Powerlessness
Southeast Christian Church For Hannah, the cultural weight of her infertility would have been significantly heavy. In this time and culture, a woman's primary contribution was thought to be having children and being a mother. And so, their society and culture didn't have a lot of compassion for a woman who couldn't contribute in that way. People would often make that woman feel like it was their fault, that they had done something wrong and this is somehow God's punishment to them, despite that belief being completely non-biblical. In fact, what you see if you study infertility in Scripture, you see that women who battled infertility were often very righteous women. Abraham's wife, Sarah, Isaac's wife, Rebecca, and Jacob's wife, Rachel, and Elizabeth, who would become the mother of John the Baptist all struggled with infertility during their lives.
But discouragement often tries to convince you that God is against you. In other words, it's one thing to go through a struggle, but if you begin to think it's your fault or it's something you did, and because of that, God is punishing you, it becomes very different. Maybe it's a financial struggle, health issue, or it's a child that just can't seem to get on the right track. When you start to tell yourself that this is God's punishment in life then that discouragement starts to feel very overwhelming. But God isn’t against you. He's for you.
DISCUSSION/REFLECTION QUESTION: When have you felt that your struggle or hardship was because of God punishing you? Can you see that struggle differently in hindsight?
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