Be Strong Courageous in Community The Courage to Entrust

Be Strong and Courageous in Community: The Courage to Entrust

1 Samuel 1:1-18, 27-28; 2:1-2

By Pastor Tammy Long

For Your Heart Today

Mother's Day often carries a mixture of emotions.

For some, it is a day of celebration and gratitude. For others, it stirs grief, longing, worry, or unanswered prayers connected to someone deeply loved.

In this week's message, we reflect on Hannah's story in 1 Samuel and the courage it takes to entrust the people we love into God's care.

Hannah knew what it meant to wait, to pray honestly, and to carry deep longing before the Lord. And through years of prayer and waiting, God was not only shaping Hannah's circumstances but also aligning and forming trust within her heart.

When Samuel is born, Hannah releases him back to God-not because it is easy, but because she is grateful and has come to know God as faithful.

Her story reminds us that entrusting is not abandoning. It is continuing to love deeply while releasing outcomes we cannot control and learning to hold tight to the Rock who remains faithful in every season.

Takeaways

1. God invites us to bring our honest sorrow into His presence. Hannah pours out her grief honestly before God, reminding us that prayer is a place where we can bring what is real.
2. Waiting can become a place where God forms trust within us. Through years of longing and prayer, God slowly shapes Hannah's heart and teaches her to hold even her deepest desires with open hands.
3. Entrusting is not abandoning. Hannah continues to love, pray for, and care about Samuel while releasing him into God's care.
4. God remains present in the journey. Even when we cannot clearly see where the road is leading for those we love, God is still faithful and at work.

Breath Prayer

Inhale: I entrust Exhale: You are my Rock

Full Manuscript - Estimated Reading Time ~20-22 minutes

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Be Strong and Courageous in Community: The Courage to Entrust

1 Samuel 1:1-18, 27-28; 2:1-2

By Pastor Tammy Long

Introduction

Good morning, and Happy Mother's Day. Amidst all the joy today, I want to recognize that Mother's Day can stir many emotions.

For some, it is a day of deep gratitude and celebration. A day filled with laughter, phone calls, flowers, cards, hugs, memories, and love. But for others, or even at the same time, it can be bittersweet… even painful.

I'm sensitive to those for whom this is the first Mother's Day without a mother they deeply miss. And those who feel the ache of having lost a child. Or others carrying the quiet grief of longing for a child that never came.

And then there are those bearing the pain of estrangement, worry, or unanswered prayers connected to someone they love deeply, a mother, a mother figure, a child, even an adult child you helped to raise or care for. In fact, even for those whose children are thriving, parenting itself carries a particular vulnerability. Because to love deeply is also to carry concern deeply.

Mothers and mother figures in particular - and really anyone who deeply loves another - know something about this. Something about lying awake at night in prayer. About carrying hopes in your heart for someone else's future. About wanting good things for someone you love more than words can express, about celebrating joys and carrying fears simultaneously.

One of the hardest things about love - not only for mothers, but for all of us - is that eventually we discover, no matter how much we love, we cannot fully protect, shape, or control the people we love the most.

As we continue in worship, I want us to turn our attention to a woman in Scripture who knew something about waiting… longing… loving deeply… and learning to trust God with all she carried.

Our text this morning is found in 1 Samuel 1:1-18.

Longing and Waiting

There is so much happening in this story. Longing. Love. Shame. Family tension. Cultural expectations. Deep grief. And deep prayer.

And though Hannah lived in a world very different from ours, what strikes me is how honest Scripture is about Hannah's pain. We see it. We feel it. We enter into it with her.

Year after year, Hannah makes this journey to worship God with her husband, carrying the same ache with every step. In Hannah's world, not having a child was not simply a private disappointment. Women were deeply valued through family and children, so Hannah's pain is not only personal, it's public. She lives not only with longing, but with blame, shame, and grief.

To make matters worse, Peninnah is a bully. She provokes her cruelly.

Scripture says:

"So Peninnah would taunt Hannah and make fun of her because the Lord had kept her from having children. Year after year, it was the same… Each time, Hannah would be reduced to tears and would not even eat." -1 Samuel 1:6-7 (NLT)

This is sorrow that has settled deeply into her spirit year after year. And our hearts ache for her. I appreciate that Scripture allows us to see Hannah as fully human. She is not pretending to be fine.

And poor Elkanah, who clearly loves Hannah deeply, cannot fully understand the depth of what she is carrying, although he tries. He says to her:

"Why are you crying, Hannah? Why aren't you eating? Why be downhearted just because you have no children? You have me-isn't that better than having ten sons?" -1 Samuel 1:8 (NLT)

Now we can miss what he's saying here. He's not bragging or trying to say he's "all that." These are actually tender words that reflect his love for her. In that culture, ten sons represented an extraordinary blessing and a sense of security. Elkanah is essentially saying, "You matter to me more than all of that. Don't you feel the same? Am I not enough?"

