Life of David Pt. 1
Dealing With Difficult People
1 Samuel 1:1-28
Orchard Church | Pastor Jim Jackson
Dealing With Difficult People | Life of David Ep. 1
and we are in 1 Samuel chapter 1, we're going to start in verse 1, 1 Samuel 1-1, there was a certain man of Raphael and Zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkana, he was the son of Jehrem, son of Illahu, son of Tohu, son of Zuth, who was an Ephraimite, and here's the problem in verse 2, he had two wives, so circle that because that's coming back in the story, the name of one was Hana and the other was Panaiah, and Panaiah had children but Hana had no children, now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh where the two sons of Eli, Hophany and Phineas were priests of the Lord, on the day that Elkana sacrificed he would get portions to Panaiah, his wife and all her sons and daughters, but to Hana he gave a double portion because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb and her rival, circle rival, used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb, so it went on year by year, underlined year by year, as often as she went up to the house of the Lord she used to provoke her, therefore Hana wept and would not eat. In Elkana her husband said to her, "Hana, why do you weep and why do you not eat and why is your heart sad and here's the worst advice a man has ever given a woman, am I not more to you than ten sons?" The answer to that is no, you're not, verse 9, "After they had eaten and drank in Shiloh, Hana rose, now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She was deeply distressed, underlined deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wet bitterly and she vowed a vow and she said, "Oh Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction, circle affliction, of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant but will give your servant a son, then I will give him back to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch his head." And she continued praying before the Lord and Eli observed her mouth that Hana was speaking in her heart but only her lips moved and her voice wasn't heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman and Eli said there, "How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you." But Hana answered, "No, my Lord. I am a woman troubled in spirit, underlined troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman. For all along I've been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation." Then Eli answered, underlined this phrase, "Go in peace." In the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him and she said, "Let your servant find favor in your eyes." Now underlined this sentence, "Then the woman went her way and ate and her face was no longer sad." And they rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord and they went back to the house at Rama and Elkan and a new Hana, his wife, and the Lord remembered her and in due time Hana conceived and bore a son. And she called his name Samuel for she said, "I have asked for him from the Lord." And the name and the man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. But Hana did not go up for she said to her husband, "As soon as the child is weaned I will bring him so that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and dwell there forever." And Elkan answered her, her husband answered her and said, "Do what seems best to you. Wait until you've weaned him but only may the Lord establish his word." So the woman remained and nursed her son until she had weaned him. And when she had weaned him she took him along with her along with a three-year old bull, an e-path of flower, a skin of wine, and she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh and the child was young. And then they slaughtered the bull and brought the child to Eli. And she said, "Oh my Lord, as you live my Lord I am the woman who was standing here in your presence praying to the Lord." Underline all verse 27 and 28, "For this child I prayed and the Lord granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives he is lent back to the Lord and he worshiped the Lord there." If you got your notes pull them out. They should be inside your bulletin if you came on campus. If you're online with us at the top of the comment section on Facebook is a link. Under the video on YouTube you'll see a link. Click on that link and my notes will come up. How many of you guys have difficult people in your life? Don't look to the left or the right if they're near you. Just keep looking straight ahead. Have you listened to me? Look at me. Have you ever wondered why God leaves difficult people in your life? Have you ever wondered why your job is hard and stressful? Have you ever wondered why America is difficult to navigate culturally? Have you ever wondered why there's just hardship in your life? Have you wondered why? If God is powerful, if God's all strong, if you can do whatever he wants, if you can take care of whatever business is going on in the world, if you're creator and all powerful then why do you leave the stuff in my life? Why do you leave these people in my life? Why do you leave that person at my job? Why do you leave the 15 freeway in construction for 150 years? You could do anything. You built a whole universe. You can fix the freeway. You can fix my wife. You can fix my husband. You can fix this. Now you can't fix a cat. It's what you get. You fix my kids. You fix America. You can fix anything. Why I think so hard? Here we go. I'm gonna walk you through one