Hope and Hannah pt. 2

Hope: A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. The story of Hannah showed us what hope is and how we can lose hope. I want to give you four practical things to do when you or someone you know feels hopeless. Here are the first two!

1. Know the person and what they are going through 

I know that this may seem really simple, but we have to know someone to be able to speak to them and to help them in their walk with the Lord. We can’t expect someone to listen to us if we don’t know them. It says a lot when you take the time to get to know the person, their story and what they’re going through. I don’t think I would put my hope in what someone else was saying if they didn’t know who I was or what I was going through. 

2. Give them a truth to grasp onto 

Everyone’s truth may look different, which is why it’s so important to get to know the person first. For one person, their truth could be, God will never leave or forsake you, for someone else, the truth may be, God is always with you, or God is the God of hope. It’s so important to know the person so that you can give them a truth that they need to hear. 

When we don’t have something that we hold onto, it makes it really easy to fall into the trap of comparison. We start to compare what God is doing in our lives to what He is doing in others. Pretty soon, we start to compare our faith with someone else’s by the ways that we have seen God move in their lives. It’s really easy to say, “God’s doing this in someone else’s life, so why isn’t He doing that in mine?” That’s where Hannah was, she was thinking, I feel like I’m doing everything that I possibly can and then Peninnah’s over here really not doing much, but she has everything that I want. When we start to compare what God is doing in someone else’s life, we begin to think that God isn’t working in ours. That’s a really tough place to be in, where we can’t see all that God is doing in our lives. 

Hannah looked at what God was doing in Peninnah’s life and thought that God didn’t have any favor or blessing on her life. When you look up the translation for the name Hannah, it is this, grace and mercy. Grace translates to the unmerited favor of God. It is by no accident that God gave Hannah that name. It served as a reminder that He was faithful, even when it didn’t look like it. While Hannah was saying that she didn’t have the favor of God, what she forgot was that her name actually meant the unmerited favor of God. That is so intentional that God looked at her and gave her that name because that was her truth to grasp onto, God knew her name. He had her name for a purpose, and for a reason. Even though she didn’t see it, she had that truth to grasp onto that her name means the unmerited favor of God. 

When we have a truth to grasp onto during the seasons of hopelessness, it makes it a lot easier to believe in God and not to pull away. Everyone’s truth is going to look different depending on the season that they are in. This is why it's so important to know someone so we can give them the truth that they need, so that we can help them when they feel hopeless.