Is God Everything to You?

In Matthew 22 and verse 37, Jesus was asked, what was the greatest of the commandments?

We are all familiar with this verse. I want to read the first part of the answer that Jesus gave, Matthew 22. And verse 37, he was asked, what is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

You will love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Which pretty well encompasses everything about our conscious awareness and life and words and thoughts and deeds and everything. In other words, our whole being. You will love God with all of your heart and every aspect of your life. Now, most of us would probably say that we try to live up to that command as best we can. And I think we would all feel that we do that.

Perhaps we don't think about it as much as we think about what we're going to eat tonight or what we'll be doing over the next few days or some major issue that's in front of us right now. But I think all of us would feel in our minds that we do love God.

After all, that's why we are here on the Sabbath worshiping God on this holy day. And with other parts of our life and other things that we do, we try to obey and serve God, don't we? When something bad happens, we may not always love God as we should, though. We've all probably shouted at God, asked God why, wondered, doubted, and thrown up a few questions if not a few fits of anger, depending upon how emotional we might get at some particular point. I'm sure that that has happened. And so we would have at times when bad things happen feelings that maybe we don't love God, maybe we question God, we feel distant from God.

There's another situation that might come up in our life that might also cause us not to love God quite as much with our heart, soul, and mind, and that would be on the opposite end of the spectrum when things are going quite well. When we have all of our bills paid up, we get a big fat bonus, the checking account is in the black, the cupboard's full, and we're on, as we say, easy street. Everything's going well.

There's a tendency about human nature to at the times when everything's full, we may not remember God. We might not have God in the forefront of our minds because we might be thinking about what we're going to eat next week, or what we're going to spend some of that money on, or the trip we're going to take, or what we're going to do with that little extra bit of money that we have come into by whatever means.

And maybe we don't think about God, and maybe we don't quite love Him with all of our heart and mind at that particular point in life. Or when we get real busy with life, do we keep the sense that God is still involved in our life? All of this, out of this verse, speaks to the thought of how close are we with God? Do we really sense that in our lives we have a very close walk with God, a close relationship with God? Sometimes we talk about walking with God. Sometimes we talk about having a close relationship with God.

And at times we may feel closer than we do with others, as I would say. And again, we might not always think about that, but it is at the core of our life. Because when it says, what is the great commandment of the law? Jesus said to love your God with all your heart, mind, and soul. And then the second, of course, was to love your neighbor as yourself. But to focus on that first, it's to put God first with everything—our heart, our mind, and our soul.

You know, sometimes I recognize that it is very easy for us to trivialize God as we try to incorporate God into our life or as we try to think about God and have a relationship with God and think about that and try to understand what that means and ask ourselves, do we really have a good relationship with God? Do we really know God as we should?

And are we as close to Him as we should be? And at times it is easy to trivialize what we think about God and how we look at Him and think that perhaps He is involved in every detail of our life. Not that we shouldn't want Him to be involved in every detail of our life, but sometimes it's easy to trivialize God. I always think of an example of this is when you may be watching the World Series or the Super Bowl and you see the winning team being interviewed afterwards and some athlete gives the Lord Jesus Christ all the glory, all the praise and all the thanks that their team want. And you'll see that and usually that's when they flick the camera to somebody else down the field or they move on to someone else because the producer back in the trailer doesn't want that to get out too much or they don't want to focus on that or whatever. But I always think, you know, I don't really think God really cares whether the Colts beat the Patriots or the Celtics beat the Lakers. I don't really think God cares. I don't think He's necessarily involved.

