Beloved: grace, mercy and peace be yours forevermore from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Welcome to another week of the month of November 2023. My prayer is that God will vindicate you wherever you are being cheated or unjustly treated and also secure for you every good thing that is yours that others are keeping from you. Amen.
One of the things we learn from the bible story of Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant, is that there is no one God does not care about. And because He cares about every one of us in the world, He is always watching our lives to see what is going on there and to make everything work together for our good. But we need to be conscious of this, so that we will put our trust in Him totally and not give ourselves to any form of wickedness that will hinder the fulfilment of His good purpose in our lives.
As the story Hagar goes, her mistress, Sarah, at some point had taken her to her husband, Abraham, so that he would sleep with her. Why? They were desperate about having a child of their own. And even though God had promised to give them one, Sarah felt that time was running out for her. So, she brought Hagar into the situation, thinking that any child she bore for her husband would be adopted as her own child. (Cf. Gen 16:1-3)
Now everything seemed to be going well for all of them until Hagar became pregnant. When she realized that she had become pregnant, she began to despise Sarah, her mistress. That means pride took over her life and she stopped showing her mistress proper respect. Why? She probably thought it was her turn to take over and become the mistress of the house.
Unfortunately for her, Abraham had no intention of allowing any spoilt girl to ruin his marriage, even if that spoilt girl was carrying his child. So, when Sarah reported Hagar to him, he told her to deal with her as she thought best. And she dealt with her so harshly that she ran away from the house. But who was to blame more for what happened to her? She was to blame more. She was the one that abused the privilege she was given to share her mistress’ husband with her. She was the source of her own misery. (Cf. Gen 16:4-6)
Nevertheless, while she was running away, the Lord found her and spoke comforting words to her. Look at some of the things said about this in the bible: “The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.”” (Gen 16:7-10NIV)
Can you see that even though Hagar knew where she was coming from at that time, she did not know where she was going in particular? She just felt that she needed to run away from her mistress. But the Lord told her that running away from her mistress was not the solution to her problem. The solution to her problem was for her to get rid of the pride in her and go back and submit to her mistress. Why? If she did not get rid of the pride in her, she would not stop doing things that would make those who loved her drive her away from them.
Then, to let her know that God cared about her, even though she was a slave, He told her that He would multiply her descendants on the face earth, so much so that no one would be able to count them. Not only that, God went on to tell her some secrets about the future of the son that she was going to have. That was so that she would not allow her position as a slave at that time to make her lose hope. (Cf. Gen 16:12)
Now did Hagar do as she was instructed by the Lord or not? She did! Not only that, she named the well where God had appeared to her ‘Beer Lahai Roi’, which means ‘the well of the Living One who sees me’. And do you know that this same Living One sees you too, regardless of how bad things may seem for you and regardless of what brought you to where you are? Not only does He see you, He also has solutions to whatever challenges you are facing. He knows where you should and the secrets of your future. You just need to listen to what He has to say to you and be ready to act on it. Then every form of hopelessness will leave you too and you will be on your way to fully experiencing His good purpose for your life.
Have a great week.
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