Penina

And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb. And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the LORD, so she provoked her; therefore she wept, and did not eat. (1Samuel 1: 6, 7)

Today I want us to look at Penina with new eyes.

Do you realise that she lengthened the waiting for her cowife through her provocation?

You see, she weakened Hannah spiritually to the point that her body refused to function properly. And you will allow me to give us a verse that demonstrates that.

And she said, Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight. So the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad. (1Samuel 1:18)

Before then, this lady had been unable to eat, especially after coming from the spiritual retreats.

But we see her receiving a prophetic word (though Eli may not have thought of it that way).

This gives her peace, releasing her body to function properly. No wonder she is able to conceive immediately.

Spiritual oppression has immediate physical and biological consequences.

We are created in such a way that should one part of our body malfunction, the rest of the body rallies all its resources to deal with that.

That is why you may go to sleep when you have a toothache, though teeth have nothing to do with work apart from eating. Or you have a headache when your stomach aches. Or experience extreme fatigue when you are anxious.

Pain in one part of the body is spread to every part of the body so that the body can then look for the solution for that discomfort.

Or have you not seen how a person lacking one sense has more acute sensitivity on the remaining senses. Someone who can’t see has an acute sense of hearing and touch. Someone who can’t walk has greater strength on their hands and so on.

The spiritual dimension is the controller of the whole body.

This means that touching on the spiritual will weaken the other functions of the body even worse than if one part of the body was removed.

And this because the body rallies to deal with something it has no capacity of dealing with since it is outside its realm.

This directly affects the functions of the body. The more the harassment the worse it affects.

Immunity will go down and even the production of the hormones for the normal functions of the body goes berserk since it has been messed with.

That is why it becomes increasingly difficult for a couple that has been unable to get a child for a few years conceive since the pressure (call it spiritual, though interpreted as cultural) increases with time.

That is why they fail though doctors may consistently find nothing functionally or biologically wrong.

That craving for a child increases the spiritual pressure on them to the point that their very normal and healthy functions are unable to cope.

That is what Penina was doing to Hannah.

The positive thing is that she took all that pressure to the right place, God’s hands. And she was able to get God’s word that released it.

But this post is not about Hannah, or even Penina. I have brought them to create a context for what I want to share.

Have you realised that most people in those highly demanding and paying professions struggle to get even a single child, especially if they got into those positions very early?

And why do people with all the money also have problems getting children to the point of buying them? Why do many successful people lack an heir?

Incidentally, why is that casual teenage fling so effective in granting that ‘unwanted’ conception?

The teenager has basically no care in the world since they are their parents’ responsibility.

This means that their bodies operate optimally.

Bring two such together, even accidentally, and the results are excellent.

Twenty years down the line and the same people will go to fertility clinics and still fail to conceive yet they have not gone through any health issues on their upward trajectory.

What has happened?

They have undergone some spiritual transformation of sorts because they are now in charge of their lives.

Beyond that, they have had some spiritual battering, probably through all the expectation their position and prosperity are always attracting.

Instead of a child being a consequence of a healthy life, it becomes the ultimate goal, the highest target, in their success. Remember Rachael asking Jacob to give her a child or she dies?

They have started looking for a competitive edge in their success, a child to carry their name.

This is compounded by the demand of the same from the community around them, and especially the culture they have grown in.

That pressure castrates the man and renders the woman infertile.

I think it is important to say something else to demonstrate what I am saying.

Ever realised that in the even that such a high-profile couple separate, many times the man will impregnate a girl somewhere and the woman will be impregnated somewhere else?

Infertility is therefore not the issue we are dealing with here. Both are as healthy as a mule.

But the spiritual atmosphere around them is so stifling that their bodies simply cannot perform.

Take them out of that pressure and their bodies become normal once again.

It is important to remind you that I am also not writing about successful and rich couples, just gleaning some lessons from them.

For they shall eat, and not have enough: they shall commit whoredom, and shall not increase: because they have left off to take heed to the LORD. (Hosea 4:10)

In the past, we associated sexual activity with pregnancy.

In fact, that was even scarier than STDs. That was the only thing parents scared their children with not so long ago.

Nowadays, even with all the sexual activity around, it is rare to see a single pregnant girl yet they do not even use ‘protection’. And I am writing this from a village.