Not that He doesn't know and He's not aware of what's going on. And I certainly know that He's not been too much involved with the Chicago Cubs over recent years. But that's another story. My son and I can commiserate with that. You see what I mean when you can easily trivialize God. And I know that you and I will make certain decisions and it may turn out all right. And if we're really honest in the depths of our mind, God probably wasn't there. It just turned out all right. So let's be honest. But that doesn't take away the fact that we shouldn't be walking with God and we shouldn't be striving to have a very close relationship. Because I know the Scripture that I won't read but I'll refer to where God says that Christ said that God does know when every sparrow falls. And I believe that and you do too. He does know when every sparrow falls because He is omnipotent. He is all knowing and He is God. But where does this put God in your heart and in my heart, in your mind and in my mind? Where does this put God? There's another Scripture that I've been thinking about over here in Colossians chapter 3. That runs right with what we read in Matthew 22. Colossians chapter 3 and verse 11. This is in the section where Paul is talking about putting on the new man, putting off the old, putting on the new man. Verse 10, the new man that is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free. But Christ is all and in all. That last phrase. Christ is all and in all. Just focus on that part where Christ is all. Is God all for us, for you?

Is God our all? Everything. Is he your all? Or is he just for the good times? Or is he just for the bad times or someone else? Or as we get it mixed up, we forget him during the good times and we remember him during the bad times or when the bad times come, we wonder where he is. And when the good times come, we forget where he is and we go through these cycles. Is he our all? Is he truly our God for the good times and for the bad times?

Really a good question, I think, for you and I to think about this afternoon and all the time, because this is what Paul is saying. Is he our all? Is he everything to us? I don't mean in some syrupy, sweet, sentimental manner that we go to the garden alone. We took that one out years ago, the hymnal. I go to the garden alone. I remember my minister saying, if you're out there with God in a garden in the morning, I want to hear about it. And he didn't mean it in a good sense.

Sometimes I thought about that and, you know, a garden is a pretty good spot to be in, pretty good spot to think about God and to pray and whatever. But sometimes God can be sentimentalized away or into something that is rather insignificant. And God is very real and things happen to us that are very, very real. And the fact that whether or not God is our all is a very, very good question. To answer it, we have to ask ourselves, how do we look at God?

So let me ask you another question. Is God a means to an end? Is your concept of God a means to an end? He's the way you get whatever it is you want. And me as well. When we want wisdom, we pray to God.

When we want something, we pray to God. When we want good health, when we want happy children, when we want a good marriage, when we want a better job, when we want a bigger house, when we want something, we pray to God. And He becomes the sugar daddy. The means to the end. What is it that we want? What is it that you want in life? Write it down, you would think, and make your list. What do you want? We all want something. We want things. We want happiness. We want peace. We want...

And those are not all bad. But again, is God just the means to that end? Or is God the end? Is He the end? Because there is a difference. If you and I look at God just as a means to get what we want, and if we don't get it, then we wrestle, we struggle, we worry, we doubt, we cycle in and out, we get angry, we get sad, we get happy when it's all going right, and we get very sad and despondent when it's not going right. We cycle through this, no matter whether we're 25, 35, or 95.

Is God a means to an end? Or is He the end? If He's the end, then He is going to be the all.

Paul talks about here in verse 11 of Colossians. He will be all, everything. Which means we take God for what He is in the good times and in the bad. You know, when I was a kid, I learned that there were times if my dad said no, there was a way to get what I wanted. It was through my mom.

Any of you ever learned that? It didn't happen too often, but occasionally it would happen, and my mother would get what I wanted. And I learned that I could play on my mother's love for me, because she loved me. I was only a mother could. My dad loved me too, but my dad would get a bit short. He had a bad day and I asked for something. You learn six o'clock at night after he's come in from a real hard day. That's not the time to ask, kids. You know, wait till some other time after you've served him strawberry waffles with whipped cream or whatever, something like that might be. But no, I learned that I could play on my mom's love for me to get what I wanted for my dad, and I did that a few times. Now, that was very selfish. I didn't think it was selfish when I was 14, but now that I look back on it, that was pretty selfish, and I think we would all agree.

