Barrenness In Secret Places

God loves me unconditionally. I have a family. Friends. Food and shelter. Great health. Beauty and brains. A college degree. A full-time job. Income. Health insurance. A blossoming writing career. A properly functioning vehicle. Opportunities to travel. Influence. And success… I should be happy, right? I should have no reason to complain or want for something more because my life is good as it is…or is it? What am I thinking? Is discontent a sin? I’m content, but my heart still desires more. I can ask God for anything, right? In my spirit I know God has more in store, although there’s no indication that the more I’ve been praying for is happening… at least not yet, anyway. Do other people have barrenness in secret places, Lord? This weekend the Lord placed a special word on my heart regarding barrenness. I immediately thought about the biblical story of Hannah. Hannah was a woman who was barren and wanted a child. But because her womb was closed she was unable to have children. To make matters worse, Hannah’s husband had another wife named Peninnah, who was able to bear children and ridiculed Hannah for being unable to do the same. 1 Samuel 1:6-7 reads, “And because the Lord had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat.” Despite her current condition, Hannah continued to pray and ask God for a child. I thought about how devastated and heartbroken she must have felt in that moment. The bible even says there was “bitterness of her soul” (1 Samuel 1:10) She had a husband who loved her and blessed her beyond what she asked for, but something was still missing. What a lot of people continually fail to realize is that sometimes, no matter how successful or put-together someone else’s life may appear to be, I guarantee that beneath the surface of that “someone else" are areas of that person’s life that are barren. This is why jealousy is never a good idea and why it’s poison. The people or person you may envy, even in the slightest, has painful and barren areas in their life that they suffer about privately, even while publicly successful. So before you get jealous, ask yourself if you’d be willing and prepared to suffer in the same ways and places that the person you’re envying has. I bet you’d have a quick change of heart. While reflecting on Hannah’s story I began thinking of different things I’ve prayed and wept to God about that didn’t seem to be happening in my own life. I pray and talk to God on a regular basis and last weekend, I literally cried out to Him regarding a specific area I’ve been praying to Him about for years. While praying, I stopped speaking at one point and just cried. And I knew He already knew what I was feeling. Hannah did something similar in 1 Samuel 1:13 which reads, “Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard.” She prayed with passion to the point that the priest who saw her thought she was drunk. Wild right? But I get it. I’ve prayed like that before. I know what it’s like to want something so badly that you can barely talk. Once I stopped crying and cleaned myself up during my time with the Lord last weekend, I decided to surrender. I would no longer present the same request to God. It was in His hands now. Afterwards, I thought about a past season with my old prayer group, when I’d prayed and cried out to Him about something I wanted and needed at the time. I was so broken that I fell out in the middle of the floor at my church and just cried. The women surrounding me all laid their hands on me and just prayed. Some of them knew what was going on and others didn’t, but after that moment, I left everything in God’s hands and before that same year ended, God granted my requests. If He did it before He can do it again. And then I thought about how Hannah’s story continued to unfold. 1 Samuel 1:17 reads that Eli the priest told Hannah, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.” God did answer Hannah’s prayer. She was blessed with a beautiful baby boy named Samuel. And she was also blessed with more children after Samuel. God opened her womb and her barrenness was no more. If you’re someone that has barren areas in your own life, I encourage you to lift those areas up to the Lord, and surrender those areas to Him. I too have areas of my life that are barren, yet something tells me God is about to open my womb. When He does, I can’t wait to share. Stay tuned.