There’s something about Hannah that draws out in me both compassion for her and admiration of her. As she reels in sorrow and distress, we feel for her. As God answers her prayer with a son, we celebrate with her. And as we listen in on her prayers, we’re invited to learn from her.
The books of 1-2 Samuel offer several “hero stories.”[1] The “heroes” in these stories are not perfect people, but they do model key virtues and aspects of what it means to know and follow God. Hannah shows us through her words and actions what a posture of humility looks like. She offers an example of what to do with hurt and pain as she takes it to God in prayer. She lives out a gritty faith, knowing the sovereign God who closed her womb (1 Sam. 1:5-6) can open it. And she also models how we can pray to God, both in our pain (1 Sam. 1:11) and with our praise (1 Sam. 2:1-10).
In 1 Samuel’s short account of Hannah, we can learn a lot about how to pray. Here are eight of those takeaways.
1) Hannah shows us the value of taking a first step in prayer.
Hannah’s pain over her inability to bear children is clear. The story peels back the layers of her pain that’s amplified by the provocations of the “other woman” who produced children for her husband. Peninnah provoked her grievously to irritate her (1:6). Hannah wept and would not eat (1:7). She was deeply distressed and wept bitterly (1:10), troubled in spirit (1:15), and full of great anxiety and sorrow (1:16). Her grief slams her with wave after wave of pain, smashing her against the rocks.
If you’ve ever felt despair, you know it can feel like the very life has been sucked out of your spirit like the wind gets knocked out of your lungs. Life punches you in the face and knocks you down, and you wonder why you should get up off the mat before the 10-count. It’s tempting to give up. You’re unsure how to move forward. I think of Elijah lying under a broom tree and telling God he’s finished (1 Kings 19:4). As Alan Noble explains in On Getting Out of Bed[2], just beginning the day, going to work, being present for your kids, or doing mundane tasks can feel overwhelming, but taking those first steps is key to moving forward, one baby step at a time. “Moments create momentum.”[3]
Hannah shows us what this is like. If you pay attention to the verbs (the actions) in 1 Samuel 1, you can almost see the movement and momentum gained when it says after eating, “Hannah rose” (1 Sam. 1:9). She’s been sitting in her despair and feeling stuck, and we can understand why. She’s wept and wept. But then there’s come a point where she has a warm meal and her favorite beverage (1:9), and she gets up and goes to the house of the LORD to pray.
Maybe she regains a bit of strength through eating so she can take this step toward God. Maybe she realizes that nothing is going to change, whether in her circumstances or in her heart, unless God moves. Maybe she knows the only balm to her heart that’s been split into two is God’s nearness. Whatever it is, Hannah rose. She got up, took a step, and went to pray. Both things are huge in her story, the rising up that reflects her taking a step to do something about her situation, and then her response of prayer that reflects her faith that God alone is her help and hope.
Her pain and sorrow led her to God in prayer. She eventually reached the point where she had to get up (1:9) and do something about it, and that something in this case was pouring out her heart to God (1:15). But she would never get to the action of praying at the temple (1:10) unless she took that bold first step of standing up and moving to the next thing (1:9).
In my daughter’s favorite show, Bluey, there’s an episode[4] where young Bingo cries and has a hard time moving on with her day. She feels like she’s messed things up and thinks that is all she ever does. She’s so caught up in what’s not to like in the moment that she can’t step into the things awaiting her that she will like in the day. Her mom, Chilli, gives her a few things to do that help her not ignore what makes her sad but also not get stuck there. It’s called Chilli’s checklist. She has a cry, but then eventually she picks herself up (stands up), dusts herself up, and she keeps going because “the show must go on.”[5] The bite-size steps made the overwhelming responsibility doable. Bingo didn’t have to stop feeling sad, all she had to do was take the next step and stand up and dust herself off, and after that, she felt up to continuing with the next thing.
Sometimes we just need to pray or open our Bibles. Sometimes we need to talk to another Christian or be prayed over by them. Sometimes we need to get unstuck from the dark pit we’re in and “rise” and take that first step to move forward. Hannah rose, and she rose to pray.
Hannah will continue to weep throughout her praying, but when we’re told “she rose” (1:10) we get this image of her taking a first, crucial step to move forward. She’s not necessarily moving beyond the pain but she’s at least moving forward with the pain. She’s no longer going to let it swallow up the entirety of her life or drown out God’s presence. She’s ready to pray about it. She’s ready to bring it to God, both to pour out her heart to God (1:15) and to entrust her desires and circumstances to God (1:11).
2) Hannah models humility in her prayers.