But is that a whole lot different at times than the game that you and I play with God that we'll love God if we get what we want? Think about it. That can be pretty selfish as well. It's not wrong to ask God for something that is our desire. Not wrong at all. Don't misunderstand me today. But when we get it, do we give him credit? And do we use what we get to develop character and to draw close to him and to heighten our understanding of him? You see, that's what God warned Israel would happen to them, and it offers a lesson for us. If you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 8, God spent a lot of time in the book of Deuteronomy as Israel was just about to go into the Promised Land after 40 years of working on their tan in the desert. Before that, generations of slavery, lack of freedom in Egypt, and he was going to give them everything that they could want, a sovereign nation land and a good land that it was going to be. And in chapter 8 is just one point where he reminds them of where they've come from and what's happened. He reminds them that in verse 3 that they had plenty to eat. Verse 4, he tells them, your garments didn't wear out or your foot swell these 40 years. You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord God chastens you. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and fear him. For God's bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will act nothing, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. In other words, abundant natural resources, the ability to plow the land and raise whatever you would want.

In verse 11, he says, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his judgments and his statutes, which I command you. Lest when you've eaten and you're full and you've built beautiful houses and dwell on them. When your herds and your flocks multiply and your silver and your gold are multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, when your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Down to verse 17, you say in your heart, my power and my might and my hand have gained me this wealth. You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant that he swore to your fathers.

So this is repeated several times throughout the book of Deuteronomy. Don't forget where your wealth is coming from. Don't use me as a means to an end. Don't, now that you get your freedom, now that you get your land flowing with Nalkehani, don't forget me, because that's not who I am. That's not what I am. I'm not a God just for the good times, nor am I a God for the bad times. I'm a God for all times, and I should be your all. You should love me with all my all of your heart, all of your might, and all of your soul. That's what he was saying here. You see, as the story goes on, God was not and did not become their all. You know the story of Israel.

He didn't become their all. They forgot. So let's bring it back home. What happens when the object of our love, of our desire, what happens when it's removed? What happens if it's your job, your health, your home, or even those that we love are removed or threatened? What do we do?

Do we blame God? Do we forget God? Do we question God? Well, yes, to all the above.

Some of us thank God at times. And then there's D. There's many other things that we probably do as well. Our blame and anger and confusion that we might get stuck in at times will continue if God is not our all. Because it comes down to understanding how God is working with us, who He is, and to understand sometimes that loving God and having God love us means that we have to take the whole package. And the whole package is the bad times along with the good. We don't use this as part of our wedding ceremony, but some of you will remember it having heard it. When you marry someone in other types of ceremonies, each person is asked whether you will take the other one in sickness and in health. In other words, when the health breaks down after 50 years of marriage, will you still love that person? Will you stay with them? Will you do those things that you thought you never would have to do or you never thought you would do with that person as they die or have to struggle through and you never know if they're going to die the next day or the next month or they'll come out of it? In other words, you take the good with the bad. That's the marriage covenant, and it is a true question. It's the same with us when it comes to our covenant with God. Do we love God? Will we love God? Take the whole package and stay with Him with all of our heart, mind, and soul in sickness and in health. Even when circumstances come that either are by our own design or God allows or for whatever reason that we cannot fathom, things are taken away, do we and will we still understand that that is something, in a sense, that's kind of terrible, kind of terrible about God. And I use the word terrible not that God is terrible, but terrible in that there's an awesome quality to God's sovereignty that is difficult for us to come to to know at times. If we only look at God through one particular part of the prism, we will not see the total picture. And I think that that's part of what comes to seeing and accepting God as our all. There's one story from the scriptures that I think helps us to understand this from a perspective that I think can speak to us and teach us something. It's from the book of Samuel, if you will. Turn over to the first chapter of the first book of Samuel. And I want to take us through briefly the story of the mother of Samuel, Hannah. It's just by coincidence that I'm speaking about Hannah here today. We have Hannah Beth Cobb just born. Before I knew, and I tried, I think even last week I was asking Mandy what the name was going to be and they were still up in the air. So I didn't believe Hannah Beth was even mentioned at that time as one of the possibilities. So this is just purely by coincidence that we're speaking about Hannah today, but it does fit, doesn't it?

