Hannah got her breakthrough outside her own home, in the place where God was worshipped. It was also the place of her greatest torment, as if the enemy was making that place so hurtful that she wouldn’t want to go there. But it was at Shiloh that God saw her tears and heard her prayer for a son. Sometimes we need to press through our pain to get into God’s presence, indeed our pain and greatest needs can take us to the place of deepest intercession. We literally cry out to the Lord, just as Hannah did.
I believe it was Rees Howells, or his son Samuel, who said that, intercession only begins where prayer ends.
1 Samuel 1:24
After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was,(must have been a real trial for a first time mother to leave her only son with the priests) … and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh.
V27,28 I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.
Hannah certainly kept her vow to the Lord and He honoured her with more children, 1 Samuel 2:21.
It’s said that in an oyster it’s a small piece of grit or sand that brings forth the pearl – the constant irritant helps form something of beauty and great value. In our lives, God may have allowed an irritant for a time to form something which would never have come any other way. The pain causes us to turn to God in a way that nothing else could.
Just like Hannah and the oyster, it takes time for the deeper purposes of God to come to fruition in our lives.
May God bless you today and may you have grace in all the circumstances of life.