What do you do when you have prayed for years and God seems silent? The sermon takes us to the opening chapters of 1 Samuel (1 Samuel 1), where Hannah, childless, mocked, living in a time of religious collapse, brings her pain to God instead of running away from him. Her prayer reaches far further than she could have guessed, because God answers not only one woman’s need but a whole nation’s. Listen if you are facing the question of where to run in a crisis: away from God, or towards him.
Discussion questions
For your small group or for personal reflection after the sermon.
- In 1 Samuel 1:1-8 Hannah goes through her worst moments year after year, precisely when the whole family goes to the temple to worship God. What makes up her crisis, and why was her pain so deep in that culture?
- Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 sounds completely different from her desperate cry in chapter one. What does it teach about God, and why is the mention of a king surprising when Israel had no king yet?
- The sermon says that crises reveal who we really are and what we believe. What do you learn about your own faith in the moments when God seems silent?
- Hannah hears two voices: her rival who belittles her and her husband who assures her of his love, yet in the end she goes to talk with God Himself. What voices do you hear in hard times, and what helps you turn to God?
- God answered Hannah in a way far beyond what she imagined: through Samuel He helped the whole nation, and her prayer points ahead to the Messiah. How does this perspective change the way you view prayers that seem unanswered?
- Where this week do you feel tempted to run away from God, and what can you do concretely to run to Him instead, as Hannah did?
