Ruthieonart

Everyone struggles with discouragement some time in their lives. To be alive is to know to disappointment, abuse, despair, ridicule, neglect. There are many ways to chose to react to these facts of life that reflect the truth that we live in a fallen world. People sin against us, life can be harsh and God may seem slow to hear us and answer us. The scriptures show us there is a beautiful way, a flawless way to respond to life’s disappointments; take your sorrow and despair to the Lord and trust.

I have been struggling with discouragement. I have recently found myself telling the Lord, “I have no courage left, this is it, I can’t face anymore difficulty and rejection, no more courage.” I am quite sure he smiled then and gave a big sigh of relief. The Lord finally had me where he wanted me. He told me, “I am your strength. Draw your courage from me.”

The Bible just doesn’t tell stories that are good to hear, it illumines the lives of others who have faced the same trails we face. We can read the scriptures and identify with their stories. Some times in whole, usually in bits and pieces. Here are four women whose lives have been laid open so we can see how they interacted with the Lord. They show us the good and the bad in us and clearly show God is there and he sees our distress and how he gets involved in our lives.

I was challenged to look at my discouragement from the point of view that God has a different perspective on it, a bigger picture when I read a devotional my pastor, Dr Kim Hall wrote for the church for New Years.

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Galatians 4:4

J.B. Phillips translates the verse, “when the proper time came…” God had given us time and works His timeless way within our measurement of time. When Jesus came the time was just right. The leaders in Rome celebrated their ability to conquer but it was in God’s plan. They built roads for commerce. He used them to facilitate the gospel. Rome used them to move soldiers about. God used them for evangels. Rome established a common language. God’s message spread rapidly. Rome created lack and need through harsh rule. God provided the ultimate source of comfort. Rome initiated the cruelest form of public execution. God plainly demonstrated His love through Christ’s sacrifice for man.

The end of one year marks a change in time. I encourage you today to stop to see God’s hand behind the calendar, hour hand or even second hand. He is working out his will. Do you see it?

Do you?

Tell Him today………quietly, softly, and joyfully.

Looking at the scriptures, at the lives of Gomer, Rachel, Hagar and Hannah I began to see God’s hand in my life.

Gomer – In Need of Reconciliation

Have you ever meet a prostitute? Have you ever spent time with her, gotten to know her and listened to her life story? I have and what I found they are women who were abused emotionally, physically and often sexually. They are wounded most often by the men in their lives. I have to imagine that Gomer was such a woman. I am not defending her choices in life, but observing her pain and the absence of genuine love. That God would ask a priest, a man set apart for himself to marry a prostitute in order that his love for a faithless nation could be demonstrated is an amazing thing. It shakes me to my core. I have always seen Hosea as obedient to God. And believe his love for Gomer was genuine. After all the scriptures say in 1 John 2: 3-6 that

 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

God’s love for us is outlandish, we do not deserve him. What God asked Hosea to do for Gomer was exactly what she needed: acceptance and forgiveness, protection and provision, unconditional love. He asked Hosea to meet Gomer at her point of need. No doubt Hosea’s marriage to Gomer cost him deeply, his obedience to God required complete humility. That is why the book is so moving to me. You do not hear Hosea complaining or feeling sorry for himself. He goes after his wife when she returns to her old ways and brings her back pledging his love to her, speaking kind words to her and telling her what is required of her. There is no condemnation, but a plan for reconciliation spelled out clearly for her. This is an act of love and kindness. How many men with unforgiving hearts never allow unfaithful acts against them to be forgiven? Or for that matter a wife towards her husband? Without forgiveness of this magnitude there is never a way to live again together as truly husband and wife. Hosea’s pursuit of Gomer is a picture of the Good Shepherd who goes after a lost sheep and when he finds them carries the messy sheep home on his shoulder. Because of her choices Gomer suffered complete disgrace. But the beauty of the story is that God provided through her husband a means for reconciliation, wholeness and a life she had never known before. I do not think Gomer received Hosea’s love until he demonstrated it to her in this way. I think Hosea took Gomer for his wife out of obedience but in the act of restoration he learned what loves really was. It became a tested love, more precious in God’s sight. God wanted Hosea in a human way to experience what it was like to love an unfaithful people. God’s plan for Israel and for us is mercy.

In a commentary by David Guzik mercy was explained,

by its very nature mercy is mercy. If one deserves leniency, then leniency is a matter of justice, not mercy. Mercy is only shown to the guilty. Therefore it is within the wise and loving heart of God to show mercy to whom He will show mercy (Romans 9:15). But no one is ever unfair for not showing mercy.

Mercy has to be complete; it isn’t partial, where something is held back. It is complete restoration.

Gomer’s response to discouragement was to run away. She made no movement towards God nor her husband. Reconciliation and restoration were initiated by God through Hosea, a picture of mercy.

Rachel – When you are loved but forgotten by God

Genesis 29:15- 30:22

Rachel was the wife who was loved. She was beautiful and pleasing to look at. Jacob fell instantly in love with Rachel and made up his mind right then to marry her.

Genesis 29:9-12

While he was still talking with them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she was a shepherdess. When Jacob saw Rachel daughter of Laban, his mother's brother, and Laban's sheep, he went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered his uncle's sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and began to weep aloud. He had told Rachel that he was a relative of her father and a son of Rebekah. So she ran and told her father.

