The Power of a Praying Woman

Passage: I Samuel 1:1-21

Her name was Monica.  She was born in northern Africa.  As a child she became a Christian.  At a young age she was given in marriage to an older pagan official.  He was a violent man, abusive and an adulterer.  She endured by faith, patience and much prayer.

She gave birth to three sons.  One of her sons followed in his father’s footsteps.  He was a real prodigal son.  He abandoned his mother’s faith and pursued paganism and hedonism.  He was notoriously wayward, living a life of immorality, sowing wild oats, fathering a child out of wedlock.  This of course deeply grieved Monica but she never gave up hope that God would bring good out of evil.  She prayed, fasted, and wept over her son’s wayward ways.

A pastor who knew of Monica’s weeping and prayers comforted her by saying, “It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish.”

When her son fled to a far city, she followed after him.  When he moved again, she kept on his trail.  Like any good mother, Monica did not let her child’s stubbornness, stupidity, or blatant sin obscure her love for him.  She wasn’t perfect, she had her own battles with alcoholism, but pressed through and had victory through prayer.

Monica died at the age of 56.  She died an exceedingly happy woman.  Her husband had surrendered his life to Christ a year before he died.  And her son, after over 30 years of praying surrendered his life to Christ only a few months before she died, but she lived to see it and die in peace and joy.

Some say her son was the third most influential person in Christianity after Jesus and Paul.  His name was Augustine.  His conversion was a great triumph of grace over sin and he became the great theologian of grace, his writings would be fuel for the reformation 1,000 years later.

Though he could run, he could never outrun his mother’s prayers.  Every child is vulnerable to the prayers of his mother, to the prayers of his parents and grandparents.

The stories of the power of a mother’s prayers and spiritual mother’s with no children of their own abound in Christian history.  The power of prayer is of course a testimony to the power of a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God.

Is Hannah’s story relevant today?  Is it helpful, instructive?  What might mothers in particular and all of us in general learn from Hannah’s prayer today?  Consider with me four things.