Following Jesus is difficult. We wish it was easy, in fact we think it should be easy but it’s not, it’s hard, it’s just the way it is and that reality is something that most people struggle to come to grips with. How about you?

Adversity is a fact of life, it happens in all areas of our lives at different times. In our finances, in our relationships, in our jobs, in our families, in our health, in our own thoughts and emotions. Last year on the program I shared a series of messages with you called How To Stop Your Family From Falling Apart and quite a number of people wrote to me and said, in effect, ‘Well my family has already fallen apart, what about me?’

And so later this year we’ll be chatting about marriage separation, divorce, losing a loved one, singleness, childlessness because things don’t always follow the old fairy tale ending ‘and they lived happily ever after’. My preference and your preference is that life should be easy, if not completely easy then at least ten or fifteen or twenty percent easier than what it is at the moment. Just a little bit less of a struggle, just a little bit easier oh and no major catastrophes thanks, no major disasters that cause us pain and the key here is expectation.

My parents generation went through World War 2, my dad fought in the German army on the Russian front, my mother lived through the air raids and the bombing of her home town Graz in Austria and when I look at those people from that generation whether European or Australian or wherever they come from, their expectations of life being easy aren’t as high as perhaps yours and mine.

Now my generation, the Baby Boomers, were born in the 1950’s and the 1960’s in that golden era of prosperity and hope. Our parents having suffered much through World War 2 worked hard to give us a better life. All the modern electric kitchen gadgets, televisions, okay black and white but televisions nevertheless, motor cars, all of those things happened post World War 2 and they indeed gave us a better, more prosperous life.

And so we Baby Boomers carried on with that tradition with our children, generation x and generation y who carried on with their children the millennials and so on it goes. As prosperity boomed in the west our expectations of what is normal became incredibly inflated. Prosperity is normal, peace is normal, success is normal and of course the advertising industry chimed in feeding us, bombarding us constantly with those images of success.

Now what I’m describing doesn’t apply everywhere, there are plenty of people listening today who live in desperate adversity in refugee camps in war-torn parts of the world but even as I travel through those parts of the world what I see is the lure of prosperity from the West beckoning.

Media’s is a global phenomenon, television internet is global and so people feed on this inflated set of expectations and we begin to imagine that success and peace and prosperity and comfort are the norm, well if not quite the norm then at least those are the things that we should be aspiring to.

Comfortable house, tick. Nice car, tick. Healthy superannuation fund, tick. Private schooling for the children, tick. The latest techno gadgets tick. The latest fashions, tick. And for men and women of faith, those of us who believe in Jesus, what we tend to do is drop this worldly model of success onto the Bible and we try and create our own blended theology of success. We expect that following Jesus should be easy and when we discover that it isn’t many fall by the wayside.

Surely if God loves me He wants to bless me. Why am I having to deal with all these problems and challenges and issues and conflicts and adversity, either there’s something wrong with Him or there’s something wrong with me, I dunno but something isn’t working the way it should be.

Have you ever thought that stuff to yourself? Or perhaps if you haven’t quite articulated it that clearly, as I talked about it just then you found yourself nodding your head in agreement. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, that’s what I’m feeling. So before we can really talk about following Jesus with confidence and hey if I’m going to follow Jesus, if I’m going to call Him my Saviour and my Lord then I want to follow Him with a quiet confidence in my heart but before we can talk about that we need to deal with this expectation gap.

Have a listen to this exchange between Jesus and a couple of would be followers whom He met along the way, it comes from Matthew chapter 8 beginning at verse 18:

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him he gave orders to go over to the other side. A Scribe then approached him and said, ‘Teacher I will follow you wherever you go’ and Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Another of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord first let me go bury my father’ but Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.’

It seems to me that Jesus isn’t calling you and me to a life of comfort, following Jesus is a journey and from what I can see here Jesus isn’t promising you and me a big house with two living areas, four bedrooms, double car garage in a nice suburb, He’s setting out the reality plainly and simply that following Him is an uncomfortable journey.

I often wonder how that second guy felt, the one whose father had just died. Jesus I really want to follow you but my dad’s just died and I have to go bury him first. I remember when my father died, I don’t think I would have missed his funeral for the world and yet Jesus replies:

Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead.

