Your Today Affects Your Tomorrow (1 Samuel 2:2)

There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God. (1 Samuel 2:2)

Hannah, who had been barren of children, went to Shiloh and sought The Lord.  Shortly afterwards, The Lord honored her request and she conceived a son.  After Samuel had been weaned, she again made the trip and presented Samuel to The Lord for his lifetime of service.  Hannah's heart rejoiced in The Lord and praised him with these words.

Many would state their desire to see The Lord do a great work in their lives so that they could see him in his magnificent splendor and praise him this same way.  However, in order to see God as Hannah did, we would need to act as Hannah.  Hannah declared after bearing Samuel the same that she did before even conceiving him.  When she prayed at the tabernacle, she already believed that there was none holy as The Lord because there was none besides him.  She also believed that there was no rock other than The Lord upon whom she could cast her burden and rest upon for strength and stability.  Experiencing success through trials and recognizing the greatness of God resulted from recognizing his greatness before the trial.  Our walk with The Lord and our vision of faith is like the water that primes the pump.  A pump that needs priming is similar to a fuel pump on an oil furnace.  If you have ever run out of fuel and then filled the tank, you found that the furnace's pump was unable to pump fuel from the tank until oil flowed directly into it.  Once you bled the fuel line, the pump was able to pump all the fuel needed.  In like manner, our present perspective of God by faith will affect how we endure through a trial and see him afterwards.

For Hannah, her heart possessed all the faith and understanding of The Lord necessary for her to make it through her trial.  When the trial ended, her knowledge expanded from what she already knew.  In order for us to endure trials and then exalt The Lord in this same manner, we must first experience him and his greatness.  Trials to do not usher us into an understanding of God and his greatness, but instead will develop our present relationship and understanding of him.