The Hannah Spirit, Part 5: The Altar of Poured-Out Prayer

There are prayers that sound beautiful and then........there are prayers that sound like breathing through pain.

Hannah’s prayer wasn't for an audience. 

The Bible says, “Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.” (1 Samuel 1:13)

If you remember, in the last post, I talked about the altar of restraint, how Hannah didn't answer Peninnah from her pain. She didn't fight flesh with flesh. She didn't give her adversary ownership of her response

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But the restraint doesn't mean the pain disappears. It means the pain needs somewhere holy to go. And that is where poured-out prayer comes in.

That verse is sooooo tender to me. Hannah had finally come to the place where the pain had to leave her somehow, but words were too small to carry it.
Her lips moved but her voice wasn't heard.
But.....HEAVEN HEARD EVERYTHING!

There are moments when the deepest prayers don't come out in full sentences. They come out in tears.....silence.....trembling lips. They come out in the ache beneath the words or the groan you can't explain, but God understands COMPLETELY.

That's the altar of poured-out prayer.

It's the place where you stop trying to sound strong and stop editing your sorrow.
It's the place where you bring God the unfiltered truth of what's been happening inside you.

Hannah didn't come to the temple pretending like she was fine. 

She came in bitterness of soul. She prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.

She didn't pour out a performance.

She poured out her soul.

There is a difference.

Performance prayer worries about how it sounds.
Poured-out prayer only cares that God receives it.

Performance prayer tries to say the right thing.
Poured-out prayer says, “Lord, this is what's in me.”

Performance prayer is aware of the room.
Poured-out prayer is aware of His presence.

Hannah had reached a place where she was no longer praying for the room.
She was praying from the wound and she was praying to the right One.

Pain will make us pour somewhere and if we don't pour it out before the Lord, we may pour it out onto people.  We may pour it onto ourselves, our families, our calling...onto anyone near enough to catch the overflow.

Pain needs somewhere to go and Hannah shows us where to take it.

She poured out her soul before the LORD.

She didn't pour it out Peninnah or before the people who couldn't fix it.
And she certainly didn't pour it out before the ones who had opinions but no power to heal.

She poured out BEFORE THE LORD.

There's something special about bringing God the part of you that no one else knows how to hold.

I think many of us know what this feels like.

We know what it's like to carry something so heavy that casual prayer doesn't feel deep enough.  We know what it is to kneel with a burden that has outgrown language.  Those times when you just sit there and think, "I don't even have the words to explain all that is going on and what I'm feeling.  I don't even know how to pray aut this. I need you to hear what words cannot say."

And He does.

And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about Hannah’s story. Her voice wasn't heard by man, but her prayer was NOT missed by God.

Sometimes people think that if they don't hear you, nothing was said.
But heaven does not need volume to recognize surrender!

God heard the prayer that never became audible.
He understood the tears that never became paragraphs.
He received the sorrow that had no explanation.

This is why the altar matters.

The altar gives pain a direction.

Without the altar, grief turns inward and become despair.
Without the altar, anger turns outward and become destruction.
Without the altar, longing becomes bitterness.
Without the altar, delay becomes accusation against God. 

But....when we bring it to Him, something begins to shift in the atmosphere and it isn't always the circumstance right away.

It's US.

Hannah didn't walk into that moment with a song...she didn't have one yet.

She walked in weeping, burdened.
She walked in with a request.
She walked in carrying years of provocation, disappointment, and longing.

But....she poured it out.

Poured out.
She didn't sprinkle it.  She didn't hint at it.  
She poured it out.

To pour something out means that you stop holding it back. You empty what has been contained. You release what has been stored up and you let it leave your hands.

There are prayers where God's not asking us to explain everything perfectly.

He is inviting us to POUR.
Pour out the grief.
Pour out the disappointment.
Pour out the fear.
Pour out the longing.
Pour out the questions.
Pour out the part of us that has been trying so hard to stay composed.

Doing this doesn't make us weak.
It makes us honest.

Hannah’s poured-out prayer wasn't a lack of faith. It was faith with tears on it!

She still came to God and she still believed That HE was the One to approach.
She still brought Him the thing she could not change.

There's deep faith in that.
Real prayer isn't always calm, is it?
Sometimes it shakes, it weeps, it whispers, sometimes it has no sound at all.

But....if it's poured out before the Lord, it's STILL prayer.

The Hannah spirit isn't the woman who always knows what to say.

It is the woman who knows where to go when she has no words left.
It is the woman who refuses to let silence mean distance from God.
It is the woman who understands that the altar is not for pretty prayers.
It is for poured-out ones.

Maybe that's where He's calling you to meet Him again?
With the truth, with the raw prayer.  
With the quiet prayer......the tear-soaked prayer.

The prayer that cannot be heard across the room but reaches heaven anyway.

Because Hannah’s voice wasn't heard.
But God heard her soul.