The only words that I can come up with to describe that is harsh and unfeeling, if I had been that guy I’d have been thinking ‘Hang on, do I really want to follow this Jesus?’ But Jesus here was making a point, a strong point about what it means to follow Him. Not a life of comfort and compromise, here it is again, Jesus:

Now the great crowds accompanied him and he turned and he said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and doesn’t hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes even his own life he cannot be one of my disciples. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.’

‘For which of you desiring to build a tower doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it otherwise when he’s laid the foundation and he’s not able to finish it all who see it begin to mock him saying, ‘This guy began to build but wasn’t able to finish.’

‘Or what king will go out to encounter another king in war without sitting down first to deliberate whether he will be able with his ten thousand to meet the one who comes against him with twenty thousand and if not while the other is yet a great way off he sends a delegation and asks for peace terms?’

‘So therefore any of you who would not renounce all that he has cannot become my disciple.’

Luke chapter 14, verses 23 to 35.

My friend, have you counted the cost? Are you expecting an easy ride with Jesus or do you see the stark reality that He’s painting here? Of course we go through times of blessing in our relationships and in our circumstances from time to time, well most people do but what Jesus is saying here is that suffering and sacrifice are the norm for a Christ follower.

Most of us are worried about the single most important person on the planet, me. What’s in it for me? That’s what we’re constantly asking ourselves, what do I get out of this? But Jesus said:

If you want to become my followers then deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it but those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit you if you gain the whole world but you lose your life?

Luke chapter 9, verses 23 to 25.

If we have the wrong expectation of Jesus then we are never going to be able to follow Him with confidence. Some days it’s going to be hard, that doesn’t mean we’ve failed, it means that that is what Jesus promised. So let me leave you with this question, in your heart of hearts what are you expecting of Jesus? Are you expecting what He promised or are you expecting what the world tells you you’re entitled to?

When we’re going through a difficult time you and I, it can rock our confidence. In fact when we’re in that place all we can see, all we can feel, all we can focus on it seems is the pain and the struggle. In that place how do you follow Jesus with confidence?

Recently my wife Jacqui had an operation on her foot and in those days immediately after the operation she was in a lot of pain. Now she’s an active woman, out there doing things, planning things, helping people, it’s just who she is but in those few days following the operation all she could focus on was the pain she was in. Now that’s pretty natural, acute pain has a way of blocking everything else out.

I was still having to think about this and that and keep the ministry running which she’s normally involved in, get the meals on the table, do the shopping but for her those couple of days it was pretty much all about dealing with the pain. Of course you’ve been there, whether it was physical pain or emotional pain and you know all about it. You know how pain seems to block out the rest of the world and convince you that the pain is all there is.

It’s our natural reaction to adversity isn’t it? We lower our gaze, we focus on the immediate and nothing else matters but as natural as that response is to adversity and pain, you know something, it doesn’t serve us particularly well. And what magnifies the pain often is the unrealistic expectation that we shouldn’t even have to be dealing with it. Hang on, I believe in Jesus, surely God wants to bless me, so why is this happening to me?

That’s often what we find ourselves thinking right? When all along Jesus said:

If any of you want to become one of my followers then deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it but those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit you if you gain the whole world but you lose your own life?

Luke chapter 9, verses 23 to 25.

See that’s a picture of suffering and sacrifice not comfort and compromise and it seems to me that accepting this reality is one of the hardest things to do and yet it’s just so necessary if we’re going to get the sort of perspective on life that allows us to follow Jesus with confidence.

What do I mean by that? Well look if we simply don’t accept this reality, if we’re kicking against it, struggling against it, if we refuse to accept delivery of the reality of Jesus promised to anyone who follow Him, how could you possibly be in a place where you can follow Him with confidence? Listen again to Jesus words, Matthew chapter 7, verses 13 and 14:

Enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction and there are many who take it but the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and there are few who find it.

So there you are. You’re travelling on that narrow, difficult road that leads to life because in your heart of hearts you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, the road less travelled. You’re heading upwards on that difficult, winding road wishing it was a whole bunch more like that wide easy road that heads downwards to destruction and that double mindedness is what’s killing you, that double mindedness is what’s stopping you from following Jesus with confidence because your heart is longing after the alternative, double mindedness is a real killer.