Hannah was the mother of Samuel who was a very great prophet of God. But the way Samuel came to be and what happened is something that is instructive to us. Let's look at it briefly, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 1 here of Samuel. And I'll just hit some of the high points.

This is the period of the Judges. This is the time in Israel before King David, before King Saul, before the monarchy. It was this Wild West period of Israel's history known as the time of the Judges when every man did that which was light in his own eyes. It was the time of the story of Ruth.

And there was a semblance of order around the tabernacle that was in a place called Shiloh.

And there were good things and bad things going on within the nation before things changed when they ultimately had a king. God focuses the story down here to the family of Hannah and her husband El-Kanaa, mentioned here in verse 1. El-Kanaa, who had two wives, verse 2, the name of the one was Hannah and the name of the other was Panina. Now, Panina had children, but Hannah had no children. So that sets up the story. A man with two wives, don't ask me why, don't ask me if that's okay, you should know better. Sometimes people look at these stories, whether it's Abraham, David, or this one, and say, well, why did God allow? And my answer to that is, well, just look around God's church today. Why does God allow? Okay, do I need to say anymore? Things weren't perfect then, things aren't perfect now. But when it comes to whether you have one, two, or three wives at the same time, you should know better. That's all I can say.

Move to Utah if you want to try that, and you'll still have problems out there. But he had two wives. Now, Hannah didn't have any children. Understand that in the ancient world, being childless had a whole host of problems that we cannot relate to today, because children were, in a sense, social security. It was the pension fund. And if you did not have children, your old age was going to look pretty, pretty bleak. That's why, back in the story of Ruth, you see Naomi saying some of the things that she did. So understand that. That's why Hannah was so upset at not having children, and she was taking some of the heat within the family envy from, and, you know, she was being looked down upon by Penaena and whatever. Verse 3 tells us that they went up from his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts in Shiloh. Now, Shiloh was a place to the north of Jerusalem. It's where the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant was placed when Israel came into the land. That's where the priesthood set up shop, and it was there that the Israelites would go to keep the Holy Days. So when it went up every year, it's like you and I going up to keep the feast every year. And this is either talking about the Spring Feast or the Feast of Pentecost or the Fall Festival, one of those when they would make a pilgrimage to the Holy Spot, to the place to worship and to sacrifice there. It mentions that the high priest was Eli and his sons Hophni and Phineas. And whenever the time came for Elchanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Penaena's wife and to all of her sons and daughters. But to Hannah, he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb. And a rival provoked her severely to make her miserable because the Lord had closed her womb. So it was, year by year, when he went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her, therefore she wept and did not eat.

So there was this rivalry and enmity between the two women in the house. And it got to the point.

Of course, Elchanah would say, you know, I love you very much. I'll give you a double portion. But verse 8, he says, Am I not better than 10 sons? But that wasn't enough. And I think any woman understands that. She wanted a child of her own. From the emotional, loving attachment, for the practical attachment to that. And so it came at one point that Hannah arose one evening after dinner, verse 9, and she went to the tabernacle and sat near the doorpost of the tabernacle of the Lord. She was in bitterness of soul, and she prayed to the Lord, and she wept in anguish. She was emotionally distraught. It built up and built up and built up. And she made a vow, we're told. She said, Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your maid servant, and remember me and not forget your maid servant, but will give your maid servant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no raiser shall come upon his head. What was the object of her desire? A son. What was the means to the end? God. Everything else had failed. And so she goes to God. I want a son. She got real specific. And so it happened that she was praying and Eli watched her mouth, and Hannah spoke in her heart, only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli thought she was drunk. And Hannah said, No, I'm not drunk. I'm a woman of sorrowful spirit. I've not had anything to drink tonight, but I've poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maid servant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief, I've spoken till now. And Eli answered and said, Go in peace.

