as with Hannah, God will raise us in resurrection power, just as He did with Jesus. So today put to death your sinful self and be raised in Christ.

Sara Hesbrook

2003-06-16