Have a listen, James chapter 1, verses 2 to 8:

Brothers and sisters wherever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have it’s full affect so that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing.

If any of you is lacking in wisdom ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given to you but ask in faith, never doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind for the doubter being double minded and unstable in every way must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

But the problem is how do we change our mind? It’s easy for me to sit here in the comfort of a nice isolated studio and tell you, ‘Look I know it’s tough but don’t be double minded’. And you’re thinking, ‘But it hurts so much, it’s so hard I’m struggling. I don’t want to be double minded but I don’t know how not to be’.

Yeah, well you know sometimes I have exactly the same problem and the answer, the how comes to us from God, from God’s Word. Let me read to you this short extract from the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119. It’s written by a man whose really struggling, who’s going through a lot of pain and he tells us the how, verses 97 to 114:

O how I love your law, it is my meditation all day long. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies for it is always with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers for your decrees are my meditation. I understand more than the aged for I keep your precepts, I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. I don’t turn away from your ordinances for you have taught me.  How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than even honey to my mouth. Through your precepts I get understanding therefore I hate every false way.

Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to observe your righteous ordinances. I am severely afflicted; give me life O Lord according to your word. Accept my offerings of praise O Lord and teach me your ordinances. I hold my life in my hand continually but I won’t forget your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me but I do not stray from your precepts.

Your decrees are my heritage forever; they’re the joy of my heart. I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end. I hate the double minded but I love your law. You are my hiding place and my shield, I hope in your word.

Do you see the power of what he’s saying here? It’s God’s Word that’s a lamp to his feet, to help him take the next step, a light to his path so he can see a little way ahead. The person who wrote this Psalm is going through the whole adversity and pain thing just the way you and I do. He’s got enemies on his tail, the going is tough but what he’s saying here as he pours his heart out to God is that God’s Word is what’s making all the difference:

How I love your law, it’s my meditation all day long. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies. I have more understanding than all of my teachers for your decree is my meditation.

Whenever someone is going through a rough patch asks me, ‘Berni, what can I do? How can I find peace? How can I discover confidence and faith in God?’ I ask them this question, ‘How much time are you spending reading God’s Word, pondering it, praying about it, thinking, turning it over in your mind?’ Invariably the answer is little or no time at all.

Man I tell you this is the only way to discover God’s peace in the middle of a storm, Bible reading and prayer. I know it sounds glib, I know it sounds simplistic, I know it sounds like ‘Here take a couple of aspirin for your migraine’ but that’s not it at all. Prayer and Bible reading are simple and powerful and the only way I’ve managed to get through some of the really rough patches in my life have been to listen to God speak to me through His Word.

You can read books, you can listen to guys like me yabbering on, you can phone a friend, you can try all sorts of things but I’m here to tell you that there is nothing, NOTHING as powerful as God’s Word. His Spirit uses it to strengthen you, to encourage you, to admonish you, to guide you, to give you wisdom, it doesn’t get any better than that and yet so many of God’s people travelling through a rough patch leave their Bible in the bottom drawer or up on a shelf gathering dust or in a box out in the storeroom. People what’s the matter with us?

When we’re travelling through a time of great trial the first thing that springs to mind is that we must have done something wrong. Maybe but as I read my Bible what I discover is that pretty much all of the great things that God has done have been birthed in times of trial.

A little while back on the program we took a brief look at the story of Hannah, the mother of the Old Testament Prophet Samuel and we had such a strong response to her story I thought that today and over the next few days we’d take a much closer look at what went on.

Now I’m not one to grab some character out of the Bible and look at them and tell you ‘You should be like them’ because you and I, we’re all different people with different backgrounds and giftings and telling a duck to be like a dog or vice versa it never really works.

But Hannah’s story is one that absolutely touches my heart each and every time I read it, my hunch is that’s why so many people responded to us after that program. It’s a powerful story of a woman in some considerable distress.

