Season 2 Episode 2 of The Whole Hearted Life

Come sit with me. Let's open the word and discover together how Jesus forms a wholehearted life. In episode one last week, we began the season talking about something foundational. There is a difference between believing in Jesus and learning to live your life with Jesus. We talked about bringing him the heart we actually have, not the polished heart, not the Christian answer, not the version of ourselves we think God wants to see. No, we bring him the believing part and the struggling part, the surrendered part and the parts we're still holding on to, the grateful part and even the disappointed part. And today we're going to talk about that disappointed part. Because what happens when you have prayed and prayed and believed and waited and the thing you desperately wanted still doesn't happen? What happens when you thought you knew what God was going to do and He didn't do what you expected? And maybe the hardest question of all, what happens when you thought the answer to your prayer was going to be part of the redemption of your story? I know something about that. I believe you know something about that too. And today I want to have a very honest, heart-to-heart discussion with you about it. So, welcome to the Wholehearted Woman Podcast. I'm Chris Ray, and this is your heart room, a place where your story is safe, your questions are welcome, and needing healing is never a failure of faith. This season is called The Wholehearted Life: Learning to Live from a Heart Formed by Jesus. And today we're going to sit with Hannah. But before we enter her story, I need to tell you some of mine. Let's dig in. In the previous podcast series, A Heartfully Alive, you heard what happened before I surrendered my heart to Jesus and the events that led up to it. But what I didn't share then and that I'll share now is how I desperately wanted to have a baby. And honestly, I held every expectation that it would happen. It was one of those things I assumed would simply become a part of my life. Sure, I was older, but a lot of people have children at an older age. I wasn't that old, so naturally I thought maybe the help of in vitro fertilization would make the process simple. But I never expected that when I went to a fertility specialist, I would be told almost immediately and very matter-of-factly that I would never become pregnant using my own eggs. I was completely crushed, thrown off guard. I was not expecting nor ready to accept that news. My husband and I didn't take no for an answer though. I became determined. If there was research to read, I was going to read it. If there was something I could change, I was going to change it. I studied age and fertility and egg quality. I changed the way I ate. I did everything I knew to do because somewhere inside of me was this thought, if it can happen for another woman, why can't it happen for me? And looking back now, I can see something about myself that I didn't see clearly then. I was accustomed to striving. If there was a problem, I was going to solve it. If there was an obstacle, I was going to hurtle over it. If there was an answer, I was going to find it. And then I surrendered my heart to Jesus. And suddenly the whole story looked completely different to me. I had spent years searching for God, years trying to find healing, years making my own choices. There were mistakes, sure, and there were sins. There were things from my past that I deeply regretted. And now I had found Jesus. Or maybe more accurately, I had finally discovered the one who had been pursuing me all along. And I remember thinking, wow, the timing is amazing. Now God is going to redeem my story. And in my understanding at that time, I thought motherhood might be a part of that redemption. Then something happened that strengthened that expectation. I began receiving prophetic words from different people, different churches I would go to, at conferences I would go to. People literally would come up to me and tell me I was going to have a baby. His name is Samuel. I heard the same name over and over again, Samuel, that I would give birth to him. And if you know Hannah's story, you can imagine what that did to my hope. Hannah had been barren. She had cried before God. She had waited, and then God opened her womb, and Samuel was born. And Samuel wasn't merely an answer to Hannah's personal longing. He became a part of God's redemptive plan for Israel. So I began connecting the pieces. Maybe this is what God is doing with me. Maybe after all the searching, all the striving, all the mistakes, all the wondering, this baby was going to become part of the redemption of my life. A living, breathing example of that. I'm going to have my Samuel, I thought. But time kept passing. I wasn't becoming pregnant naturally. It was a struggle. It was a battle. Eventually I began looking into donor eggs. And that was an emotional journey all of its own. Suddenly I was thinking about things I had never really considered before. Lineage, family, genetics, what gets passed down from one generation to another. I had always thought, does any of that really matter? Aren't we all simply human beings? We're all the same family. But when I was actually making the decision, it mattered. I thought for the first time, this child wasn't going to have my mother's chin, my father's forehead, my