The Place God Answers Prayer

More lessons from Hannah for modern believers

I wrote last week about the Old Testament character, Hannah, and how she learned to pray with tears. I want to follow up in this article with some thoughts about what happened next with Hannah and how the place where God answers prayer is as important as the answer itself.

Hannah Has Her Baby

Following her prayer for a child in the temple at Shiloh, Hannah returns with her family to their home in Ramah. Did God hear? Will he answer? What will happen next? The time between the moment when we pour out our need before the Lord and the moment when he answers can be fraught. Then, at some point during the next few months, the miracle happens. “And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife and the Lord remembered her,” the Bible says. “And in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked for him from the Lord.’” (1 Samuel 1:20)

Children’s names usually carry a meaning—a beloved family member or friend, an admired celebrity, even a place where a special event took place. For Hannah, the meaning of the name she gives her son is testimony to the power of prayer. As she holds her baby in her arms, breathes in the sweet smell that only newborns have and feels the delicacy of his cheek against her own, his name bubbles up on its own from the depths of her spirit. “I’ll call you Samuel,” she breathes—a name that sounds like the Hebrew word for “God hears” and testifies to her encounter with the “prayer-answering God” (the name Old Testament scholar Joyce G. Baldwin gives God in her commentary on 1 Samuel).

Once the child is weaned, Hannah returns to the temple at Shiloh where the story of Samuel’s birth began. It’s time to make good on the bargain she made earlier with God—that if he would give her a son she would dedicate the son to God. After offering the required sacrifice, Hannah approaches Eli, the same priest who a few months earlier witnessed her desperate plea to God. “Oh, my lord!” she says, “As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord.” (1 Samuel 1:26)

“I was standing here,” she says. What does she mean? Clearly, she’s pointing to a specific site. Maybe the temple in general; more likely, the hard ground where she fell to her knees and held on to the altar as a drowning man clings to a life preserver. But beneath the here of the physical site where her experience with God took place, Hannah has in mind the here of her anguished spirit at the time she prayed. F.B. Meyers explains the connection between the two dimensions of Hannah’s confession as our tendency to

associate certain experiences with certain spots. Here we suffered; here we resolved to live a new life; here we heard God speak It was thus with Hannah. And was it not befitting, that she should rejoice where she had sorrowed; that the harvest of joy should wave over the furrows where her tears had fallen so lavishly; that the blue skies should overarch the very spot where the dark clouds had lowered?

While his language may go a little overboard, Meyers makes a crucial observation. The place where God answers Hannah’s prayer has more to do with her spiritual condition than her geographical location. The Bible calls that place “Barrenness.”

A Fellowship of Barrenness

Hannah isn’t the only barren woman in Scripture. In fact, there are so many others that it’s easy to see that they have a special place in God’s heart. Sarai is the first. The wife of Abram (later called Abraham), we meet her in the book of Genesis as part of the larger story of the beginnings of the Jewish people. Like Hannah, her distinguishing feature is barrenness: “The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.” (Genesis 11:29, 30) Her condition is a crucial point in the history of Israel because it sets the stage for God’s future promise to Abraham and the miraculous birth of Isaac. But it also connects her with the series of sordid events that take place in the earlier chapters of Genesis.

Think about it. Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden of Eden because they disobey God’s command. Their son Cain murders his brother Abel. By Noah’s time, the world has grown so corrupt that God judges it through the great flood. Even then, people continue in their sin and build the tower of Babel to challenge God’s authority. Sarai’s barrenness isn’t just about her. According to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman, it shows the end game of human disobedience and the barreneness it brings:

[Adam’s] family (and with it the whole family of Genesis 1-11) has played out its future and has nowhere else to go. Barrenness is the way of human history. It is an effective metaphor for hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future. There is no human power to invent a future.

There are many more women like Sarai. We know her daughter-in-law Rebekah has the same status because “Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren.” (Genesis 25:21) The list grows with Rachel, who cries out, “Give me children, or I shall die.” (Genesis 30:1) Samson is born to yet another woman who was previously barren. (Judges 13:2-3) John the Baptist’s mother Elizabeth is too old for children. (Luke 1:7) Even Jesus’ mother, Mary, may be included in this group because her virginity means she can’t have children by normal means. (Luke 1:34)

These women form a fellowship of barrenness—but their plight isn’t the last word. God later gives to each one a child by miraculous means; and the condition they share, far from being the residue of life’s disappointments, turns out to be the very place where hope is born.

“Here is the place where I stood to ask for a child,” Hannah says to Eli, recalling where she was at the worst moment of her life even as she remembers how her prayer was answered. It turns out that barrenness is where God does some of his best work.

Be Careful What You Pray For

The answer to Hannah’s prayer is the child she has with her as she talks with Eli. Although, to be honest, I think some of the story has been left out. I’ve known many young moms over the years and have lived with one, and I know that it’s next to impossible for them to carry on a serious conversation with their child anywhere in the vicinity. Hannah, though, seems to do a pretty good job (so far as we know) as she revisits the bargain she made at the time with God. “For this child I prayed,” she says, “and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.” (1 Samuel 1:27-28) In other words, she says to Eli, “I promised God that if he gave me a son, I’d give the boy back to him. I’m here to fulfill my end of the deal.”