He sensed he had perhaps intruded into something that he shouldn't, misspoke. And he finally, you know, he backed off. He said, Go in peace. And the God of Israel, grant your petition which you've asked of him. And she said, let your maid servant find favor in your sight. So the woman went her way and ate and her face was no longer sad. There are some prayers that you come to in a trial or in your life, or after you've prayed it, you've spent your emotion, you've made your case, and you get up, you leave the room or you come back in from wherever you've made this prayer. If it's in a garden, so be it. Or if it's on a walk or if it's in the privacy of your home. And you know when you've made a prayer, when you've spent it all, and you've just emotionally said everything that can be said, and there are times when you know that God has heard that prayer. I hope you've all had that experience. I know we've all had experiences where we've prayed and really deep down we know God didn't hear that one because it was kind of half-baked, didn't go any further than the ceiling.

We were thinking about two or three other things, right? No? Yeah? But there are times when you make a prayer and you know that one got through. This is one. Hannah knew this one got through to God, and she was no longer sad. It had been her. And so they got up in the morning, went to church, returned, came to their house at Rama, and Hannah, in the process of time, conceived. She got pregnant.

Verse 20. And she had a son. She called his name Samuel, saying, because I've asked for him from the Lord. Now the man, Alkanah, in all of his house, went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and his vow. And Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, not until the child is weaned. So this would have been the next festival after the birth. And she said, I won't go up till he's weaned, and then I'll take him up that he may appear before the Lord and remain there forever. She's going to follow through with her word. But she's going to wait until he's weaned. So her husband said, do what seems best, wait until you've weaned him, only let the Lord establish his word. So the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him. Now this would have been, in these days, commentators think three or four years to go through the weaning process.

That's how long we're talking about. Three or four years. And when that happened, when she had weaned him at the end of verse 23, she took him up with her with bulls and flour and wine to the house of the Lord in Shiloh, and the child was young. They slaughtered a bull, and they brought the child to Eli, a high priest. Picture this scene. This is a woman who has for years wanted a child, any child, she got a son, and now three or four years later, she's never forgotten the vow she made that she would give it to God. And now she's making this pilgrimage to the spot where God had placed His name, and she is going to stand there before God. Verse 26, she says, Oh, my Lord, as your soul lives, I'm the woman who stood by you here praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition, which I asked of him. Therefore, I also have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he shall be lent to the Lord. So they worshiped the Lord together.

So she formally turned him over to Eli. Now think about this. Four-year-old boy, the only son of this woman. For all she knew at this point, this may be the only son that she would have. Now, she went on, the story goes, she wanted to have more children. But at this point, we could reasonably say she hadn't had any more, and she didn't know if this was going to be the only one. But even if she'd already had another one, this was her first son. And even if it was the third child, it doesn't really matter because only a mother, and I would hope a lot of us as fathers, but certainly a mother like this, in the case of Hannah, with all that we're told she went through, would know the feeling of leaving a child at a boarding school. Think of the tabernacle and whatever was going on there.

She was leaving him in the care of strangers, and then she had to turn and leave and go back home.

The next morning when she got up, Samuel wasn't there. She didn't tuck him in that night, nor the next night. What did she think about? The same thing that you would think about as a mother.

Is he getting enough to eat? Is clothes being kept clean? Is somebody reading him a book at night?

Is someone attending to his needs? What's he thinking? Now you might think, well, you know, it's one of those Bible stories, and she was giving away a, you know, Samuel was going to be a great prophet. He was going to anoint kings. He was going to do great things. She didn't know that.

She did not know that at that moment. All she knew was that was her four-year-old son, and she was watching him walk away from her. She had to turn her back and walk away herself.

And I would imagine that Samuel probably cried himself to sleep that night, and for a few more nights. How many more nights before he kind of forgot? Or did he ever forget? The story goes on that during the, you know, every year they came up, and she didn't, it wasn't the last time she saw Samuel, but the next time she saw him, he was a year older. Because he didn't come home on three-day weekends. He didn't come home for holidays. They went up for the holidays. So, essentially, she saw him once a year, and she would marvel at, oh my, how big you've grown.