of the most important aspects that you need to realize about living because you've been lied to by our culture in TikTok and Facebook reels in the majority of the counseling that you've probably done in your whole life, which is this idea. Life doesn't get easier but God is strong. So here we go. We're gonna walk through this with Hannah as she brings Samuel into the world and Samuel will be the last prophet, the last judge before David comes on the scene. So here here's why we're starting with Samuel. Everybody look, let me give you some history. Nation of Israel, people group of Israel end up as slaves in Egypt. They cry out to God. God sends them Moses. Moses brings out the whole nation of Israel. They wander around to the desert. This is wander around the desert. For 40 years. They end up at the gate of Canaan right at the Jordan River. They end up getting ready to go into Canaan, which is modern-day Israel today. They go into Canaan, modern-day Israel. They start to live there. It's now been hundreds of years. Moses is dead. He gave them the Ten Commandments. He gave them the law. He goes, "This is what it means to be in the family of God, in the same way that your kids learn what it means to be whatever your last name is, like whatever your family name is." That's what it means to be you. Same thing with Israel. This is what it means to be in the family of God. Here's how you act. All Ten Commandments, all those, all those rules. It's now been hundreds of years. God gave them judges from the death of Moses all the way to Samuel. They don't have a king yet. And from this time, the nation has slowly drifted from God. I'm going to help you understand something. The majority of the time, your drifting from God is almost imperceptible to you. If this is the way God wants you to go, it's almost imperceptible when your life starts to drift from God. Because many of us would say, "When were you really close to God? Oh, it was when I was 18 or when I was 16 or when I was 28 or whatever." It's like, "Well, what about now? You're 153." Oh, you know, I'm still pretty close to God. But what we haven't realized is when you're just starting to leave God, the angle is very small. It's imperceptible. But then as you start to live your life and you don't tether yourself to Scripture, you don't make sure that you're coming to church, that you get with people that think the same way as you that want to follow God. You just start... The things that are ungodly start to seem natural. And then everything that's on your phone just seems like, "I don't know, everybody else is living this way. I guess God's okay with it then." And then what you don't realize is you wake up one day and you're like, "Dude, where is my walk with God?" It's like gone. So I grew up on the lakes in Minnesota, a hunting and fishing resort. And so even if you parked a boat on a totally still lake with no waves, if you sit there for hours, the boat will slowly start to drift with just like imperceptible just breezes on the water or maybe the flow of the water that you can't even perceive underneath the boat. It will never stay just like pointed straight at something on its own for like hours and hours. At some level, it moves. And if you're not paying attention, you literally look at the shoreline and you go, "Dude, where the heck am I?" And that's what's happening to Israel when Samuel was born. The nation has drifted away from God. By the time it gets to Samuel, they're hundreds of years later and they need a godly king, which is when David's coming on the scene. But we need to set the scene for why David was such a man of God and why it was so rare. And Samuel's the last judge before the kings come on the scene. Number one, societies make life dark. Societies make life dark. Don't get suckered into believing something that God wants you to change about your life because you don't see anybody else changing or you don't see anybody else on social media like encouraging that aspect. In fact, many times you see people encouraging ungodly behavior. You don't see many people encouraging godly behavior, which is why it's so important to be at church, which is why it's so important to be with godly men and women who are trying to do god stuff rather than just going, "I don't really need to go to church like God is God and I can just kind of hang on and do my own thing like I can read the Bible for myself." The issue isn't your comprehension of English. Of course, you can read the Bible for yourself. The issue isn't your reading comprehension. The issue is you need to be with godly dudes and godly doodets that are doing god stuff. That's the issue. You need fellowship. Stop living on your own. You're going to die alone, but you can have strength when you're with people that are going the way you're going. When you don't do that, then it's just drift time and you're going to wake up one day and go, "What happened? That's what's happening in Israel. That's what can happen in our own lives." At the end of the era of the judges, Israel had devolved into a spiritually bankrupt nation where everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Sounds like a nation you might know of. At the very end of literally the book of judges is right before first Samuel. You got judges and Ruth. It's like it's right there and then Samuel comes on the same. So at the end of the book of judges, which I have it in your notes there in Judges 21 25, it says, "Everyone just did what they thought was right. They did no more Ten Commandments, no more law of