grandmother's smile. Things I hadn't realized that were significant to me suddenly became deeply significant. But eventually I decided to move forward. I told myself, this may not be my egg, but this baby will grow inside my body. My body will nourish this child. And so I tried. Some of the best eggs didn't produce a pregnancy, and then one did. After everything, there was a heartbeat, and hope became tangible. This was no longer merely something I was believing for. There was life. I started experiencing signs of pregnancy, cravings, a metallic taste in my mouth. And I was so encouraged. I thought, this is happening. Until I went back for another appointment and there was no heartbeat. I lost the pregnancy and I was devastated. Maybe some of you have never experienced infertility. Maybe some of you have never lost a pregnancy, but I know there are women listening who have and who understand this kind of loss in a very personal way. And almost all of us know what it feels like to believe for something, to pray for something, to hope for something, and not receive it. Maybe you prayed for healing. Maybe you prayed for your marriage. Maybe you've prayed for a child. Maybe you've prayed for someone you love to come home. Maybe you've prayed for reconciliation. Maybe you've believed a door would open. Maybe you believe God had spoken something to you. Maybe you thought something was part of his plan for your life and then it didn't happen. What happened in your heart? Because unanswered prayer doesn't simply affect our circumstances. Sometimes it begins touching what we believe about God and what we believe about ourselves. After I lost that pregnancy, I had questions. So, so many questions. Because of my default pattern of self-blame, I automatically went to, was it me? Did I do something wrong? Did I try too hard? Were all those people wrong? Had I misunderstood? Was God angry with me? Had he changed his mind? And because I waited so long to have a baby and my life before knowing Jesus was very messy, another terrible question surfaced. Was this punishment? And I want to say something today that I did not fully understand then. Not having that baby did not mean I failed in faith. And I don't want to turn my story into some simplistic lesson that says, sometimes God says no, or sometimes God's promises aren't really promises, or God made you stronger through this. Maybe there are things he formed in me through that season. Maybe there are things I learned. But I don't need to turn my loss into a tidy explanation in order to make God good. I don't need to decide exactly why it happened. I don't need to say God caused it. I don't need to say I didn't have enough faith. And I don't need to decide that God simply said no, because God is good. His answer is always yes. There are things I still don't know, and perhaps one of the deepest forms of surrender has been learning to leave what I don't understand with him. And this is why Hannah's story matters so deeply to me. We read Hannah's story knowing how it ends. Hannah did not have that privilege. We read her story backward. She had to live it forward. First Samuel tells us that Hannah had no children, and Scripture says something very directly. The Lord had closed her womb. Year after year she lived with that longing, and she wasn't suffering quietly in some peaceful prayer closet. Panina had children, and Scripture tells us Panina provoked Hannah because of her barrenness. Year after year. Imagine having the deepest ache in your heart repeatedly touched by another woman. Hannah wept. She couldn't eat. Her husband Elkinah loved her, but even he didn't understand. He essentially asks her, Why are you crying? Why aren't you eating? Why is your heart sad? Am I not better than ten sons? He loved her, but he couldn't reach the place inside Hanna that hurt. Have you ever been loved by someone who still can't understand your pain? Sometimes people are not cruel. They simply cannot understand the meaning something has inside of us. And Hannah carried something no one around her could fix until eventually she poured it out before God. First Samuel tells us Hannah was in deep anguish. She wept bitterly. She prayed. And when Eli misunderstood her and thought she was drunk, Hannah told him, I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. I love those words, pouring out my soul. Hannah did exactly what we talked about last week. She brought God the heart she actually had, not the polished one, the exhausted one, the hurting one, the longing one, the disappointed one, the heart that had been provoked year after year. She poured it out, and then something happens that I don't want us to rush past. Eli speaks peace to her and expresses hope that God would grant her request. And Scripture says Hannah went away. She ate, and her face was no longer downcast. But Samuel hasn't been conceived yet. The circumstance has not changed. There is still no baby in her arms, and yet Hannah leaves differently. The text doesn't explain every internal thing that happened to her, so I don't want to put words into scripture that aren't there, but we can certainly notice this. She poured herself out before God and afterward, she went away differently. And that gives us a beautiful question. What can happen in the presence of God before anything changes in our circumstances? Over the