Now, she got on with her life. She had other children, but that was her firstborn. It was her desire. And she gave him up because God was her all. God was not her means to an end.

She had prayed, and God gave her the answer to her prayer. And then, maybe God was wondering now, Hannah, will you follow through on your vow? Or would Hannah be tempted, as you would look at this story, would she be tempted to think, well, God really wouldn't expect me to give up my child.

After all, I may not have any more. And I need someone to take care of me in my old age.

And after all, families are supposed to be together. And I love my son. God would not expect me to do this. You know the line of thought, how it would go. And I bet she thought that way, too.

Because she was a Bible character, but she was human first. But in the end, she reasoned it all around and had to put those thoughts and deal with them. She had to steal herself because she knew she'd made a vow to God. And her God was her all because she eventually would have had to come back to think, I wouldn't even have him were it not for God. I hadn't had a son before. And so, she would have had to know that this is what I have to give up. And she wasn't going to die. She wasn't sacrificing him in that sense. And we go back to the story of Abraham, and that's a whole other story in itself. This is life goes on. But you think about the anguish and the heartache, what she would have had to live with. And then going through that, that would have been a very emotional moment. That's why when you read in chapter 2 her prayer, you can appreciate what she said. This prayer in the first 10 verses of chapter 2 is a very fine prayer. It's one that stood the test of time because you can find elements of this prayer in some of the Psalms.

And when you come to the book of Luke and you read Mary's prayer, when she was praying as Jesus was in her womb, there are elements of this prayer in her prayer. So, it's a good prayer that stood the test of time in the history and the story of Israel and found its way being repeated, kind of like poems or sayings in our own American story that will be passed from one generation to the next and will show up from time to time. I mean, even Barack Obama the other day in his inaugural, he did a little play off of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural when Abraham Lincoln talked about the angels of our better nature. And Mr. Obama did a little play off of that. So, certain phrases and statements are made in a culture that stand the test of time. And this prayer of Hannah's did.

But when you look at this prayer, you come to see and understand something about God from her perspective. She prayed, it says, and here's what she prayed. My heart rejoices in the Lord.

My horn is exalted in the Lord. I smile at my enemies because I rejoice. In your salvation, no one is holy like the Lord, for there is none beside you, nor is there any rock like our God.

God's right smack in the center. She's got a pretty good theology here about God, and he's right in the middle of her life. Talk no more so very proudly. Let no arrogance come from your mouth. Perhaps she's got a pinina in her mind at that time, or other women that may have mocked her. The Lord is the God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty men are broken, and those who stumbled and girded with strength, those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, and the hungry have ceased to hunger. Even the barren has borne seven, and she who has many children has become feeble." Maybe Pinina's life didn't pan out, and maybe she had a downturn. Hannah had other children. Maybe this statement here in verse 5 was just a bit of an observation about how fortunes can turn, and a lesson that don't mock someone, don't look down on someone because you've got something they don't have, thank God for what you have, and learn from it because things and times and fortunes can change. But it's in verse 6 that Hannah comes to say something in the next few verses here that are very profound about God.

This is the side of God that sometimes we don't like to acknowledge because we want to think of God as all raindrops on roses, westeries on kittens, all good, loving, kind, merciful.

We don't realize that God is sovereign. Yes, God is merciful, and He is all loving, but that love doesn't take away pain. That love doesn't remove all suffering from life. In verse 6, she says, the Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to the grave and brings up. He is the sovereign Lord of life and death. He controls it. He can kill and He can bring back to life. That is in His hands. Why does He allow it at times? Does it seem premature to us? I don't know. Does it hurt?

You bet. Does it leave a void? Yes. Can we understand it? Not always. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and lifts up. He. Not we. Not you. Not me. He. He does these things at times. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are the lords, and He has set the world upon them. He shall guard the feet of his saints, but the wicked shall be silent in darkness. This passage through here, these six-seven and eight, are passages that really speak to the power of God. As she says this, she is saying, God, I understand this about you.