We’re continuing today with our series Following Jesus With Confidence, not some brash over-confident attitude but you know that quiet confidence that you can have in your heart that stills your fears and just gives you that wonderful knowledge that God is on His throne, He’s in control, He knows what He’s doing, knowing that you can trust in God’s faithfulness no matter how crazy things get around you.

The biggest inhibitor to that we’ve seen so far this week on the program is that the success orientated world in which we live has convinced us that normal equals healthy, wealthy and wise. Success is what it’s all about and we’re all born to be successful according to the worlds definition which is pretty much, you know, big house, tick, nice car, tick, healthy superannuation fund, tick all those temporary symbols of so-called success.

We then very quickly imagine that that’s what our walk with Jesus should be like, successful and yet the Bible knows little if anything about worldly success. God’s plan for you and me isn’t a life of comfort and compromise but a life of sacrifice and suffering. It’s exactly what Jesus promised us when He spoke to some would be followers, Matthew chapter 8 beginning at verse 18:

When Jesus saw great crowds around him he gave orders to cross over to the other side. A scribe then approached him and said, ‘Teacher I will follow you wherever you go’ and Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Another of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord first let me go bury my father’ but Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me and let the dead bury the dead.’

Now we’re going to go a lot deeper with this, its one thing to hear someone, even Jesus, talking about this idea of following Him often means an uncomfortable journey but it’s another thing entirely to see this principle in action. That’s why we’re circling back to spend some time with Hannah today and over the rest of the week.

Hers is a story of adversity and out of that adversity God births quite literally one of the great Prophets that He sends to His people Israel. So lets just spend a few minutes entering into Hannah’s pain, 1 Samuel is the Book in the Old Testament, chapter 1 verses 1 to 8:

There was a certain man of Ramathian, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, son of Elipu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives, the name of one was Hannah and the name of the other was Peninnah. Peninnah had children but Hannah had no children.

Now this man used to go up year by year from his town 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 his wife Peninnah and all her sons and daughters but to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her though the Lord had closed her womb.

Her rival used to provoke her severely 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. Her husband Elkanah said, ‘Hannah why do you weep, why don’t you eat, why is your heart sad, am I not more to you than ten sons?’

I’m not a woman obviously and I’ve never had the experience of wanting to have a child and not be able to get there. No doubt there are some women tuned in today who either have been there or who are in that place right at the moment. But even as a man I can just so feel the pain that Hannah was going through, her body clock is ticking, her heart is to have a child and nothing.

But as bad and as tough as that is it was even worse because laying on top of that personal pain were two other things. The first and the most obvious was Peninnah, Elkanah’s other wife. Polygamy was all the rage in the early days of the Old Testament, it wasn’t until society had time to grow and mature that God revealed that this wasn’t His ideal plan. I mean it should have been obvious, Adam had one wife, Eve not two or more but we humans have a way of wandering away from God’s ideal for us and God has a way of choosing just the right time in history to reveal His plans.

So at this point polygamy was the norm, that’s why Elkanah had two wives. That would have been bad enough except one of them could have children and the other couldn’t and the one that could, Peninnah taunted the one who couldn’t, Hannah. Her rival used to provoke her severely 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. What a terrible situation. A woman who can’t have children and a rival for her husband’s affection and who can and then uses that fact to rub salt into her wounds year after year after year.

And the final layer of shame as if all that weren’t enough was that back in those days the thinking went something like this. If you were a good and Godly person God will bless you with many children and if you weren’t He wouldn’t. So Hannah’s plight was further compounded by the fact that socially people looked down at her. They would have whispered behind her back, ‘She can’t be a very good person; look God’s cursed her and closed her womb’.

Please put yourself into Hannah’s shoes for a moment, how do you feel? Terrible right? You’d be asking some serious questions of God, ‘Lord why are you doing this? I’m doing my best to honour you and my husband, my rival is taunting me and people despise me. Lord what have I done to deserve this?’

I don’t know what particular pains and trials you’ve gone through in your life but this one of Hannah’s would rank right up there right? I mean you can equate your trials and your pain with what Hannah was going through. This feeling that God must have forsaken you, that God’s treatment of you isn’t fair.