God. I'm just going to do what my feeling." What that verse is basically saying is this. What I feel is right is right. My truth is my truth. You can't tell me what to do. It's my truth. I live my life how I want to. You're going to tell me what to do. So this is 3,000 years old. You literally hear that every day on social media. It's the same problem. It's just different technology, which is I'm selfish. I don't want you telling me what to do. So I'm going to live my life how I want to. That's been going on since men and women have been on the earth. Into this dark social and political climate, God responded by sending Samuel. And this is about 1100 BC. So everybody pay attention. Let me set this scene for you. Here we are today. Boom. Having a party at the orchard. Eating cake. Loving Jesus. Rewind 2,000 years. Boom. Here's Jesus. New Testament. Now we're going to rewind 1,100 years before Jesus. Way back here is Samuel. And then eventually David comes. So this is way back in Israel's history. And they're still they're they're falling away from God. Let me curge you. Look at look at my eyes. There comes a point when God sends light into the darkness through people. So let me help you with this because many of us are all get our souls in a twist about our political system and our voting year or whatever. Let me help you with this. It doesn't do any good to yell into the darkness. Yelling into the darkness only creates anxiety and hatred and anger. You don't yell into the darkness to change the darkness. You walk with love and light into the darkness and help people see Jesus. So I want to help people find Jesus rather than I care about their voting record. Because when their hearts change toward God, then their whole lives change. So understand, ready? We live in a culture of just yelling and screaming. We live in a culture of like, if you don't agree with me, I hate you and blah, blah, blah. And we're just we're blame placers on other people. Rather than going, I might disagree with you on some of these things, but at the end of the day, politics isn't the major thing. What the major thing is, where are you going to spend eternity? Because when politics is over, your eternal life still lives. So if I'm a Christian, I stop yelling about things I don't agree with politically to focus people on what's important spiritually. Because the spiritual reality of a nation relies on the spiritual reality of Christians. And Christians need to stop yelling about things and start loving people to God. Because life changes what matters. Because when people's lives change, then it whole nation changes. You don't fix people politically to change a nation. You fix people's hearts first and then nation changes. And that's exactly what's happening here in Israel. This is 3000 years old. People's hearts need to change. They already have the law. You don't just keep screaming about the law. You go, you need to change and start loving God as an Israelite 3000 years ago. And that's what Samuel's going to do here. In ancient Eastern cultures, a first principle, God often allows national darkness before shining his spiritual light. God often allows national darkness before shining his spiritual light. So my encouragement to you is this. Hey, look at my eyes. Look at me, especially all you Facebookers and instead snap to chat to people. I just want to yell with your thumbs online about stuff. People need less of your yelling and more Jesus from you. I'm not saying other things are important. I'm saying Jesus is the most important. So be about that first. Many times God allows spiritual darkness in a nation to make his light shine through people. So shine your light first for Jesus and everything else is secondary. In ancient Eastern cultures, a wealthy man might take on multiple wives to make a large family to expand the family's influence or affluence. Polygumous marriages would also provide security for women who lived where there was little opportunity to support themselves. So everybody pay attention. I'm going to drop some knowledge to you. Ready? Sometimes people will say like, oh, it's in the Bible. I'm going to have multiple women up in here. Well, you're stupid because one wife is enough. Okay. Number one is that. Number two, just because the Bible records it doesn't mean the Bible supports it. Unless God says thus says God, then that's a God thing. But just because the Bible records something historically doesn't mean God supports it spiritually. So Elkinah makes a call here. He gets another wife and it's very possible that Hannah was his first wife and only wife. She couldn't have babies. It looks like over an amount of time and it's possible he married his second wife because you've got to make kids. In the ancient world, you had to make children. You don't make children. You don't have anybody protect your stuff, especially if you're a wealthy man. You need as many babies as possible, especially males. You need as many sons as possible because if you have herds, I mean, the majority of history was agriculture before the Industrial Revolution. It's all agriculture or international business and what's international business? Travel. You could be mugged. You could be killed like you need strong men to be able to hold the fort down, especially with your wealth, especially with your herds. You got herds eating a hundred miles away from home. You can't just send one son out there. You got to send 50 sons. You got to literally make a home army to make sure you can protect your stuff. So here's what here's what