1-2 Samuel tells us the story of the rise of the monarchy in Israel. Figures like Saul and David loom large. But the book begins in a remote village with an ordinary family and a barren woman. God chooses to work through the weak and exalt the lowly. This theme will show up as a major theme in Hannah’s prayer of praise (1 Sam. 2:1-10), later in David’s origin story (1 Sam. 16), and then ripple out all the way to the story of the virgin Mary (who borrows Hannah’s words for her own prayer in Luke 1). We first meet Hannah in a scene of humble circumstances.
Even more than her situation, it’s Hannah’s posture that exemplifies her humility before God. Between 1 Sam. 1:11-18, Hannah refers to herself five times as a “servant.” Three of those instances show up in her prayer.
- “look on the affliction of your servant” (1:11)
- “remember me and not forget your servant” (1:11)
- “give to your servant a son” (1:11)
Hannah prays to God in bold ways, asking for the miracle of a son (1:11). She’s honest with God about her pain, pouring out her soul to God (1:15). But she does so from a place of humility and submission. She is not making demands of God. There’s no hint of entitlement or that God owes her anything. But like a child throwing themselves at the mercy and kindness of a parent, Hannah brings the desires of her heart to her God. She appeals to His compassion and love (“look on my affliction” and “remember me”).
When we pray, we are servants of the king. We are not the king, and God is not the servant, and that truth should always inform our prayer life. We express desires but we do not make demands. We avoid entitlement and recognize we have no right to the things we ask, and yet in humility and faith, we God to do what He alone can do.
Humility is an essential ingredient to prayer. Humility admits our inability to accomplish what we need and our dependence on (and faith in) God. We give thanks, as Hannah does in 2:1-10, because we recognize everything we have is from His hands, not of our own doing (James 1:17; 1 Cor. 4:7-8). As Thomas Schreiner writes, “Prayer is humble because when we pray, we are saying that God is merciful and mighty, that He is wise and sovereign, and that He knows far better than us what is best for us.”[6] In other words, prayer is humble because God knows what’s best for us, when it’s best, why it’s best, and how it would best be worked out in our life. Because God alone knows all these things, and because He alone can do all these things, we pray to Him with humility.
Pray in humility recognizing who you are and who God is.
3) Hannah boldly asks God for what she desires.
Don’t mistake the humility of Hannah for timidity. She knows she comes before the king, but she also knows the big and gracious heart of the king, so she prays bold prayers.
Hannah has never had a child. Despite all her efforts to the contrary, this infertility has been a monthly source of disappointment and discouragement in her life. And yet, Hannah doesn’t see her circumstances as bound by the limits of her experience. Instead, she believes the Almighty, sovereign God over all is limitless. Her God, not her past experience, defines what can happen in her life.
The one who closed her womb can open it. God CAN cause her to become pregnant. He’s not obligated to do so or unkind if He doesn’t (since we don’t know what other good things God has in store through the hard things in our life). But she models a prayer life that isn’t hesitant to ask God to do big things that won’t happen apart from His intervention. Bold prayers shouldn’t demand God to do what we want and that shouldn’t make it sound like God must act in the way we think is best, but bold prayers do express faith that God can and does powerful and surprising things for His people.
Paul reminds us we have full access to God through Christ and can pray to God with boldness (Eph. 3:12). The Bible often encourages us to “ask” God for what we desire (Matt. 7:7-11; Phil. 4:6) or it reminds us we might not have something because we’ve never asked God for it (James 4:2). The biblical emphases isn’t halting our prayers with cautions but expanding our prayer life with reminders to pray to the God who does “far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20).
Hannah prays this way, asking God not only for a child but a son. She asks God to do what only God can do. Her theology of who God is opens her imagination to what God can do (and what she can pray for). And you know what happens after Hannah prays for what seemed impossible, God does it. He gives her a son (1 Sam. 1:27). He answers her bold request with lavish generosity.
Pray with faith and boldness because of who you’re praying to.
4) Hannah prays honestly to God.
We might (wrongly) sometimes think that praying in the Old Testament had this formal, ceremonial aspect to it. The prophets do call to task those who prayed with their lips but didn’t mean it with sincerity in their hearts, but most people simply prayed in light of their problems. Life hit them, they felt helpless, and it led to them to ask God to work on their behalf. Many of the prayers are short and to the point, raw and authentic in expressing what someone feels, thinks, and wants. What matters is they got the words out (prayer) to the right person (God), not how long they prayed or how great it sounded. Prayer is personal conversation, not religious incantation.