Now we’re going to look at what happens next tomorrow on the program but what happens is a mighty act of God and in a sense we’ll see that Hannah almost expected God to act but I’d like to suggest that when you and I are having ‘Hannah’ moments in our lives often a mighty intervention of God is the last thing we expect. In fact we don’t even expect to be in this rotten situation in the first place because, well surely God wants to bless me and surely I’m living through this terrible curse like there’s something terrible must be wrong in my relationship with God.

It’s that false logic that I’d like to kick in the guts today. This idea of ‘Yes I am in God’s favour because I’m being blessed or no I must have fallen out of God’s favour because I’m going through this terrible patch’. That’s a lie, that’s a distortion from the enemy who’s dropped this healthy, wealthy and wise lie on our heads, let me finish today where I began, as I read my Bible what I discover is that pretty much all the great things that God does are birthed out of great times of trial. We’ll talk some more about that on tomorrow’s program.

Okay, so you’re going through a tough time in your life, perhaps not today but who knows, sometime in the future? Things hit a brick wall, getting through even the next twenty-four hours looks like a complete impossibility. So what’s your plan?

Yesterday we were talking about the story of Hannah, the desperate struggle that she was going through to fulfil the call of God on her life. Here was this woman, one of two wives of a man named Elkanah and she was childless in a world where children represented a blessing from God and the absence of children meant that you were cursed of God.

To make things much worse her rival Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah, had no problem bearing him children and she took every opportunity to point that fact out to Hannah:

Her rival used to provoke her severely to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year after year, as often as they went up the house of the Lord she used to provoke her.

That’s what we’re told in 1 Samuel chapter 1 verses 6 and 7. Just wonderful hey. So as though being childless for this woman wasn’t bad enough and only another woman who has wanted children but not been able to conceive can truly know how that feels. She carried the scorn of her rival and indeed the scorn of her society around on her shoulders.

Okay none of us have ever been in quite that situation hopefully but we all relate to being in this desperate place of adversity when the whole world seems to have turned against us. Most of us want to follow Jesus with all our hearts, not in some legalistically or religious way but from our hearts.

As I look back at the moment I first laid hold of the truth that Jesus died for me, that actually the Son of God became a man, walked the dusty roads of 1st century Israel and was ultimately nailed to a cross to pay for my wrong doing, my heart leapt out of my chest and I decided to claim Him as my Saviour and my Lord.

If you’re a bit like that you know that the desire in your heart is to follow Jesus. The problem is that when you’re having a ‘Hannah’ moment, when the going gets really tough, following Him with confidence just isn’t that easy.

Now the reason we’re in the middle of this series, Following Jesus with Confidence, is that we need to know how to follow Jesus with confidence during those difficult times. For me it’s not enough to be told ‘Berni have faith in God’. Well you know that’s a great theory but how do I live that out when I’m in a tough position? When everybody and everything seems to be against me.

Those are the questions we need answers to and that’s why we’re talking about this stuff, that’s why we’re sharing this story of Hannah because through her story God speaks to us about how, how to have confidence in Jesus during the really tough times because lets face it it’s in the tough times that we need that confidence, that quiet sense of ‘I know my Saviour lives, I know my Saviour reigns, I know my Saviour has it all under control.’

This next part of Hannah’s story is what that’s all about, the how. We’ve heard the desperate struggle and now let’s take a look at how she chooses to deal with it, 1 Samuel chapter 1, verses 9 to 18:

After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the door post of the Temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. She made this vow, ‘O Lord of Hosts if only you would look on the misery of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant but will give your servant a male child then I will set him before you as a Nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants and no razor shall touch his head.

As she continued praying before the Lord Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying silently, only her lips moved but her voice wasn’t heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk so Eli said to her, ‘How long will you go on making a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’

But Hannah answered, ‘No my Lord, I am a woman deeply troubled. I have neither drunk wine nor strong drink but I’ve been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.

Then Eli answered her, ‘Go in peace, the God of Israel grant the petition that you have made to him.’ And she said to him, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight’. Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband and her countenance was sad no longer.

I’ve never been one to shake my fist at God, some people do. It’s not something I’ve done up to this point in my life and I pray that it’s a place that I’ll never get to but you could have understood it had Hannah gone to God and shaken her fists at Him. She was deeply distressed, she wept bitterly. Not only was she childless but she was scorned.

