“If I Tell God” with the Kurt Carr Singers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkeuhyRgRY4

“That’s Just the Way the Father Is” with the Kurt Carr Singers and Troy Bright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Brq4t6QQDs

“My Soul Loves Jesus” a Kurt Carr Song sung by the Berklee College of Music Gospel Choir
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE5OyF0ap_g

“The Lord Strong and Mighty” with the Kurt Carr Singers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pefOg38EFQc

“Call Him Up” with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCXnjTnqynw

“I Can Go To God in Prayer” with Elder Ivory Nuckolls and the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEoX-Ch5J-g

“Marvelous” with Dwayne Lee and the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago Brotherhood Chorale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylW8uCx7QlU

God Is (My Everything) with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago Brotherhood Chorale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsdEqNSNGhQ

“Wait on the Lord” with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago Brotherhood Chorale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dGrnKco02o

“Agnus Dei” with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago Brotherhood Chorale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcZ7eTDd78E

“Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago Brotherhood Chorale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laYDyFU6yMs

“Praise Jehovah” with the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qsWoHlcxSM

4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, Philippians 4:4-7. (NRSV)

The Peace of Almighty God in Our Lives
1 Samuel 1-2:21

	Praise the Lord! This week we celebrate our relationship with God in 1 Samuel 1 – 2:21. God loves us and wants to give us peace for every one of our challenges. With this peace, we can move forward with our loving trust in God. What a wonderful life we will have to celebrate with God and others!
	I have not read but just finished skimming through Lisa M. Brown-Alexander’s Strong on the Outside, Dying on the Inside: A Black Woman’s Guide to Finding Freedom from Depression. When I noticed that Ms. Brown-Alexander used the story of Hannah to frame her book, I wondered if God had something in that Biblical story for me as well.
	I knew that I was in the right place when I read Hannah’s vow to God. 11 She made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a Nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’ 1 Samuel 1:11. We have been studying the names of God in Kadesha Carroll’s , Mrs. Live on Purpose’s, Institute, where the name of God, Jehovah Sabaoth, as the Lord of Hosts has intrigued me. 
	The Lord of Hosts is simply the Mighty God of great armies. But the study of the passages that calls God the Lord of Hosts shows that God is the Lord of so many different armies. God. Jehovah Sabaoth put the stars and planets in battle array to do His will. The Lord of hosts put armies of people together to accomplish His purposes. And Joel 2:15 even described God as the Lord of Hosts who put together the canker-worm and the palmer-worm, his great army to work God’s punishments. God is in command of everything in the universe to put it in order to do awesome things. (American Theological Society Bible Dictionary)
	So, in the first place that we see the name of God as the Lord of Hosts, Hannah called on God to look at her misery, remember her, and give her a male child. Hannah believed that the Lord of Hosts, who could activate anything in His creation, could orchestrate life in her life.
	Yet Hannah was consumed with so much misery in her prayers that she looked like she was drunk to the priest Eli. So Eli said to her, ‘How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away your wine.’ 1 Samuel 1:14.
	 There was such revulsion to public drunkenness, then and now, that it was natural for priest Eli to tell Hannah to put away her liquor. Our sense of propriety encourages us to put away uncomely problems that we have like drinking, smoking, and drug addictions. 
	We have become so conditioned in shame that we join others in warning ourselves not to share too much of our pains and addictions. They will turn us into spectacles. The exposure of our problems will drag down our environments and set everyone else around us on edge. We and others will simply see us as our problems that all of us will feel incapable of addressing or eliminating. 
	Hannah, though, was brave enough to say that her misbehavior came through her personal suffering. 15 …Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord. I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. 16 Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time, 1 Samuel 1:15-16.
	What would anybody in church; in our schools; at our homes; or in our workplaces say if we approached them and said, “I am a man deeply troubled,” or “I am a woman deeply troubled”?  “I look drunk because of all the vexation and anxiety that has been pouring out of my soul.” 
	The priest Eli spoke with God’s love and answered, ‘Go in Peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’ 1 Samuel 1:17. 
	This is the great news.  There is peace from God for everything we are going through. Nothing that we are going through is so horrible to put us beyond God’s peace. Eli may not have known what Hannah wanted. And if Eli had known Hannah wanted, Eli might not have believed in it for her. But Eli did believe in God’s Peace and that God could answer prayer. There is peace today for all of us from a prayer-answering God. 
	If there is peace for us, God bless us then! God bless us all. Hannah said, ‘Let your servant find favor in your sight.’ Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer, 1 Samuel 1:18.  
In peace, Hannah was able to eat again. Her face no longer looked sad. Hannah got up the next morning and worshipped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. Elkanah knew his wife Hannah,
And the Lord remembered her, 1 Samuel 1:19. 
May all of us see this: Peace made Hannah into a new woman. Peace made Hannah into a faithful woman who acted on her prayers without the outward proof that God was going to grant what she wanted. 1 Samuel told us that God remembered her long after she put her life back together. The text did not even tell us that she conceived when God remembered her. The scripture said that Hannah conceived in due time. In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, 1 Samuel 1:20.
In due time, we might be blessed. In due time, we might become whom we asked God to bless us into. In due time, we will see the move of God in our lives. 
In a way the due time of God is more wonderful than giving us what we want when we want it. If God gave us whatever we wanted when we wanted it, we would feel out of sorts until we got what we wanted.
But the work of Peace in our lives that strengthens our faith to trust God until our due times gives us not the awesomeness of what we want but the awesomeness of God first. 
After Hannah left her first-born son Samuel at the temple for God, Hannah prayed and celebrated over God: the One she had first and had left and had always. Hannah prayed and said, ‘My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in my victory. 2 There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God,’ 1 Samuel 1:1-2. 
Hannah had God and Hannah had peace. We first have God and we can always have peace. 
Hannah kept living in her peace even though she no longer had her only child. While Samuel ministered to God, Hannah, [h]is mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year, when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. 20 Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, ‘May the Lord repay’ you with children by this woman for the gift that she made to the Lord’; and then they would return to their home. 21 And the Lord took note of Hannah; she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord, 1 Samuel 2:19-21.
We might leave this Bible Study like Hannah not knowing when or how or if God will positively answer our prayers. But we can leave this Bible Study with peace from a God who is more than happy to see us pour out all our misery, vexation, and anxiety to Him. Our Father loves us and wants us to have His awesomeness and His peace more than anything. It may come in due time. But it comes in irrevocable greatness because of the faith and peace that comes to us now in this time. 
Bless the Lord, oh our souls. Bless God’s Marvelous Name!

Peace, faith, and blessings -- 

Tobias Pinckney at Powered to Witness University, 4/22/17

© 2017, Tobias Pinckney