years, Samuel began to mean something more to me. I do not say this to spiritualize away the very real baby I wanted. I wanted an actual child. I experienced an actual pregnancy, and I experienced actual loss. But spiritually, Samuel began representing something else to me. Birthing, promise, prophetic expectation, God's timing, waiting, faith, trust. And Hannah began representing something too. The woman being formed while she waits. The pressing, the pruning, the exhaustion, the tears, the pain, the places where your strength begins to run out, the place where you pour your soul before God. And eventually I began realizing something. And this took me a while to get this, but I had been so focused on Samuel that I hadn't understood the significance of becoming Hannah. I was looking for what God was going to birth. I didn't yet understand what could be happening in me while I waited. And I want to be very careful here too. I'm not saying God intentionally creates every painful circumstance in our lives, so we'll learn something. I'm not saying every delay means God has put you in some divine training program. And I'm certainly not saying that if you finally become surrendered enough, then God will give you your Samuel. That turns surrender into a transaction. I'm saying something much simpler. No season is beyond the reach of his presence. Even in circumstances we did not choose, God can meet us, lead us, form us, reveal himself to us, and draw us deeper into relationship with him. And this is where Hannah's story and mine diverge. Hannah eventually held Samuel. I did not. I think we have to say that clearly because I never want to use Hannah's story to tell you, just keep believing, your Samuel is coming. I can't promise you that. Scripture doesn't give me permission to promise you that either. I cannot tell you that if you pray enough, believe enough, fast enough, wait enough, or surrender enough, God is obliged to give you the exact outcome you're asking for. Faith is not a mechanism for producing a result, and an unmet desire is not proof that you failed spiritually. Hebrews 11 itself shows us people of tremendous faith who received extraordinary promises and deliverance, and others who remained faithful without seeing every promise fulfilled in their earthly lives. The same chapter, the same faith, but different outcomes. So the measure of faith cannot simply be, did I get what I was believing for? The deeper question becomes, where is my trust resting? When I first came to Jesus, I didn't understand much of this yet. My heart had surrendered to Christ, but my mind was still being renewed. I didn't deeply understand grace. I didn't understand my righteousness in Christ. I didn't understand the rest that comes from surrender and yielding to God. I was still learning that faith isn't simply something we generate with our minds. Scripture says we believe with the heart, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Then Jesus says something extraordinary in John 15. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, there's the connection. The vine, his presence, his word, faith, trust, fruit. Faith isn't mental pressure. It's not if I think positively enough, pray hard enough, believe intensely enough, repeat this verse enough, then God will finally produce my desired outcome and move his hand. No. His word becomes authoritative in our hearts because his word reveals him, his character, his nature, his goodness, his finished work, who we are in Christ. And eventually his truth begins carrying more authority in us than fear, than shame or disappointment or circumstances. Fear may say, God abandoned you. Shame may say you're being punished. Striving may say, do more, don't give up. Disappointment may whisper, maybe God isn't good. But God's word tells me there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ. And his grace is sufficient for me. And I have access to the Father through Jesus. I am his. So faith it becomes less about confidence in my outcome and more about confidence in my Father. This is why Jesus' picture of the vine means so much to me. A branch doesn't manufacture life, it receives life from the vine. It doesn't bear fruit, so the vine will accept it. It bears fruit because it is connected to the source of life. Jesus says, abide in me, remain, stay, live connected. And that's something I didn't understand in those early years. I had spent much of my life thinking, what do I need to do to make things happen? Grace started teaching me a different question. Father, what are you doing and how do I walk with you in it? That's participation. Grace doesn't mean inactivity. Rest doesn't mean passivity. We pray, we obey, we act, we make decisions, we seek wisdom, we participate. But we're learning to do it from rest rather than from striving. We're no longer trying to complete what Christ already completed. We're living from the finished work. You can act without believing everything depends on us. We can pray without manipulating, we can believe without demanding, we can desire without making the desire our source of life. We can surrender without pretending we don't care. And we can wait without automatically assuming silence means God is angry. And please hear me. God gives good gifts. Jesus Himself teaches us that our Father gives good gifts to his children. It's not wrong to