wealthy men would do is they'd marry a bunch of women to have a bunch of babies to try to grow their affluence and their influence as a home. But here's the thing. That's really bad. Because God has designed the home to be one wife and one husband for the rest of their lives. And the aberration of that brings heartache. Let me bring it to you and me right here in our culture because you're like, oh, this polygamy is like, doesn't happen very often in our day. In fact, that was one of the justifications for Mormonism when they first started in the 1800s was, oh, well, Abraham did it. Some of the Old Testament prophets did it blah, blah, blah. It's like God never commanded that. God never told anybody to do that. People just did that, either out of lust or out of desire to protect their stuff. So let me help you with this. When you understand God's design and you stay with God's design, you reduce the heartache in your life. When you go outside of that, for whatever reason, even if it seems like it's the right thing for you, you introduce heartache into your life. And it's what's going to happen to Elkhana and one of the reasons you got rival wives in the home. However, this choice to have multiple wives proves disastrous for family health, creating jealousy and competition between wives and children. So you're like, well, we're not in a polygamous society. So it doesn't really affect us. Oh, yeah, it does. Let me tell you how it affects us. Many of us come from broken homes. Dad left found another wife or mom cheated and went within a thing or your parents just separated her, got divorced and now there's multiple homes. So now you are a stepchild or you have a stepdad or a stepmom or whatever. And it's like, there's still competition sometimes between families and children and ex-wives for the husband's either attention for themselves or the kids or the husband's money for the support of both households because now you're supporting two households. So it isn't really different. We just have done it. We just create serial monogamy. But we still have two homes. They're just not living under the same roof. So it's not really different in our culture than it was back here. You're still supporting multiple women, multiple homes. There's still drama. There's still tension. There's still those issues. So how can I deal with difficulty, whether it's in my own home or if I have two separate homes or I have relational drama? How do I function that way? Some of it wasn't, some of it's not my fault. Like Hannah, this isn't her fault. It's not her fault. She can't get pregnant. It's not her fault that her husband took on another wife, not her fault. None of this stuff is her fault. And she's just got drama and drama and drama. So how does she deal with it when she feels anxiety? Because a lot of us are in that space today. Here it is. Here's our principle. What is socially acceptable is not always biblically commendable. Woo, look at my eyes. Hey, here we go. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral. There can be many laws America can make that God hates. So just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. Just because our society says it's okay, leave your spouse doesn't mean God says leave your spouse. Just because our society says, hey, this pregnancy is really going to get in the way of my future. And it's a whoopsy baby. I should just abort this child and move on with my life. And the cult should be like, okay, hey, just whatever you need to do, girl, to have a happy, healthy life, whatever, God goes, no, I created that baby. Bring it into the world. If you can't support that baby, that's part of being a part of a community. Literally this church, let me tell you something. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Woo, this is going to be a light and fluffy teaching as you can tell. I'm going to tell you something. Ladies, especially young ladies out of wedlock ladies, you get pregnant with the orchard. I'm telling you right now, we have families in this church that will adopt your baby. Okay, I want you to know that from your pastor. Listen, it's not, listen, I'm telling you. So don't think because here's what's going to happen. You're going to get pregnant. It's a thing and you knew you shouldn't have done it and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're going to, if there's going to be a lot of mixed up emotions, I'm telling you right now as your pastor, we love you. We love, we love your baby. We will do everything to help you. And if you can't support that child on your own, we will have families that will take, well, we'll take your baby and we'll support that baby. I just want you to know that from your, from your pastor's heart. Okay. So this isn't just a thing on, don't abort your kid. This is like, we will help you. We will, we have a way forward for you is my thing. So don't feel like it's, it's the end. It's not. It's the beginning of something beautiful, even if it, even if it's difficult. That being said, this, many times our culture goes, hey, do this thing. And, and God goes, don't do that. There's going to be heartache over here. There's going to be, I mean, there's going to be heartache over here. With God, there's going to be answers. Over here, there's no answers. Just heartache. Elkhana made a bad call, probably when he felt like he had to make, but now it's creating drama in his home. Which leads us to number two. Number one, societies make life dark. Don't add to the darkness. Love people to the light of God. Love people