Heart Over Hype: 1 Samuel 2:1-11

Use this curriculum to help you further engage with the sermon, the scriptures, and each other. Allow the Holy Spirit to bring things up to encourage and guide you so that you are always growing in your faith. If the Spirit leads you away from these questions and into conversation and prayer that encourages and points you to Jesus, go for it.

scripture

Read the following scriptures together: 1 Samuel 2:1-11.

overview

Hannah begins her prayer of praise with the declaration that “her horn has been lifted high,” and she ends with the promise that God will “exalt the horn of his anointed.” In the Hebrew imagination, “the horn” (literally from a ram or an ox) was the visible representation of strength, dignity, and salvation. God wants to be the one to “raise our horn for us,” which is his way of inviting us to stop trying to:

1.     Be our own source of strength.
2.     Dignify ourselves in the eyes of others.
3.     Save ourselves from harm.

question 1

Why do you think God insists on being the one to “raise our horns for us” rather than letting us “raise our horns for ourselves”?

discussion

In Hannah’s prayer, we see a clear theme emerge: rejecting pride. Verse 3 is a perfect example: “Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the Lord is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed.”

 Andrew shared four ways to recognize the presence of pride in our motives:

1.     Pride takes credit.
2.     Pride seeks attention.
3.     Pride exaggerates its importance.
4.     Pride assumes control and knowledge it does not possess.

question 2

Is there an area in your heart where the Lord is currently helping you let go of pride?

The central movement in Hannah’s prayer (verses 4-8) is all about God’s great reversal, where the last become first and the first become last. Right in the very middle of this section is verse 6: “The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.” In other words, there can be no resurrection without death. But as Andrew said on Saturday, we often “want resurrection without death.”

question 3

Is there an area of your life where you are resisting hardship? What could it look like instead to see this circumstance as God’s invitation to “die to yourself and take up your cross” in a new way?

weekly application

Paul writes in Philippians 2:5, that we ought to “let the same mind be in [us] that was in Christ Jesus” (NRSV). Take a moment to read Philippians 2:5-11 and ask the Spirit to give you the same mind that was in Christ Jesus when it came to rejecting pride and choosing the path of humility. Ask the Lord for wisdom in applying Christ’s mindset to your current season of life.