And we can feel for him, too, because loving someone and fully understanding their pain aren't always the same thing, and he can't fully understand.

Then, the scene changes. We're told that after the meal, Hannah gets up and goes to pray. She takes her longing and pain into the presence of God. Scripture says:

"Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord." -1 Samuel 1:10 (NLT)

Again, this verse is a gift for us - a peek into what's real and how to respond. Because Hannah does not hide her sorrow from God. She pours herself out honestly before Him. She's turned her longing into prayer and her waiting into an avenue to encounter God. She goes to the place she knows she can connect with God and seeks Him.

And then comes a surprising moment in the story. She prays,

"O Lord of Heaven's Armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be yours for his entire lifetime…"

The story may be so familiar that we miss its oddity, but think about this for a moment. Hannah prays for a son… and, at the very same time, promises to return him to God.

Now, at first glance, it can sound like she's bargaining. "If You do this for me, then I will do this for You." But I don't think that's what's happening; God doesn't bargain. But at the same time, it is strange to pray so desperately for something you are already willing to release. Most of us pray for what we want to hold onto. So what is going on?

Well, of course, we are not in Hannah's head, and we won't know this side of heaven, but I wonder if even in this prayer, we see God at work in Hannah's heart through all those years of prayer and waiting, slowly aligning her heart's desire with His own.

Perhaps even Elkanah's question: "Am I not better to you than ten sons?" lingered in her mind, and caused her to reflect on what she truly longed for, even beyond the gift of her husband or a child…

Perhaps she remembered God Himself was her portion, her hope, her security, first and foremost, even as she still desperately wanted a child.

We cannot know exactly what Hannah understood in that moment. Scripture leaves us with some holy mystery. But somehow her prayer carries both a deep desire for a child and open hands to return him to God.

You know, sometimes that is part of what long seasons of waiting do within us, maybe not at first and not without struggle. But slowly, through prayer and longing and tears, God begins a deeper work in our hearts and aligns our prayers with His plan and timing.

And perhaps that is why this story still speaks so deeply to us, because most of us know something about waiting on God and waiting for healing and waiting for reconciliation. Waiting for clarity and waiting for someone we love to find peace, wisdom, freedom, or faith.

Because often, the waiting itself is where God slowly builds trust within us.

What's striking about this story is that by the end of this passage, something has already changed in Hannah. Not because her circumstances have changed, because they haven't. But she's changed.

After pouring herself out before God and receiving Eli's blessing, Scripture says:

"Then she went back and began to eat again, and she was no longer sad." -1 Samuel 1:18 (NLT)

Something is different. In her time of prayer, as she shared her sorrow with God, hope began to rise again.

Entrusting and Release

As the story unfolds, Hannah's prayer is eventually answered. She does indeed become pregnant, and Samuel is born. And then we come to one of the most remarkable moments in Hannah's journey. She is faithful - the Scripture reads:

"When the child was weaned, Hannah took him to the Tabernacle in Shiloh…
I asked the Lord to give me this boy, and he has granted my request. Now I am giving him to the Lord, and he will belong to the Lord his whole life." -1 Samuel 1:24, 27-28

After all those years of praying, and tears, and waiting, Hannah keeps her vow and returns Samuel to God when the child is weaned.

Now, for historical context, in that culture, children were often not fully weaned until three to five years old, which feels quite old to us.

But the point is, Samuel is not a tiny infant when Hannah brings him to Eli. He is a little boy. Old enough to know his mother's voice. Old enough to walk beside her hand in hand. Old enough to feel the separation that is coming.

Hannah has spent those formative years loving him, nurturing him, holding him close, singing over him, and praying over him. And now she releases him. That would be hard to do at any time in history.

And what's more, Hannah is not entrusting Samuel into perfect circumstances. Eli is old by this point, and Scripture tells us his own sons are corrupt men. Whether Hannah fully understands all of that, we do not know. But she would know she has no control over what Samuel's future holds. Anything could happen.

But Hannah's confidence is not in Eli. She is entrusting Samuel to God.

Now think about that word for a moment. To entrust someone is to place them into the care of another because you believe they are trustworthy. And that is what Hannah is doing here. She is placing Samuel into the care of the God she has come to know as trustworthy and faithful.

Still, and I don't want to pass this too fast, it couldn't have been easy. And that's where it's hard for us, too. Because when we love someone, we intuitively want to hold tight. We want them to be safe, happy, and well cared for. And when we hold tight, it feels like we're doing our part to help, support, and protect.