Schools are closing (some have closed already) because there are no children to attend them, even schools that had hundreds of pupils in their hey days.

What has happened? Why are people who are so sexually active, almost to the point of obsession, not able to produce children?

Looking at social media you will notice immediately that sex stopped being a taboo topic. It is more of a trending topic than anything else.

Young people are obsessed with sex. Heartbreaks are the only crisis you will notice.

But there are almost nil conceptions.

And nobody wants to associate this with the spiritual.

I do not want to descend into the banal since that is not what I want us to learn.

Spiritual disconnection brings about unproductivity in other dimensions.

Spiritual pressure emasculates all other fields.

They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel: But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul. (Psalm 106: 13 - 15)

Leanness may be equated with someone eating a fat-loaded food yet never gaining any weight or getting fat. Or someone always exercising but never getting fit or getting anywhere near his targets.

You may also realise that it is God who is sending this leanness. And He does it because His people have chosen to forget Him and insist on having their way.

He is therefore sending leanness to show man that any pursuit outside God’s revelation and against His standards is not only futile but counterproductive.

Pursuing any agenda but the one God has set up for us will never bring about positive and rewarding fruit, simply because it has locked God outside.

The lack of fruit is therefore the outcome of life lived outside God’s agenda, or anything like that.

God is therefore not welcome to manifest His fulness, simply because it will be credited to something or somebody other that Himself, yet we know Him as a jealous God.

You see, even the testimonies coming from such success will heavily lean on everything else but God, though He might be mentioned to avoid Him being outrightly offended.

I have bailed out of book projects when that happened, simply because I couldn’t be able to bridge God’s glory and self-made men.

God is all or He is nothing. Do not mention Him if you are not ready to give Him all the honours, even the ones that you think belong to you. Or what does John 3:30 say?

Back to conceptions.

What happens when God’s order is reversed?

For decades, we have been immersed in the empowering of the girl child.

Sadly (or intentionally), we have forgotten that we also have the boy child. Some communities have gone so far as unashamedly saying that the girl is a better investment for a parent than a boy.

The result of that has been the complete neglect of the boy child in many communities.

The girls are now way up in the clouds and the boys are completely finished.

Nobody cares whether they are educated or not. Nobody cares what they do with their lives. Nobody cares whether or even when they drown in drugs or crime. Nobody cares whether they are responsible or not. Nobody cares whether they mature or not.

They might die for all they care.

Yet these high-flying girls will need husbands.

This will mean that for some of them those village bums will be their husbands, probably those from good (meaning wealthy) families. Others will decide to get married to whoever to tick the community and culture box.

Now, who do you think will be the husband and who will be the wife in this scenario?

Who will submit to the other?

That was the purpose of this post.

The spiritual tension in that household will be so thick as can be cut with the right knife.

And that is why schools are unable to get pupils.

It is Penina pressuring Hannah.

But it is worse because our Hannah does not even realise there is a problem because she has refused to seek God’s solution to her infertility, especially because she has a man to blame, the man society chose to raise contrary to God’s revelation.

The resulting leanness is the product of our overturning and reversing God’s order

And this because nature itself will rebel at such an affront. Even our bodies will rebel.

Just like a fish cannot live on land and a bird cannot live in water, people cannot operate contrary to the way they were created to function.

No wonder there is so much infidelity as people outside God’s order struggle to compensate for that leanness using their own designs.

But then it will make it far worse. It is like taking salt to deal with thirst.

And it will continue becoming increasingly worse until like Hannah we take it where it matters by seeking God’s take on the whole stinking game.

Then, like Hannah we will be able to hear what God has to say about our situation.

But He has already spoken through His word.

But are we willing to surrender our rebellion? Are we willing to repent that upside down structure we have nurtured and bred?

Because that is the only thing that has the solution we so desperately need.

We must agree with God to be able to access His fullness and wholeness. We must agree with God to access the peace that releases our bodies to function as He created them to function.

His word is the primary key to all that.

Our hunger and thirst for it is the easiest way to access what God has released to us.

It is the sure way to let us know when we are drifting from His ways.

In closing let me say that the leanness God releases to us is actually allowing us to reap what our self-seeking and unspiritual pursuits produce.

It is the pressure we create when we remove ourselves from His dictates and refuse to surrender to His Lordship.