desire. That's different. God wasn't simply the one who could give me Samuel. He was the one my heart had been searching for all along. And eventually I began learning something that all the meditation, philosophies, and spiritual practices I had explored before Jesus could never give me. Christian surrender isn't simply detachment. It isn't eliminating desire. It isn't becoming so present that you stop caring about what happens or white knuckling things. Christian surrender is relational. I surrender something into the hands of someone I trust. That's completely different. Look at Jesus in Gethsemane. Jesus doesn't pretend he has no desire. He doesn't suppress what he feels. He tells the Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. And then, nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. That's surrender. Not I shouldn't want this. Not I don't care. Not this doesn't hurt. But Father, this matters deeply, and I trust you with what matters deeply. That's wholehearted surrender. And I think this is where surrender stops becoming a beautiful Christian word and becomes something real. Because it's easy to say, your will be done. They're just words. Until we're talking about something we desperately want, something we've built, something we're trying to hold together, something we're afraid of losing, the future we've planned, the ministry we've created, the marriage, the child, the financial security, the reputation, the dream, the health, the version of our life that tells us this is what a meaningful life is supposed to look like. And suddenly, surrender costs something. That makes me think about the rich young ruler. He wanted eternal life. He came to Jesus. He had obeyed so much. He had accomplished, he had possessions, he had built a life. And Jesus put his finger on the very thing the man couldn't imagine releasing, and the man walked away sorrowful. We often reduce that story about money, but I think it confronts something deeper in all of us. What have I made so essential to my definition of a meaningful life that I cannot imagine trusting Jesus without it? For me, motherhood became intertwined with redemption. For someone else, it might be marriage, success, health, ministry, recognition, security, a relationship, a particular future. Even an interpretation of something we believe God promised. And sometimes The hardest things to surrender aren't bad things. They're good things we have gripped too tightly. For years I thought I understood surrender. I had surrendered my heart to Jesus. I had repented. I had surrendered my old life. I wanted God's will. But I don't think I yet understood how deeply surrender reaches. Because it's one thing to say, God, I give you my past. It's another thing to say, God, I give you the future I've already imagined. I give you what I'm trying to gain. I give you what I am desperately trying to hold together. I give you what I've built and I'm terrified of losing. I give you the outcome of attached to your goodness. I give you my interpretation of what I thought you promised. And perhaps the hardest of all. I give you my demand to understand why. Your will, Lord, not mine. Can we really say that? I mean, really say it? Years later, there were enormous losses in my life. My husband at the time lost his father and brother only 14 days apart. I lost my father. Then I lost my husband. There was a six and a half week period surrounding my husband's illness when my life became hospitals and hospice and grief all in a short time. My mother was battling cancer and grieving my father. So she couldn't come and spend time with me. My sister was caring for my mother and she couldn't leave. I had no family on either side who could simply step in and carry everything for me. I had to work. And eventually I found myself realizing, how could I have seen any of that when I was praying for a baby? I knew what I wanted. I knew what I thought would make my life complete, but I couldn't see down the road. But God could. And still I want to be careful because we can have a tendency to answer things for God that were not meant for us to answer. And I'm not going to tell you. That's why God didn't give me a child. I don't know that, and that's not the God I know. He would never withhold something from us to prove a point or teach us a lesson. And the phrase that would come to me out of the blue one day that I like to hold on to is God never says you made your bed now, lie in it. No, he says now pick up your mat and walk. But at the same time, we sometimes don't know the answers to things. And I, after a season of trying to figure it all out to satisfy the part of me that always wants to know why to everything, I learned that I may never need to know. I don't need to explain my miscarriage to make God good. I don't have to prove that some better outcome came from it. I don't have to decide that God deliberately caused my loss to make me stronger. And in moments of grief, I don't have to conclude that if I'd had more faith, if I knew Jesus earlier in my life, if I wasn't so determined to set out on the wrong path to find God all those years, the baby would have lived. I learned that I can leave what I do not understand to him. Because he sees what I cannot see, he knows what I cannot know. And after years of wanting answers, maybe this is what surrender finally looks like. That