to Jesus. People should know your Christian before they know your voting record. Number two, people, people make life hard. Societies make life dark. People make life hard. Don't you hate people that make life hard? Everybody else is like, no, I love difficulty. More, more drama, please, Jesus. Now we all hate it. But here's the thing, ready? You might be the hard person in somebody else's life. So be super careful before you go, God, I wish you just remove all the hard people off the earth. Like if that happened, literally there'd be zero people on the earth. It'd be Jesus and some giraffe still on the earth. So here's the thing, you could be the drama in someone else's life. So here's what you do. If you are the drama in someone else's life or somebody else brings drama into your life, if you are the difficulty or someone else is the difficulty, all people are difficult. You want to know why we're difficult? It's because we're selfish and self-oriented and we just want our own way. And so we clang and bang into other people and we create problems. So how do we fix that? Here we go. Elkinom was an Israelite living in the hills of Ephraim with his two wives. It's possible he married Hannah first and then Paniah once Hannah couldn't bear children. Well, I'm not specifically prohibited. So the Bible doesn't directly say don't have multiple marriages. Although the principle here is that's always bad. Well, not specifically prohibited, God designed the home to run best with one man married to one woman for life. And here's our principle, keep heartache out of your home by keeping your head and your heart at home. Hey, this is going to get even fluffier. Listen to what I'm saying. Here we go. Hey, you want to know where heartache exists? Heartache exists when you go away from God. God says if you're married, you're married person, awesome. Stay in your marriage, stay in your lane when you go off-roading into somebody else's life. Sometimes it's a long way back and it's hurtful. It's painful. So let me help you with that. If you haven't gone down that road, don't go down that road. If you're down that road, fight your way back to your marriage, okay? So here's the thing. Our culture, again, I'm going to go back to this. What's culturally acceptable is not always morally and biblically commendable. So watch. Our culture goes this, girl, you got to jerk for husband. That guy's a jerk. You deserve better. You deserve somebody that's going to treat you better. Somebody's going to love you. Somebody's going to take care of you. Somebody's going to like build you up rather than tear you down. Girl, you need a real man. I got this perfect guy for you. I know you're married, but man, that's not a big deal. I got a perfect man for you. This is my friend at work. Well, guess what? Everybody looks shiny and new until you start living with them. Somebody's still with me. Somebody's still awake. So here's my point. Here's my point. Ready? Everybody's drama. Everybody's problems. Everybody's issues. So what do I do? I work through the issues to become mature. I don't give up on the issues and stay immature. I will. Hey, here we go. Ready? Same thing with guys. Dude, you need to get rid of that wife, man. She just nags you, man. You don't need that drama in your life. Now, all she does is cause you issues, man. She's so disrespectful. And she's not sexually compatible with you. Obviously, you got a different desire to sexually like, dude, just find another chick, man. Life is too short to be living with drama in your home with that wife. And so all your bros at work or all your bros at Vegas or all your bros at the river, dude, let's go. We had to get out of here, man. I'm going to find you. And you're like, I'm a married man. I'm going to get on this dating app. Oh, whoops. What are you doing? You're a married man on a dating app? Be crazy? You want God to be more against your life than he already is? You're going to create more drama than you already have? What are you doing? But here's a point. Our culture on TikTok, our culture on Facebook reels, our culture everywhere. Everybody's going to like support your feelers. You got bad feelings. Let's fix your feelings by finding somebody else. No, you fix your feelings by going to Jesus. And Jesus gets your head right. And then you go, man, even if I've got drama, I can still serve God. And I'm going to trust that God is going to work in the people that are causing me hardship so that I can live at peace and we can be at peace. So I can grow towards health, not grow towards hurt. Here's a map of Shiloh. Here's where this took place. This isn't mythology. This actually took place in the real world. Shiloh is just north of Jerusalem. You see that little gray box area down there in the Mediterranean Sea at the lower left hand corner. That's the Gaza Strip. Toward the Gaza Strip there where the wars currently going on. So Jerusalem is there. Shiloh is there. A hill country where Elkhana live with his two wives was right up in that hill and he would travel to Shiloh, which is one of the first places the Israelites worship God when they came across the Jordan River. Jordan River is that little sliver of water connecting the Sea of Galilee up north with the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest body of water on earth, which is why they call it the Dead Sea because it has no escape. Water doesn't go anywhere from there other than evaporate. And so Shiloh is where they're worshiping and here's what it looks like today. They've been excavating that area