Surrender to a move of the Spirit like we’ve never seen before!

Hannah in the Bible knew the pain of loss, waiting and unanswered prayer, but also God’s miraculous provision. At ELS, Damilola Makinde explored her lessons in surrender, repentance and hope

If there is one woman in the Bible who understood the agony of loss, shattered dreams and unanswered prayer it was Hannah.

Things started so well for her – growing up, becoming a wife and homemaker – but then her dreams of motherhood were dashed and her husband took a second wife; a rival who bore him children and taunted her mercilessly.

Hannah prayed faithfully, but nothing changed. By the time she made her annual pilgrimage to the tabernacle as described in the first chapter of 1 Samuel she was at breaking point.

The Evangelical Alliance’s advocacy engagement lead Damilola Makinde explored this story and the lessons we can learn from it at ELS.

“Hannah knew a thing or two about pain and loss because every month she hoped to conceive and every month her hopes turned to ash,” she explains.

Hannah’s situation was inescapably everywhere. She couldn’t seek refuge in her husband or find space at home to process her grief.

“Hannah can’t get a break in her body, she can’t get a break in her marriage, and she can’t get a break in her home,” says Damilola.

Could she get a break in the presence of the Lord? Seemingly not even there.

“Year after year it was the same: Peninnah would taunt Hannah as they went to the tabernacle. Each time Hannah would be reduced to tears and would not even eat. There doesn’t seem to be a square inch of the world in which she can get a break.”

Hannah’s situation raises some huge questions that many of us can relate to. When will relief come? Surely one person can’t be expected to bear this weight themselves? Where is God? And what’s the point of having a name that means ‘favour’ when your life looks like this?

“What use is the favour of God when in the most desperate cry of your heart… you don’t see him move?”

At the point where Hannah cries out to God in the tabernacle in 1 Samuel 1:10 she is at the end of herself, says Damilola, but she knows the Lord and is clinging on to his truth with everything she has because her life depends on it.

The power of surrender
As Hannah brings her burdens and the longings of her heart to God there is a transformational moment of surrender, says Damilola.

But more than that, as Hannah tries to get God’s attention, God draws Hannah’s attention to him.

In the place where the longing in Hannah’s heart meets the longing in God’s there is surrender. “Hannah says, ‘If you will look upon the misery I endure in my home, the taunting, if you will look upon it, answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you.’

God’s response is to ask Hannah to bring her pain to him and trust him.

“He says, ‘If you allow this provocation… to turn you further towards me then I will do with your pain more than you could ever ask or think.”

That’s easier said than done, says Damilola. “Surrender is really easy to say but really horrible to get to. You don’t tend to waltz into the kind of surrender that we see in this passage.

“This is a place you tend to be dragged into kicking and screaming and begging at every turn: ‘Lord you’re all powerful. Can it look any other way than this? Does it have to be quite as brutal as this?’”

Yet this is relevant for us at a time when God is moving in the UK.

“God is at work in this nation and we’re set to host a move of the Spirit; we’re at the beginnings of a move of his Spirit like we’ve never seen before,” says Damilola.

At such a time, these moments of surrender and encounter are vital. “The Lord is calling us afresh in this moment to surrender our lives to him, including – and perhaps most especially – our pain. For all of us, the call is surrender.”

Repentance in surrender
Hannah’s story teaches that surrender often involves repentance, says Damilola.

“Idolatry is what we will do with our pain, longings or wants if we haven’t first brought them in surrender. “Hannah takes what is a good, God-given desire, inbuilt into her very nature, yet in surrender she stops it from being an idol; a thing in her life in the place of God. She puts it right at his feet.”

Our response in such situations must be to repent of idolising anything we’ve been waiting on or trusting for. We must come to the point of saying, “Lord, I’m sorry for where I’ve held this up against you and believed I couldn’t see you in the midst of it. I turn away from that, so that I might turn to face you.”

Fresh hope
Hannah’s story also teaches a message of hope. In a situation where the enemy meant to bring evil, the Lord brought deliverance for her, says Damilola.

And he wants to birth fresh hope in us, that he might do beautiful things through us too.

“Hope is a non-negotiable in this kingdom. We don’t have hope because of how well someone speaks at a leadership summit, how healthy our bank balance looks or how well structured our teams are at church.

“We have hope because we have a risen and returning King. We have hope because even in the bitterest of nights, the light of Jesus shines.

“We have hope because in Jesus, the graveyard of our dreams becomes a site of his resurrection power.”

Damilola Makinde is advocacy engagement lead at the Evangelical Alliance. This session at the Elim Leaders Summit at Harrogate was packed with lots more teaching and standout moments of responsive worship. Listen to the full seminar on Elim’s podcast at www.elim.org.uk

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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