1 Samuel 1:11: “Then she made a vow and said, ‘O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head.'”

May 10th, 2023 by Pastor Ed in devotional

The Book of Samuel marks the end of the period of the judges and the beginning of the time of the kings. Hannah was a barren woman who desperately wanted a child. Her husband’s other wife had children and taunted her each year when they went to Shiloh to worship the Lord. Hannah finally made a vow to the Lord that if He would give her a son, she would give the son back to the Lord. No doubt this was the reason God had delayed in answering her prayer. There is nothing like trials and storms to drive us closer to the Lord. Since God responded to Hannah’s vow, this must have been the very thing He was moving and drawing her toward. The waiting made her desperate, but it also helped her to grow in trust.

Every godly parent, at some time or another, must confront the question: “Will I trust God with my child’s life?” This is not a question of life or death; that’s relatively easy since we have no power over it anyway. No, this is dealing with something much harder than losing or keeping a child and watching them grow. This question is about a willingness to die to your goals and aspirations for their life. It requires releasing them completely to God and then watching them grow up to become whatever God wants them to be. What if it’s to be a missionary to some far off place in the world? What if it’s a son becoming something other than what the parent always thought the son should be?

English pastor, Charles Spurgeon, wrote to his son, who asked his father’s permission to go into the diplomatic corps:

I should not like you, if meant by the gifts of God [to] be a great missionary, to die a millionaire. I should not like it, were you fitted to be a missionary, that you should drivel down to a king; for what are all your kings; what are all your nobles . . . all your diadems . . . when you put them all together, compared with the dignity of winning souls for Christ, with the special honour of building for Christ, not on another man’s foundation, but preaching Christ’s gospel in regions yet far beyond?

Hannah pledged to give the Lord her son in return for God’s favor in giving her that son. She faithfully did so, and it impacted the future history of the entire nation of Israel.

“LORD, help us to give everything to You again this day. You are LORD and we are not.”