Eugene Peterson writes, “We must pray who we actually are, not who we think we should be. In prayer, all is not sweetness and light. The way of prayer is not to cover our unlovely emotions so that they will appear respectable, but expose them so that they can be enlisted in the work of the kingdom.”[7]
One of the ways people in the Old Testament describe this way of honest, personal prayer to God is simply pouring out their hearts to God. David calls the people of God to entrust all things to God in this kind of praying: “pour out your heart before him” (Ps. 62:8; see also Ps. 42:4; Job 30:16). Jeremiah calls us to lament to God in our pain by saying, “Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord!” (Lam. 2:19). And Hannah explains, “I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord” (1 Sam. 1:15).
Prayer doesn’t have to sound pretty or impress anyone. It’s talking to God. It’s bringing both our pain and our praises to God in humble honesty without pretension.
In The Imperfect Disciple, Jared Wilson writes, “Prayer is spilling your guts. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It doesn’t have to be tidy. It doesn’t have to be particularly eloquent or even particularly intelligent. But the Bible is how God speaks to us and prayer is how we speak to God. These two rhythms form the dynamic of our friendship with the God of the universe. You can’t be good friends with someone you don’t listen to, and you can’t be good friends with someone you don’t talk to.”
As we pray, we pour out our heart to God, which not only hands over what’s on our heart to Him but it knits us closer to Him as we share our burdens and start talking to Him as a person (rather than simply saying out loud formal religious thoughts). Just talk to God. Be honest and pour out your soul to Him like Hannah did.
5) Hannah prays what she’s seen in Scripture.
I think another reason why Hannah is willing to pray bold prayers is because that’s what was passed down to her from the stories of Israel (or from Scripture). She has heard about how God’s people ask God to accomplish for them what only God can do. She prays what she learned about how and when God’s people pray in Scripture.
When you read Genesis, you can see echoes of women like Rebekah and Rachel in the prayer life of Hannah.[8]When Isaac and Rebekah couldn’t conceive, they prayed (Gen. 25:21). When Rachel couldn’t give Jacob a child, she also envied the “other woman” (Gen. 30:1).[9] Eventually, God does open Rachel’s womb, and the text emphasizes that it’s in response to her prayers. “God listened to her” (Gen. 30:22).
Hannah’s prayer for a son in many ways reflects the stories of these other women of faith. She learned how to pray in her suffering by hearing stories of how women of God prayed in their suffering.
But Hannah’s words also reverberate with the words of God’s people when they suffered under anguish in Egypt. Hannah prays that God would look on her affliction (1 Sam. 1:11). This is a common phrase that both Israel and God use (Ex. 3:7; 4:31; Deut. 26:7; see also Gen. 29:2). God roots His action of delivering Egypt in the fact that He sawthe affliction of His people and heard their cries. Hannah taps into this language in her own life, praying to the same God who saw Israel, had compassion on them, and worked so powerfully in their desperate situation.
Hannah prays to God according to what she knows to be true about Him, based on what He’s done in the past. She knows God looks on the affliction of His people with great mercy and glorious might, so she follows in the footsteps of God’s people and prays that God would look on her affliction too.
This way of praying the Bible is a model for us today. We pray in light of who God is and what we see Him do in the Bible. We pray back the prayers and promises of Scripture, knowing that when we pray Scripture, we’re much more likely to be praying according to God’s will.[10] We pray according to how God has acted toward His people throughout time, believing He can do the same for us as His people today.
The prayers of God’s people are not static; they echo throughout history in the lives of families and the people of God. This is evident, not only in Hannah praying in light of earlier prayers of God’s people, but also in how Mary (the mother of Jesus) borrows so much from Hannah’s prayer of praise (1 Sam. 2:1-10) in her own prayer of praise (Luke 1:46-56).[11] Learn to pray what you see in the Bible, and pray in light of who God is and how He has worked in the Bible.
6) Hannah prays to the God who is sovereign over her circumstances.
1-2 Samuel emphasize God’s sovereignty over the big and small things of life, both for specific people as well as whole nations (whether Israel or Philistia). The book opens with its author recognizing God’s providential control over Hannah’s painful circumstances. The story repeats in back-to-back verses the same phrase so it’s not missed: “the Lord had closed her womb” (1:5-6). But for Hannah, as for the Scriptures as a whole, God’s sovereignty doesn’t turn humans into fatalists who sit back and say, “Whatever will be, will be.” Instead, the God who is sovereign over all things is the God who is powerful enough to change her circumstances and use the hard things for good (Rom. 8:28). The sovereignty of God should stir prayer to God.[12]
Hannah is wrecked by her barrenness, but she knows even this is not outside God’s wise and providential purposes for her life. It doesn’t lead her to anger at God or holding the “Why?” question against Him. Instead, it leads to asking God to change her circumstances, to see her in her affliction, and to bring good out of her hard situation like only He can. Hannah worships and prays to the Almighty, sovereign God who rules over all things, including the small details of her life.