Due to the deception of her father, Laban, Rachel spent her whole married life confronted with a jealous sister who was married to Jacob also. Leah was in competition with Rachel and Rachel had to deal with it. Her lack of children and the abundance of sons Leah had given Jacob was a source of great discouragement. God did answer her pray by giving her sons, but she had to wait. She also had to wait seven years for Jacob to marry her. Rachel was a woman who had to learn to wait on God. Some scholars estimate she may have waited 25 years to have children, long enough to appear to have been forgotten by God. In a Middle Eastern culture of that time it was a disgrace to be childless.

After six children by her sister, two by her maidservant and two by Leah’s maidservant Rachel finally had a child. Then her disgrace was taken away. Although Rachel was loved by her husband she was still subject to disgrace.

Genesis 30:22

Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and opened her womb.  She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, "God has taken away my disgrace." She named him Joseph, and said, "May the LORD add to me another son."

Rachel repeatedly reacted to discouragement by scheming and trying to out do her rival. But she did eventually come to the end of herself and by faith prayed and trusted God in the midst of her disgrace. The scriptures say “he [The Lord] listened to her and opened her womb.”

Hagar and the God who became real

Hagar, like Rachel’s maid servant was given to her mistress’ husband, Abraham in order to bear a child in the place of Sarah, who was barren.  The scriptures say Hagar became Abraham’s wife or concubine. According to Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology a concubine is a “female slave who functioned as a secondary wife and surrogate mother.” In the context of the culture Hagar was still a servant, but her child was seen as Sarah’s child and thus an heir.

Many things where not right in Hagar’s life. When Hagar despised Sarah she was mistreated, so she ran away. Later when her son Ishmael made fun of the young Isaac she was asked to leave. Both times she faced the desolation what comes from rejection and the inhospitable barren land that lead back to Egypt and idolatry. Hagar would never return to Egypt, however, both times the Lord himself would intervene, speaking to her.

Genesis 16:7-14

The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" 

"I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered.

Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." 10 The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count."

The angel of the LORD also said to her:
"You are now with child
and you will have a son.
You shall name him Ishmael, ^[a]
for the LORD has heard of your misery.

He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone's hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers."

She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

The Lord did not allow Hagar to run away and return to Egypt, he gave her a promise and sent her back into a difficult situation. Her response was to give the Lord a name; The God Who Sees Me. In obedience she returned to Abraham and Sarah.  

When Hagar was sent away, meaning Abraham divorced her, the Lord reassured Abraham is it was the right thing to do. The Lord himself would provide for her. Hagar took the boy and went into the desert. As their provisions were depleted she lay down and prepared to die, the Lord spoke again.  

Genesis 21:7-21

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation."

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. 21 While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.

The Lord became that day for Hagar God, My Provider because he was “with the boy as he grew up.” The Lord kept his promise to Hagar concerning Ishmael.

Hagar shows us that even when life isn’t fair and our situation is difficult God sees us and knows us and we in turn need to listen to him and obey him. Hagar did and still life did not go as she may have wanted but God was faithful to her and did not allow her or her son to perish. He made Ishmael a great nation, just as he said he would. In Hagar we find the faithfulness of God.

Hagar’s discouragement was so great it was to the point of death, she called out to God. She was told to act, “Lift the boy up and take him by the hand” In faith Hagar was able to obey and act because in God’s promises she was given s bigger picture, a future. It was to that future she responded. The big picture over shadowed her difficult situation and when she acted upon it, cooperating with God he was able to work in her life.

Hannah worshipped God

Her name means grace. Hannah was like Rachel loved by her husband yet she too was disgraced because she was barren. The scriptures say:

But to Hannah he [Elkanah] gave a double portion because he loved her, and the LORD had closed her womb. And because the LORD had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the LORD, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat.  Elkanah her husband would say to her, "Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?"

 When Elkanah asked Hannah “Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?” he was referencing Rachel. Like Rachel, Hannah was provoked by her rival, Elkanah’s other wife. I believe Hannah may have used Rachel as an example of how not to respond.

The reoccurring theme of Hannah’s life and that of Elkanah’s was worship. Elkanah was not able to comfort his wife but Rachel responded correctly to her despair by taking it to the Lord. So great was her grief she was accused falsely of being drunk. Hannah defended herself with dignity, trusted God, because she too had a sense of the bigger picture. She was obedient to God because she was faithful in worship.

As the story goes she poured out her heart before the Lord and made a pledge, if the Lord would answer her prayer she would dedicate her son to the service of the Lord. When rebuked by Eli Hannah explained she was seeking the Lord in her despair. Eli blessed Hannah and she went her way, the countenance on her face changed. The Lord made good on the blessing, giving her a son. Although the blessing did not come immediately. After the child was born Hannah was faithful to do what she pledged. When she weaned the Samuel she took him to the temple.

1 Samuel 1:24- 28

After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh.  When they had slaughtered the bull, they brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, "As surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the LORD.  I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. 28 So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD." And he worshiped the LORD there.

What began with worship ended with worship. Hannah’s shame was removed and Eli who had wicked sons was given the boy as a charge. Samuel would prove to be one of the greatest prophets Israel would ever know. The Lord was honored by the actions of these godly people, however, the story doesn’t end there. When in faithfulness Hannah returns year after year and lovingly provides Samuel with a tunic that showed he was set apart for the Lord, she was blessed by Eli.

1 Samuel 2:18-21

But Samuel was ministering before the LORD -a boy wearing a linen ephod. Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice.  Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, saying, "May the LORD give you children by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the LORD." Then they would go home. And the LORD was gracious to Hannah; she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the LORD.

There is a beautiful way, a flawless way to respond to life’s disappointments. It begins with worship and end with worship. Make Hannah the example of for your life and take your sorrow and despair to the Lord and trust.