Reason #716

Eight months! Today Aaron and I celebrate our eighth monthiversary. What a wild 8 months it has been. We were just talking about what we wanted to do for our year anniversary last night because, let’s face it, as fast as time is moving that’ll be here before we blink. We find ourselves drawing from our date night box faster than the month before, and that’s a pretty exciting thing, my friends. You know, it’s a count down until you get married and a count up afterwards. And so we’ve made the most of counting up, and I’m really glad about that.

 

I began reading Samuel 1 last night, and I love reading Hannah’s story. Here’s a quick recap of what went down. Hannah gets married and she really wants a baby. Like a lot of the big hitters in the bible, she struggles with infertility and basically becomes so depressed about her barrenness that she cries her eyes out and won’t even eat. Been there… just not for barrenness. Anyway, Hannah falls on her face before the Lord and she desperately prays for a baby. Admitting that she is so broken and torn up about this circumstance, she asks God to grant her the desires of her heart. But notice that Hannah ends up her prayer by promising God that if He chose to bless her with a child, she’d give that little blessing right back to God. What a bold statement, right? Because so often we ask God for blessings so we can keep them to ourselves. We forget to honor God with what He has giving us, giving it back to Him. And really, when I think about this, I think the best way we can honor God with these blessings is to give Him the glory and praise for it.

 

“…the Lord remembered her plea and in due time she gave birth to a son.” (1 Samuel 1:19-20) Doesn’t this just bring a smile to your face? God gave Hannah her heart’s desire in due time. And so Hannah obviously realizes that this is completely God’s doing, and none of her own, and she prays the most beautiful prayer of thanksgiving by saying, “…for I delight in your deliverance.” (1 Samuel 2:1). To delight is to remain. Delightfully remain, I think is what she’s getting at here. Because so often when God brings deliverance, we he delivers us from a hard situation into one of joy, we forget to delight in it. We are grateful at the start and then we quickly move on. And, if you’re like me, you look back and still think about the past. You wish it would have happened differently, or you wished you could have taken a different path. But the thing is, God doesn’t deliver us so that we can go back or so that we can develop hearts of ungratefulness and forgetful minds. He delivers us so that we can delight in His goodness. He delivers us so that we can remain in joy and peace, so I loved seeing how Hannah took the time to delight in the fact that God had delivered her from her state of infertility. And the truth is, He can deliver us from all sorts of things. From addiction, heart break, illness, debt, depression, loneliness, shame, regret, insecurity, you name it. God is in the business of delivering!

 

That’s why we celebrate the 10^th each month. Because on May 10^th, God delivered us. For me, I was delivered from insecurity, heart break, loneliness, and shame. And we celebrate what God did for us because we realize that it was completely His doing and none of our own. So if you’ve been delivered, delight. Rejoice and celebrate and praise God for delivering you, too. And honor God with the deliverance blessing He has given you because He is most worthy of all the glory.

 

#716 – Because He delivers us so that we can delightfully remain in the blessings of deliverance.

 

“There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. “ – 1 Samuel 2:2