God is not a spectator, helpless before her circumstances. He is not caught off guard by what she experiences. He is not scrambling to fix things He didn’t know were going to happen. Nor is He unmoved by her situations and prayers. His sovereign will in her life is brought to bear through her prayers of pleading. She models what it looks to humbly but honestly ask the sovereign God over her circumstances to change them.
Sam Storms writes, “Never presume God will grant you apart from prayer what he has ordained to grant you only by means of prayer.” Prayer and sovereignty work together. God is sovereign over all things, but God uses means to bring about His sovereign plans. Prayer is one of those means.
Hannah is one of many biblical examples of how rightly viewing the “bigness” of a sovereign God doesn’t cause us to shy away from prayer, but it motivates and empowers our prayer. Pray knowing that the world and your circumstances are in God’s hands, not out of His hands. Pray knowing that the God who works providentially can be at work in any detail or aspect of your life to accomplish His wise and gracious plans. Pray knowing the sovereign God who is over all things can then be at work in all things, working out His good purposes through your gutsy prayers of faith.
7) Hannah praises as well as petitions God.
We get a good glimpse of Hannah’s request to God in 1 Sam. 1:11. Her emptiness and distress push her to bold prayer for a son. And while God doesn’t always answer prayer this way (there were no doubt many prayerful, barren women in Israel who never became pregnant), in Hannah’s story, He does provide her with a son. For some, that’s where their praying stops. Pray is only petition (asking) for many people. While prayer often arises out of a need and begins with petition, that can’t be our whole prayer life. It must also include praise and thanksgiving.
I’ve written about thanksgiving and why God is worthy of our praise both when prayer is answered and when it’s not, when life is “good” and when it’s “hard,” so praise is not dependent on getting the circumstances we want. But when God does answer prayer, when God does work on our behalf, when we see God moving with power or kindness around us, it certainly should prompt thanksgiving and praise. A well-balanced prayer life includes “Thank you” or “Wow” (praise), “I’m sorry” (confession), “How long, O Lord?” (lament), and “Please” (petition).
Hannah exemplifies this as well, both in giving glory to God for His answer to her prayer (1 Sam. 1:27) and in her own personal prayer of praise to God (1 Sam. 2:1-10). The more Hannah learns about God through His work in her life, the more it turns to worship of God for who He is. She rejoices in God and exalts Him (2:1), and she does so in part through a prayer of praise.
The beautiful and significant prayer of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2 is a bit of a lens to read the whole book(s) of 1-2 Samuel. It worships the God who is holy like no other, our rock we depend on, who is just in his dealings with the wicked and gracious with the faithful, sovereign over the affairs of earth, who reverses the fortunes of the humble, who sets up kings and brings kings to the ground, and whose might alone is worthy of our trust and hope.
Hannah shows us how to petition God for the desires of our heart as well as how to praise God for the goodness of His glory and grace. We don’t have to choose between asking God for things or giving God thanks for who He is and what He’s done. Pray all kinds of prayers to the God who receives those prayers, whether praise, petition, confession, lament, or thanksgiving.
8) Prayer changes us (whether it changes our situation or not).
Prayer changes Hannah. She’s been weeping, distressed, and sorrowful. But now she’s spent her time pouring out her heart to God (1:15) and entrusting her desires and life to God (1:11). The priest, Eli, tells her to “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him” (1:17). We’re told that she then gets up, eats, goes her way, “and her face was no longer sad” (1:18).
After praying, her circumstances haven’t changed but her countenance has changed. Because she entrusts things to God, and because she believes God will answer her prayer, she goes forward in life and her face is no longer sad.
Prayer is not solely about experiencing a change in our situation, but it’s also about a change in us. Prayer isn’t just something we do but it does something in us and to us. Not all of us will be assured that our prayers will be answered, some won’t be (at least like we expected). But again, if in prayer we entrust our life and circumstances to God, and we believe that He is good (will do what’s best for us), wise (knows what’s best for us), and powerful (able to do what’s best for us), then we can find some measure of comfort and rest in Him.
Prayer produces peace. It takes the burden off of us and places it on God. So often I find myself changed through the process of prayer because it knit my heart to God, it redirected my gaze from my problems and onto God’s glory, it helped my submit my desires and will to God’s, and it allowed me to cast my burden on Him rather than carrying my burden. Prayer is our chance to be changed.
