Day 1: Relentless Hope
Have you ever prayed for something for a long time and felt like nothing happened? Or maybe the outcome you got wasn’t the outcome you prayed for? Maybe you felt like God was just silent?
In 2014, I learned I was pregnant with my son about a year after my husband and I were married. It was a relatively easy pregnancy with no complications. Once Paul turned one, we decided it was time to add another baby to our family. Never in a million years did we imagine we were about to walk down a painful road filled with loss and disappointment. Between September 2015 and October 2019, my husband and I experienced five pregnancy losses.
One day, while feeling completely overwhelmed by my situation, the phrase “Relentless Hope” dropped into my heart. Curious, I decided to look up the definition of those two words. Here is what I learned:
Relentless means unbending or unyielding. The definition of hope is expectation. How many times have we heard people say “Don’t get your hopes up!” If you ask a room of people what “hope” means, you’ll get a variety of answers. I had the opportunity to test this out when I asked the college students I teach what they thought hope meant. It turns out many people equate hope with positivity or optimism, but hope isn’t that. You can’t shake yourself into being hopeful and you can’t get hope by scrolling social media for nice quotes to lift you up when you feel down.
It is possible to live a life of relentless hope despite bad test results and doctor’s reports; a life led with an unbending expectation that God is who He says He is and that His Word is always true. Perhaps you haven’t experienced infertility, but you probably have experienced loss and disappointment. If that’s you, join me over the next 5 days as we learn what it means to live relentlessly hopeful. We’ll look at the story of Hannah, a woman who lived in a place of waiting, praying for a baby year after year.
Each year, her family would go down to the temple to give their offerings and have a ceremonial meal and each year Hannah was confronted with her unanswered prayers. Her husband, Elkanah, didn’t understand why she was so upset, even telling her “Aren’t I enough for you?” (1 Samuel 1:8) His other wife, Peninnah, would taunt her and reduce her to tears (1 Samuel 1:6). Have you ever had to see relatives of yours at Christmas dinner and felt like you had to explain why you are still single, still not in the right job or just plain stuck in life? I imagine this is how Hannah felt. But one year, everything changed for Hannah.
I don’t know what Hannah was doing in the years prior to 1 Samuel 1, but I couldn’t help but notice that she did some things that were really practical; things I needed to do if I was going to walk through this season and make it out on the other side. The funny thing is that they are probably things you already know to do – she showed up to the house of God, she connected with the Word and she worshiped God.
Throughout this devotional, we’ll look at what Hannah did and we’ll learn how to apply what she did to our own lives in simple, practical ways so that no matter how long we live in a place of waiting for the answer to our prayers, we do it with relentless hope.
Verses:
“There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephrathite. He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. 8And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” – 1 Samuel 1:1-8 (ESV)
“When hope’s dream seems to drag on and on, the delay can be depressing. But when at last your dream comes true, life’s sweetness will satisfy your soul.” - Proverbs 13:12 (TPT)
“So now wrap your heart tightly around the hope that lives within us, knowing that God always keeps his promises.” – Hebrews 10:23 (TPT)
“Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he promised.” – Romans 4:20-21 (NLT)