This is what you understand except when you come to make God your all. You recognize this, and you have to deal with it, and live with it, and love God with all of your heart, your mind, and your soul at the same time. Verse 10, the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces from heaven. He will thunder against them. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to the king, to his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed. Then Elkanah went to his house at Ramah, but the child ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest. And the story goes on about Samuel. We don't really hear any more, too much more, beyond chapter 2 about Hannah.

When you look at her prayer, you look at her life, she desired a son. God gave her Samuel. She gave him back to God because God was the object of her desire, not Samuel. She loved him dearly, and she cried for him. She mourned for him. I bet all the other children didn't make up completely for the fact that she didn't get to raise him and mold him as she wanted and would have desired as a mother. But it was the decision that she knew she had made and the vow that she had made to God, and that vow was important. He was her all. He was her all. Hannah could only give up her son to God because she loved him with all of her heart, with all of her mind, and all of her soul. Sometimes bad things happen and pain happens, but at those times we have a chance to let go of some of the objects of our desire and learn to love God. We all know what is the often asked question at those times. Why did God let this happen? I've asked it 100 times if I've asked it once. Why did God let this happen? One of our most prolific pieces of literature years ago was an article, the headline, or the title, Why Did God Let Tommy Die? If there's anything probably that is the number one question that we would get in our personal correspondence aspect of the church as people write in and ask questions, and what you can read and discern as people try to grapple with life is, Why does God let this happen? Why does God let this suffering go on? I see those questions come across in my own area a number of times, and I see us attempt to answer it, and certainly when it comes to our own lives and the lives of each of us within the church, we will ask that, Why did God let this happen? Let me ask this. This is something for you to write down and to think about the next time we ask that question. Some of you will not like this question, but I'm going to ask it and put it out to you. The next time we face the time when we might have to ask the question, Why did God let this happen? Ask yourself, Why don't I love God more? Why don't I love God more? Because that's what we will have to come back to. Do we love God more? Do we love Him with all of our heart, all of our soul, and all of our mind? That's what we'll have to come back to. That's how we come to an answer to the first question. And I will ask this first question about, Why did God let this happen? I will ask that many times, I'm sure, in the future too. But I hope that I will ask this other question in parallel with it, Why don't I love God more? And use that to work through whatever I have to work through. Because in the end, I, like you, want to walk with God and want to love God with all my heart, mind, and soul, and want to be able to say that God is my all. But that is an awesome thing to come to, to grapple with and deal with. But I submit that it is at the essence of what our relationship with God and what we're all about as we relate to God. Come to know Him. In conclusion, let me take you to a passage over here in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 33. Jeremiah 33. This was at another this was at a time in Jeremiah's life when he could have asked, God, why did you let this bad thing happen? Because he was in prison. Verse 1 tells us that he was shut up in the court of the prison when God's word came to him, when God spoke to him.

Verse 2 says, Thus says the Lord who made it, the Lord who formed it to establish it, the Lord is his name. God said, Call to me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things which you do not know. Jeremiah was in prison, and God said to him, Call to me, Talk to me, Pray to me, Cry out to me, and I'll answer you. I will hear that prayer. I will answer you while you're in prison. Jeremiah was thinking, If you wanted to show me something, why did you put me in prison? Why did this bad thing happen? Why did all this ignominy happen to me? He had to get to that point for God to show him something. God says, Call to me, and I'll answer you, and I'll show you great and mighty things which you don't know. In other words, God is saying to Jeremiah, and he says to us, when we get into a bad situation, cry out to me, call to me, come to me, and God is saying to us, I'll show you, you thought you knew things? You thought you knew me? You thought you knew my plan? You thought you knew every aspect about me? I'll show you things now that you did not know. But to get to that point, we have to love God with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and God has to be our all. So, that's a pretty tall order. Think about that.

Do we walk with God? How are we walking with God? If he's not our all, then we will have things to learn. But if we cry out to him, he'll teach us. And he's waiting to show us and to teach us everything that we need to know for his eternal kingdom.