Her statement is straightforward, even if you wonder about a mother making such a strange bargain. But when you drill down into the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, what Hannah says takes on a different meaning, one more about courage than parenting skills. Like Japanese ama, those remarkable women with the lung capacity to free-dive for pearls, Hannah goes as deep with God as her prayers can take her.

Let’s start by looking at how Old Testament scholar Dale Davis renders her words: “For this child I prayed, and Yahweh gave me my asking which I asked from him; and I also have given back what was asked to Yahweh; all the days he lives he is one that is asked for Yahweh.” Unlike the English Standard Version that I quoted earlier, Davis’ version shows how the same Hebrew word for “ask” is used four times—I highlighted it so you could see for yourself—but each time in a different way. First, the word is a noun used as a direct object that receives the action of the verb. For Hannah, then, the first “asking” results in God’s gift of a child. God is the cause and Samuel the effect.

The second time the word occurs is as a verb. “I asked from him,” Hannah says to Eli, meaning that her prayer was a request made to God. So, not only is the word a noun that describes the substance of her request, it’s also a verb describing the act itself. This isn’t as complicated as it sounds. The same sort of thing occurs in our own language with a word like “walk.” It’s a verb when you tell someone you’re “walking” but a noun when it describes the path you’re walking on. You could have a little fun—something even English teachers engage in from time to time—by saying, “I’m walking on a walk.” But there’s a spiritual truth behind the grammar. Prayer is not only something you do, it’s how you do it. The only way you can learn the meaning of the noun is to risk the power of the verb.

The third time Hannah uses the word “ask” it’s once again a verb, but the subject of the sentence is different. Instead of God performing the action as in the previous case, this time it’s Hannah herself. “Just as God gave me my heart’s desire,” she says, “I now give my son back to God, per our agreement.” Or, as Dale puts it, “I also have given back what was asked to Yahweh.”

The word is used a fourth time to describe Samuel as the gift that’s exchanged—first from God to Hannah then from her back to God. “All the days he lives he is one that is asked for,” according to Dale.

Other than an exercise in grammar, what do Hannah’s words mean? The answer is as clear as it is threatening: the very thing God gives us in answer to prayer may be what he calls on us to give back to him in worship. The point of Hannah’s bargain with God—that she would give back to him what he gave her—is that prayer is less a linear equation with a predictable outcome than a spiritual communion inviting us into the mysteries of God’s will. Julian of Norwich, one of many spiritual teachers from the past we no longer read but should, could have been describing Hannah’s experience when she writes of her own. “I am the Ground of each thing for which you ask,” God says to Julian in a vision as he explains the mystery of prayer to her. “It is My will first that you have whatever it is, and then I make you yearn for it, and then you ask Me for it—so why should I not give you that for which I have made you yearn?” Today, when prayer often amounts to little more than religious agendas, rote formulas or to-do lists for God, Hannah gives us a glimpse of something more complex and risky.

The Heart of a Warrior

Hannah’s conversation with Eli at the altar isn’t the end of the story. Do you remember her first prayer back at the beginning of Chapter One, the one where her weepy drama made Eli think she was drunk? What she prays next in Chapter Two makes a spiritual U-turn that resets her attitude from victim to victor in the space of ten short verses and reveals that beneath her appearance of submissive wife and doting mother beats the heart of a warrior. Her hidden nature is evident in a couple of ways. First, in the prayer’s military spirit. You can almost hear tramping boots and the clash of swords as you read it. “My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord,” Hannah proclaims. “My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation.” (1 Samuel 2:1) Three verses later there’s more of the same: “The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength.” (1 Samuel 2:4)

The second piece of evidence proving her warrior’s heart is the militant group it connects her with. The Bible lists several other women who share Hannah’s situation as well as her spirit. The songs of Miriam (Exodus 15 :21), Deborah (Judges 5 :1-31) and Mary (Luke 1:46-55) flow in the same spiritual stream as Hannah’s prayer. All four call on God to replace the worldly power structures that oppress the poor and weak with the structures of righteousness and justice that reflect his Kingdom.

While the public personas of the four are as powerless as most women in biblical history, in the secret places of their soul they know how to lay claim on the power of God. I think of their company sometimes when I hear the prayers of a few of the older ladies in my church. There are moments during our prayer gatherings when their gentle voices fade away and they begin to call out to God more like Hannah and her sisters than someone’s grandma. What if one day those fierce spirits were to leap with a shout into the open congregation like Amazon warriors? The thought scares me enough to keep one eye open as I pray.