and this is probably where the Shiloh tabernacle was. You can walk around the ruins of it today and then here's what a tabernacle may have looked like in Hannah's day. Imagine Eli sitting out there and Hannah's just broken like I love that it says year after year. This wasn't a one-time occurrence. This was a woman having drama with another woman, which I know no women in here do, but she did. So if you ever run into a woman that's had drawn with other women, you'll be able to speak into their lives because this is that lady, okay? Seems like it's been going on a minute because this story is 3000 years old. So imagine Hannah brokenhearted on her knees just weeping to God. God, why do you leave the situation of my life? Why don't you just remove this other wife out of my life? I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask to not become pregnant. Like everything is wrong. It imagine took place right there and she just pours out her heart to God. Let me encourage you with this. Pour out your heart to God. God knows your brokenness. God knows what's going on in your life. Don't keep, don't run from God, run to God. And just pour out your heart. God, these are the problems I have in my marriage. God, these are the problems I have at work. God, these are the problems I have raising my kids. God, these are the problems I have with my health. Just pour out your heart to God. And God who sees the voids and the hurt in your heart will begin to heal it and fill it because only God can heal some of the things that people can't heal. So let go of your fake life, let go of your false life, let go of your cultural appropriated life and grab on to Jesus. And then Jesus will straighten your path. Jesus will clean up your life. Some of the drama won't leave your life. But guess what? The drama in your heart will end. Look at me, look at my eyes. There is no life that doesn't have drama or hardship. The life doesn't exist. This is the life we're living right now. The next life will have no drama and no hard people. This one you get a bunch of hard people. But guess what? You don't have to live, pour up inside. You give your heart to God, let him, let him carry the burden for you for the things that are heavy on your heart. Let me speak specifically to the ladies. I'm going to speak to the ladies again. Listen to me. Take your drama to Jesus. Don't take him to mimosas at the vineyard. It's good to have good girlfriends. It's good to have awesome friends. Awesome. So when we talk about here, we talk about women getting together. It's awesome. Get good girlfriends in your life. But take your heartache to Jesus because it's there we find hope and healing and light and life. Because God knows you better than you know yourself. So don't just take it to your girlfriends that will agree with you. Take it to Jesus who will heal you. Here's a principle. Peace doesn't come from focusing on our circumstances, but from focusing on our faithful God. Peace doesn't come from obsessing on your circumstances. That's what a lot of us love to do. Look at all these problems I have and our culture teaches us to just look inward. I always just go to my feelings. How am I feeling? And that tells me how my life is. Nope. Your feelings are real, but they might not be true. Hey, your feelings are real, but they might not be true. Write that down because I didn't think of it when I wrote these notes. Your feelings are real, but they might not be true. So don't let your feelings lead you astray, let your faith lead you back to God. And then lastly, number three. Number one, societies make life dark. Go be light and life this week. Number two, people make life hard. You will have a hard spouse. You will have hard children. You will have hard people at work. You'll have hard people on the 15th freeway going home. Hard people are all around us. You're a hard person. We're all hard, but we can become usable in the hands and moldable and soft in the hands of God when we repent and come to know Him as Savior. And then God does something beautiful with our life. Even though the hard people are still involved, God gives us grace to deal with hard people. Even when we're hard, God gives us grace too in love. God has grace for me. I can have grace for others that are hard and difficult. I don't have to live in drama. I don't have to be part of drama. I let go of drama and hold on to my Savior. Number three, God makes life good. God makes life good. That'll preach. Here it is. I close with this. As Elkinah was from a priestly lineage, which is interesting, the husband was from a priestly lineage in Israel. Hannah promised that if she gave birth to a son, he would be dedicated to serve the Lord as priest at God's house. In the ultimate sacrifice for an infertile woman after Samuel was born and weaned around three to four years old, she didn't go back on her promise, but presented him to Eli to serve at God's house. Instead of becoming bitter and hard in her heart, she appreciated God's goodness and gave her child back to God. Her faithfulness produced Israel's last judge right before the kings are coming on the scene, which we'll see in a few weeks, and a great prophet of God. I close with this. Everybody, look at me. Hey, I want to encourage you with this. Here's our last principle. God does huge things with small faith. God is going to use you. Look at me. I'm done. God's going to use you to do great things. What will keep you from doing great things is when you leave God and go do something else. Stay with God even in difficulty.