Pray Like Hannah
Hannah’s prayers (1 Sam. 1:11; 2:1-10) are not the only ones in the Bible. Like her, we would do well to know the Bible so we know how to pray, which means picking up little patterns of how to pray from many others (including Paul). But we also shouldn’t miss out on how many good things Hannah models to us about how to pray. Pray like Hannah by praying humbly, honestly, biblically, and boldly to the sovereign God and good Father who loves to hear our prayers and loves to respond to our prayers.
Footnotes
[1] See “Before You Preach A Narrative, Study Your Hero” by Matthew Boffy at https://www.logos.com/grow/before-you-preach-a-narrative-text-study-your-hero/, citing Leland Ryken’s How Bible Stories Work: A Guided Study of Biblical Narrative.
[2] “…we must see that each choice to do the next thing is an act of worship, and therefore fundamentally good. Feeding your pets is an act of worship. Brushing your teeth is. Doing the dishes. Getting dressed. Going to work. Insofar as each of these actions assumes that this life in this fallen world is good and worth living despite suffering, they are acts of faith in God. Choose to do the next thing before and unto God, take a step toward the block. That is all you must ever do and all you can do. It is your spiritual act of worship.” Alan Noble, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Season 2, Episode 16, entitled “The Show”
[5] Bingo and her sister, Bluey, are quite literally putting on a show, a very funny one that reenacts how their parents met (from their way of imagining it). Bingo thought it was too much to jump right back into this play that she felt like she had messed up, but breaking down into these little, manageable acts on her checklist helped her put one foot in front of the other. She cried, but then eventually could stand and try again.
Or if Bluey’s not your show, Anna’s song, “The Next Right Thing,” offers similar advice. When Anna is overwhelmed with her loss of both her sister (Elsa) and her friend (Olaf), she doesn’t know what to do next. There are too many big things still needing done, and it’s too much. But she can stand up and do “the next right thing.” Anna sings, “I won’t look too far ahead, It’s too much for me to take, But break it down to this next breath, This next step, This next choice is one that I can make.”
[6] Thomas Schreiner, “Humility is the Main Ingredient of Prayer, Repentance, and Thanksgiving,” https://equip.sbts.edu/article/humility-is-the-main-ingredient-of-prayer-repentance-and-thanksgiving/
[7] Eugene Peterson, Answering God, 100.
[8] I would love to know what Hannah would have done with the story of Sarah and Hagar (Gen. 16). Sarah’s barren condition in a polygamous marriage where another woman produced an heir would have resonated with Hannah, but so would Hagar’s story of being mistreated and yet God looking on her affliction with care.
[9] Similar to 1 Samuel, Jacob reminded her that her infertility is out of Jacob’s hands but it’s in God’s hands (Gen. 30:2). At first, Rachel responds not in faith but in taking matters into her hands and doing what makes sense to her (offering her maid as a surrogate mother). This is the “negative” (don’t do this) example of a key theme in 1 Samuel, not trusting in our own strength, wisdom, and plans but trusting in God alone.
[10] See Don Whitney’s Praying the Bible.
[11] See “How Hannah’s Prayer Found Its Fulfillment in Mary’s Magnificat,” by Benjamin Gladd, https://www.crossway.org/articles/how-hannahs-prayer-found-its-fulfillment-in-marys-magnificat/
[12] See “God is Sovereign: Pray, Vote, Share, Rest” by Jean Wilund at https://www.reviveourhearts.com/blog/god-is-sovereign-pray-vote-share-rest/?srsltid=AfmBOorR96oV9V1cGt-j9loCKU-ucKd6GZ_2i76pM8bOO3t28REEVMTa; “Leonce Crump on Prayer and God’s Sovereignty,” at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/leonce-crump-on-prayer-and-gods-sovereignty/; “Pray Because God is Sovereign” by Marshall Segal at https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/pray-because-god-is-sovereign.
Tim Chester writes, “God is sovereign, and so he is sovereign over our suffering. Whatever the medical causes for Hannah’s barrenness, ultimately it was God who had closed her womb. The key thing is what you do with this information…. For Hannah, it is a reason to pray. If God has closed her womb, then maybe God might also open her womb. In verse 9, God’s sovereignty spurs her into action. Up until this point things have happened to Hannah. She is passive. But now she stands up from the meal and goes to the Lord’s house to pray (v 10–11).” Tim Chester, 1 Samuel for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2014), 13–14.
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