We don’t know much about Hannah’s life to this point but as I read about her further in the Old Testament Book of 1 Samuel you discover that she’s a really good and godly woman, she seemed to be honouring God in every way and yet this affliction had struck her life and there was not a single thing that she could do about it.

Well maybe not quite a single thing, there was one thing and she was doing it right now, she was pouring it all out to God, she was praying. Prayer seems like a cop-out to some and yet the Bible teaches us over and over again that prayer that yields powerful results is entirely normal in God’s sight.

And so Hannah engages in that sort of prayer, heartfelt prayer, powerful prayer. I’m sure it didn’t feel powerful to her at the time and she was weeping there before God, pouring her heart out but it was because she came in prayer not just to meet her need, she came with a humble heart offering this child up should God grant him to her to God Himself. Giving up her son before she’d even had him, should she ever be blessed with one into the lifelong service of the Lord.

Come on you women who have had children, how difficult would it be for you to offer up your precious child to serve the Lord? How easy would you find it to be separated from this little one? But here she is honouring God above all. That’s why her prayer is so incredibly powerful.

She doesn’t tell Eli the priest what it was all about, she just tucks her time away with God in her heart and immediately, immediately she reaps the benefit of her prayer, she receives peace from God:

The woman went back to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband and her countenance was sad no longer.

That’s what supposed to happen because Jesus promises exactly that when we bring our burdens to Him, Matthew chapter 11 beginning at verse 28:

Come to me all who are weary and carrying a heavy burden. I’ll give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

My friend with all my heart let me say to you that the biggest single thing that you can do to receive the quiet, gentle, powerful gift of true confidence in Christ is to pray. To spend time genuinely in God’s presence. Pray and read God’s Word, back to the psalmist’s words, Psalm 119 verses 105 to 107:

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to observe your righteous ordinances. I am severely afflicted. Give my life O Lord according to your word.

My friend if you’re looking for the ‘how’, how to follow Jesus with confidence you’ve just discovered the answer through Hannah, through the psalmist, through God’s Word. The answer is heartfelt prayer. The answer is reading and meditating on God’s Word. Can it really be that simple? Actually yeah it can, it is.

It’s easy to put your confidence in God when the going is good but what about when we’re going through a difficult patch? That’s when we really need to be able to trust in Him and that’s when that quiet confidence and trust in Jesus most often eludes us.

It’s great to be with you again today as we chat together about how, exactly how to lay hold of our confidence in Christ when we’re in the middle of a period of some adversity. And can I tell you, as we’ve chatted about Hannah’s story so far this week it hasn’t just been for you because right now I’m going through a tough time in the life of our ministry, Christianityworks. It’s just what happens when you step up and step out to serve God.

See we expect things to go always swimmingly well, we expect things to be always on the up and up and when they aren’t the easiest thing for us to do is to imagine that somehow we’re a failure. But life is full of the old one step forward two steps back shuffle isn’t it? Sometimes it’s because we’ve made mistakes. Okay so lets learn from them and move on. Other times it’s because life is just like that and things happen that are completely outside our control.

And when things are on the up and up we’re really happy to let everyone know how well things are going, obviously we must be pretty clever, obviously God must be blessing us, so we don’t mind telling people about it right? But when we’re on the back foot, when we’re going through that rough patch we mostly try and keep it to ourselves, it’s almost like we’re ashamed about it but that’s not what the Bible teaches. Have a listen Romans chapter 5, verses 3 to 5:

And not only that but we boast in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope and hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who’s been given to us.

See quite a different concept, boasting in our sufferings but it’s all about letting God have His way with us. So let’s take a look at the next part of Hannah’s story in our quest to discover how to develop that quiet confidence in Jesus during our times of suffering, the sort of confidence that has us boasting in our suffering like the Apostle Paul, way out crazy guy that he was.

So picking up Hannah’s story thus far, she’s been through a terrible time of trial. Childless, despised because she’s barren and so she went to God and poured her heart out to Him, 1 Samuel chapter 1, verses 9 to 11:

After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh Hannah rose and presented herself before the Lord. Eli the priest was sitting at the seat beside the doorpost of the Temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed and she prayed to the Lord and she wept bitterly and she made this vow. Lord of hosts if only you will look on the misery of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant but you’ll give your servant a male child then I will set him before you as a Nazarite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants and no razor shall touch his head.