I can say to God, I trust you even here. That's something Hannah and I and every one of us have in common. We live forward. We don't know the ending while we're walking through the middle. We don't know what next year holds. We don't know what next week holds. Sometimes we don't know what tomorrow holds. And that's why surrender isn't merely intellectual. It's not a doctrine, it's not a spiritual slogan, it's a relationship. Father, I can't see what you see. I don't know what you know. I don't understand everything you're doing, but I'm learning to know you, and I trust you with what I cannot see. Not perfectly, not without questions, and not without tears, but relationally. So I'd like to take a moment and ask you something. What are you trying to gain? What are you trying desperately to hold together? What have you created that you're so terrified of losing? What outcome have you attached to God's goodness? What promise are you trying to make happen? What version of your future have you already written and handed to God for approval? And perhaps the hardest question, if God never explained why, could you still trust who? I'm not saying you can't ask why. Ask. Cry. Tell him you're confused, tell him you're angry, tell him you don't understand. Bring your whole heart. But eventually why reaches the edge of what we can know. And that's where relationship becomes everything. This week, try to identify one thing you're gripping onto, something you're trying to gain and hold, protect, create, fix, or keep from losing. And bring it to Jesus. Tell him, Jesus, this is what I want. Tell him why. Tell him your desperation. Tell him what you're afraid will happen if you don't receive it. Tell him exactly what you think it means about your life. And then don't force yourself to say, I don't want it anymore. That's not surrender. Instead say, Jesus, I trust you enough to tell you exactly what I want. And then show me, Lord, how to walk with you here. And if you're able, pray the prayer Jesus prayed, not my will, but yours. Not as a resignation, not as defeat, but as relationship. And definitely not out of fear. So I'd like to end in prayer. Father, you know the prayers we have carried, you know the desires we have whispered, you know the promises we believe we heard. You know the places where we have waited so long that hope itself has become exhausting. You know our questions, you know our disappointments, both past and present. You know what we're gripping, and today we bring you our whole hearts. Forgive us for the places where we've mistaken striving for faith, where we've believed everything depends on us, where we've tried to manufacture what only you can produce. Teach us to abide, teach us to remain in the vine. Let your word abide deeply within us, not merely as verses we know, but as truth that has become authoritative in our hearts. Teach us to trust your character when our circumstances don't make sense. Teach us the difference between faith in an outcome and faith in you. And Lord, where we've decided what redemption must look like, give us grace to open our hands. Not because our desires don't matter, but because they matter enough to entrust them to you. For the woman whose Samuel came, thank you. For the woman who is still waiting, hold her, Lord. And for the woman whose Samuel did not come in the form she prayed for, meet her there too. Remind her that an unanswered prayer is not evidence of your anger. Her grief is not proof of failed faith. Her questions do not frighten you, and she does not have to explain everything in order to trust you. You're not distant, you're not a far-off God. And Father, we cannot see everything you see. We do not know everything you know, but teach us to know you. Teach us to participate in grace, to work from rest, to listen, to follow, to trust, to surrender, and above every gift, teach us to treasure the giver. Because your presence isn't merely where we go to get an answer. Your presence is the treasure. In Jesus' name, amen. So, friend, maybe the greatest evidence of faith isn't that we received everything we believed God for. Maybe sometimes it's discovering that when we don't understand, he is still enough to hold our hearts. I spent years looking for Samuel, and along the way, I began discovering the significance of Hannah. Not because loss made everything okay, not because unanswered prayer suddenly made sense. I still grieve, but because I began learning what it means to trust God with a story I cannot see from beginning to end, that's the wholehearted surrender. Not merely surrendering the outcome, but surrendering our insistence on knowing what God must do with it after we release it. This is the wholehearted life, real life, heart, scripture, Jesus, practice, and we're going to keep walking it together. So next time we're going to sit with Peter, because Peter raises and touches another part of our human hearts. Who do you believe you are after you've disappointed yourself? And maybe disappointed God. We're going to talk about failure, shame, identity, restoration, and the way Jesus meets us after we've done the thing we thought we never would. Until then, keep abiding. Keep bringing him your actual heart. Keep letting his word have the final say. And remember, you are seen, you are deeply loved, and the shepherd is still speaking. I'll see you next week.