Especially when the people we love are struggling, like an adult child making choices we know can lead to pain, an aging parent refusing help even as we watch their needs increase, or a friend drifting farther from God while we pray and ache quietly for the distance we see growing.

Those situations can make us feel helpless. And helplessness is uncomfortable. Scary even.

So, out of genuine love, we might tighten our grip emotionally. Worry constantly. Try harder to persuade, manage, rescue, or protect. And if we are not careful, somewhere along the way, caring becomes carrying. We can find ourselves trying to carry outcomes we cannot control, or burdens and responsibilities that ultimately belong to God.

But Hannah demonstrates a profound act of courage. She entrusts Samuel to God.

But notice this - entrusting is not abandoning. Release is not absence. It is choosing to trust the One who actually can make a difference.

I believe we can know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Hannah prayed for Samuel every single day. Scripture tells us she visited him year after year, even sewing and bringing him a little robe as he grew. I love that image and detail. She did not stop loving him.

And this may be important for some of us to hear today. Entrusting someone to God does not mean we stop loving them. It means we continue praying, continue loving, continue showing up, while also recognizing that ultimately, they belong to God.

This may be one of the hardest spiritual acts of courage there is. To keep loving someone deeply while holding open hands before God.

And by that, I mean open hands of release. The release of outcomes we cannot control. The release of timelines we cannot force. The release of our own vision for how someone's life should unfold, even if we perceive they are going in the wrong direction.

Because the courage we see in Hannah is exactly that. Her confidence in releasing Samuel was not based on the circumstances surrounding him, nor on any certainty about his future. Her confidence was rooted in the character of God to be faithful in His love.

And if we start from that same place - confidence in the character of God - perhaps we can begin to loosen our grip on those we may be holding just a little too tightly as well.

One of the deepest acts of becoming strong and courageous in community is learning to entrust the people we love to the God who loves them even more than we do.

Joy and Anchored Trust

Now, as we continue a little farther with Hannah's story, we see something worth noticing. At the end of chapter 1, Hannah has left Samuel with Eli at the temple, entrusting him into God's care.

And then in chapter 2, we see Hannah praying again. She says:

"The Lord has made me strong…
There is no one holy like the Lord!
There is no one besides you;
there is no Rock like our God."
-1 Samuel 2:1-2 (NLT)

The prayer continues, but we'll pause here because somehow, in what must still have been a hard and emotional season, joy rises.

Hannah begins: "My heart rejoices in the Lord." What a way to begin. Because I imagine Hannah still missed Samuel deeply. I imagine there were still tears. Still moments of ache.

And yet, her prayer reveals she finds strength and comfort in the Lord.

It is both a declaration of what she knows to be true about God and a reminder she can return to whenever entrusting Samuel becomes hard again.

Then she declares: "The Lord has made me strong."

Now I know that's a truthful statement right there. I have four sons I love incredibly. I know Hannah could not have done what she did without the help of the Lord. The Lord strengthened her to entrust Samuel into God's care. After years of praying and waiting, there's no way she could have done that without the strength of the Lord.

And then Hannah names this truth: "There is no Rock like our God."

We serve a God who is rock solid. Steady. An anchor in uncertain times.

Because entrusting our loved ones to God is not a one-and-done. There are moments we have to entrust and entrust again, especially when fear rises again, when worry resurfaces, or when we are tempted to tighten our grip once more. Instead, we have to return to what we know to be true about God. And hold tight to the Rock. Because there is no Rock like our God.

Closing

As we've already noted, year after year Hannah would return and watch Samuel grow - and each year, I imagine, she had to entrust him to God all over again. And of course, we know something Hannah could not see in that moment. Samuel would grow to become one of the great spiritual leaders in Israel's history. A prophet. A priest. A voice that helped guide God's people through an important season of transition.

God truly did have His hand on Samuel's life. Now that was Samuel's journey. But God has a journey for every person we love, too.

And sometimes those journeys include roads we never would have chosen for our loved ones. Difficult seasons. Painful detours. Hard lessons. And yet, we have seen God meet people in the middle of those very places. Which means even when we cannot clearly see where the road is leading, even when it's frightening to us, the story is not over. God is still present in the journey.

And so today, like Hannah, I invite you to entrust. To release the people we love into the care of the God who loves them even more than we do.

A Prayer for the Courage to Entrust

Lord, today we ask for the courage to entrust our

children, parents, spouses, friends, wandering loved ones…

Teach us to love deeply with open hands…

Strengthen us, as You strengthened Hannah…

Give us courage to release where fear has tightened our grip…

Help us hold tight to the Rock…

Because there is no Rock like our God.

Amen.