And that prayer as it turned out, verse 18, gave her such peace:

The woman went back to her quarters and she ate and she drank with her husband and her countenance was sad no longer.

I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that I have gone to God in distress about something, some great drama or problem, some great obstacle in the ministry or blockage in a relationship, something causing me distress and pain and pray about it only to discover God’s peace.

This Bible verse I’m going to share with you is absolutely pivotal in my walk with Jesus, Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

Don’t worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

So if you hear me coming back to that verse again and again it’s because it beats in my heart as an absolute truth. This promise that if instead of worrying I go to God with a thankful heart and I just pour it all out to Him the way Hannah did, the peace of God will guard my heart and my mind and friend that’s exactly what happened to Hannah.

That’s what happened to Paul on death row over a thousand years later, that’s what happens to me every time I dare to live out and act and pray out that promise two thousand years on and that’s what will happen to you when you believe this verse, this truth with your very life.

The peace of God will be restored to you, the confidence that you have in Jesus will grow. It’s like it’s a gift from God, it’s so incredibly special. Friend, please listen to me today, God doesn’t want you to be afraid as He said to Joshua in a difficult time in his ministry:

Be strong and courageous.

That’s God’s will for your life and mine, strength and courage. Now I’m a pretty strong sort of a character but let me boast here in my sufferings, when I’m going through a tough patch I have to tell you, I don’t feel strong, I don’t feel courageous, when fear grips my heart I feel weak and worthless just the way you do. The only thing that makes a difference is praying, pouring out my heart to God, trusting in His Word.

Can I say it again in case you missed it because this is the crux of it, this is the heart of it, this is how you receive God’s confidence. The only thing that makes a difference is praying, pouring out my heart to God and trusting in His Word. It made a difference to Hannah too, she had peace, her countenance was sad no longer, hallelujah!

Isn’t that what you’re looking for, the confidence in Christ to replace your sadness and fear in times of trouble. But it didn’t stop there, God blessed her, God honoured her because she honoured Him, 1 Samuel chapter 1, verses 19 to 28:

So they rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord then they went back to their house in Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah and the Lord remembered her. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel for she said, ‘I have asked him of the Lord.’

The man Elkanah and his household went back up to offer to the Lord for the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow but Hannah didn’t go up for she said to her husband, ‘As soon as the child is weaned I will bring him that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and remain there forever. I will offer him as a Nazarite for all time.’

Her husband Elkanah said to her, ‘Do what seems best to you, wait until you have weaned him only may the Lord establish his word.’ So the woman remained and nursed her son until she weaned him. When she had weaned him she took him up with her along with a three year old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine.

She brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh and the child was young. Then they slaughtered the bull and they bought the child to Eli and she said to him, ‘O my Lord as you live my Lord I am the woman who is standing here in your presence praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have sent him to the Lord as long as he lives he is given to the Lord.’ She left him there for the Lord.

My friend you and I serve a good God, He honours those who honour Him. It distresses me so greatly when I see people travelling through the difficult times of their lives, people who earnestly believe in Jesus but they struggle so much to make it through. And so I ask them, ‘Tell me about your prayer life right now, tell me about your Bible reading right now’ and they tell me, ‘Oh I don’t pray, it’s too hard. I don’t read my Bible.’

Two things that are so simple, two things that open the way for the Lord to pour His Spirit and His peace and His power and His confidence into your heart and they’re not doing those things, why? It’s so simple. God’s promise is true. God doesn’t want you to be afraid. God doesn’t want you to lack confidence in Him. God doesn’t want you to just listen to some preacher who tells you platitudes about having faith. God wants you to experience His faithfulness in the middle of your trials.

God wants you to know in your own experience how faithful He is and the way we lay hold of that confidence is by doing what Hannah did, pouring it all out to Him and trusting in the Word of the Lord. God’s promises are true, He wants to bring peace and confidence and courage into your heart, He really does.