So many times I have read 1 Samuel 1:10 and have had my heart ache for Hannah and long for that kind of prayer life. Hannah was a woman of prayer. She would agonize over her condition and she did what we should do as well, she looked not the strength of flesh but the Lord God who alone can move mountains (Mark 11:22-24). Hannah feared God and she cried out to Him and God came through in her time of need to meet her and to touch her and to do a mighty work in Israel through her prayers.
But I wonder where are the women of God who pray like Hannah? Where are the mothers who weep over their children and who cry out for their children? I pray that my wife would be such a woman. I pray that God would stir up many women this Mother’s Day to learn to imitate Hannah and learn the value of prayer and total devotion of yourself and your children to God.
History reveals other great women of prayer. Amy Carmichael was a great woman of God who was also a woman of prayer. Catherine Booth worked faithfully beside her husband, William Booth, to launch the Salvation Army and she, like her godly husband, was a woman of prayer. Susanne Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley, was a woman of prayer. She would cry out for her boys souls. Martha Ravenhill, the late wife of Leonard Ravenhill, was a woman of prayer. She even said that she would never have married Leonard had God not told her to.
But where are the women who pray? Where are the women who cry out to God, seek His face for their families and know what it means to agonize in prayer as Hannah did? So few women, like men, pray. It is true that women largely make up the prayer movements in the modern Church (oh that would prayer meetings would be full of godly men who hunger for Christ alone) but still, we need more Hannah’s to touch God for the children.
Being a parent, I meet parents all the time. I wonder how many of them cry out to Jesus for their children. I cry out for my boys and my wife. I pray daily for my boy’s to be saved. God has no grandchildren (Galatians 3:26-27) and so I pray for the Holy Spirit to draw them to the Savior and I pray that God will protect them from Satan and his devices. I pray for my wife to be a godly women, for her to lead our boys in holiness and with integrity. I pray that both my wife and I would set an example of what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ and that my boys would find me often in prayer. I often pray, “Lord I pray that when I die, let them find my knees are worn out from being on my face before You.” Oh I want my boys to know Jesus and love Him!
I urge you to join with me in praying for the Holy Spirit to raise up godly parents. We need more Hannah’s. We need more Mary’s. We need more Joseph’s. We need more Booth’s and Wesley’s. We need a touch from God! I pray that a prayer revival will break out all across this nation and that it would begin in the home.
© 2011, Matt. All rights reserved.