But Hannah isn’t just a role model for women, and the three sections of her prayer give direction for anyone seeking ways to communicate more effectively with God. The starting point is a personal relationship with God—a principle that she proves by her use of personal pronouns in the first few verses. “My heart…My horn…I rejoice in your salvation…There is none like you,” she says (1 Samuel 2:1-2). No one can pray well if a stranger to God. Hannah next recognizes how Samuel’s miraculous birth set into motion larger forces by which God “breaks the bows of the mighty,” “feeds the hungry” and “raises up the poor from the dust.” (1 Samuel 2:4-8) As a stone thrown into a lake causes a ripple effect that may reach distant shores, her prayer effects more change than she could have imagined. God has a way of using even our most intimate requests to bring about his greater plans.

The last section of her prayer elevates her personal prayer to a universal level. “The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven,” Hannah decrees. “The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed” (1 Samuel 2:10). The concluding phrase, “his anointed,” is in Hebrew “his Messiah,” making her the first to use the word in the Bible. As she prays, Hannah’s spiritual eyes see beyond her personal victory to glimpse the future impact of Samuel on the course of Israel’s history. But there’s an even greater vision beyond—God’s final triumph over all enemies of his Kingdom through the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ. None of us should be surprised that Hannah’s prayers are answered: her warrior’s heart binds her to the God who wars on her behalf. For us today, to pray in the name of Jesus is to tap into the same spiritual victory.

The Place God Answers Prayer

Where does God answer prayer?

That’s the question that begain this article, and I hope our journey through Hannah’s experience has helped you understand a little more about the broader way the Bible frames it. Remember, we’re not talking about “place” in a physical sense—as though God can’t hear you pray unless you’re in a familiar seat in church, a well-loved spot in the country or the comfortable corner in your home where you keep your Bible. While those kinds of locations may play a role in how you experience God’s presence, Hannah teaches us a different and more critical lesson. When it comes to answered prayer, the location of your body isn’t nearly as important as the condition of your soul.

It took a friend dying from cancer for me to learn that lesson. Ed and his wife Susie were one of those couples that every church needs more of. While key leaders in our overall ministry, their larger impact was as role models for the many younger families in our congregation. Ed was a godly, faithful husband who adored his wife. Susie was a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor who loved Jesus. They made Christian marriage look easy.

When I came to be their pastor several years ago, Ed and Susie’s professional careers were winding down and they were looking forward to a comfortable retirement of spending time with one another, visiting their grandchildren more often and travelling to see the places they’d always dreamed of. The next few decades looked to be golden. Those plans fell apart when Susie developed several physical symptoms in quick succession. They began with a worrisome pain in her side. Then a fatigue that wouldn’t go away. Blurred vision was next. Finally, after several doctor’s visits and a full range of tests, the couple received the feared diagnosis—a fast-growing cancer that had already metastasized throughout her body. As far as medical science was concerned, Susie had only a short time left to live.

Of course, the people in our church began to pray. We believe in the power of God and through the years have seen him work miracles of healing in response to prayer. We expected to see him do it again for Susie and Ed. But not this time, and a short time after her first symptoms appeared Susie was gone.

Spiritual maturity is no guarantee that life’s griefs won’t affect your emotional balance; and following his wife’s death, Ed found himself in a place much like Hannah. The same loneliness. The same bitter disappointment. The same loss of a hoped-for future. The same hurt that comes from trusting in a God who doesn’t seem to care enough about you to answer your prayers. The same barrenness.

Then Ed had a dream—and what God showed him in the dream turned everything around for him. In his dream, Ed saw his wife not as the suffering cancer patient she was before she died but as the beautiful and healthy young woman she had been when they first married. Sitting at ease beneath a structure of some sort, Susie smiled at him with an expression of perfect joy and peace.

Ed couldn’t see how it fit into biblical teaching, so a few weeks later he shared it with me. As he related the details, I sensed the Lord giving an interpretation based on Psalm 91:1, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” “Susie is in the presence of the Lord,” I told Ed. “And the expression you saw on her face reflects the perfect peace and contentment she has there.” He nodded his head and smiled. “I thought it might be something like that,” he said. Then the Holy Spirit nudged me with an additional encouragement. “And the structure she sat under is the spiritual covering you provided for her as a husband through your years of marriage,” I told him. “As a godly husband, you helped fit her for glory and the Lord wants you to know that you did your work well.” The dream comforted Ed and in the months that followed he was able to reclaim his spiritual and emotional equilibrium. He taught his Sunday School class. Ate dinner with friends. Travelled to see family. But his story didn’t end with just a return to normal life because God began to work in Ed’s grief just as he did in Hannah’s.

Through a series of meetings and conversations that could only have been by divine appointment, Ed started a Bible study with a small group of high school boys. Today, you can find them sitting around his den many Saturday mornings, reading through the Bible verse by verse and exploring the ways God works in their everyday lives. It’s hard enough to get students that age to come to a Bible study under any circumstances, but on Saturday mornings with a man old enough to be their grandfather? That’s something I never would have thought possible. There’s even a waiting list of elementary-aged boys waiting their turn.

On the wall near Ed’s chair, the one he sits in while he teaches, there’s a small picture of Susie, a reminder of the love of his life but also the promise of the God who does some of his greatest work in life’s most barren places.