Key points
- 1
1Taking matters into our own hands — instead of being still and trusting God — leads to greater pain and complication, as Abram and Sarai's plan with Hagar demonstrates.
Paraphrase
Because God sees, because God is El Roy, I can be still and know that He is God.
- 2
2God pursues people who are running from Him, showing up to Hagar — a slave girl the world deemed worthless — as the first theophany recorded after the Garden of Eden.
“We have an opportunity to trust in what we see or to trust in the God who sees something we don't see”
- 3
3When God does not rescue us from difficult seasons, He often gives us a powerful revelation to hold on to — enough light for the next step, not the whole picture.
A story from life
Daniel's years on staff at a church in San Diego with a toxic culture, repeated closed doors, and learning to pray for revelation rather than rescue
- 4
4God hears the cries of our hearts even when we are not formally calling out to Him, and He names Hagar's son Ishmael — 'God hears' — to remind her of that truth for the rest of her life.
“Faith, friends, is the thing that rises up when we still sit in the tension and the uncertainty of the mystery”
- 5
5God's plan is far larger than any individual circumstance; staying faithful in a difficult season can break generational cycles and preserve purposes that stretch across hundreds of years.
“When you are running, when you aren't even looking for Him, when you're not calling out to Him, He is in desperate pursuit of you leveraging everything that He has”
- 6
6El Roi — the God who sees — is the only name of God in Scripture given to Him by a human and received by Him, spoken by a slave girl in the wilderness.
Illustration
A photograph of the preacher's daughter covering her eyes during hide-and-seek, illustrating how many people hide their face from God even though He already sees them
- 7
7The life we really want comes when we stop hiding from God and allow Him to see us fully — uncovered, with all our mess and mistakes — and respond to His presence with 'Here I am.'
“I don't have the courage to pull my hands down from my face and to look at you face to face and to let you see me for who I really am in all my mess, in all my mistakes”
“The irony about entering into the life that we really want on this side of heaven is it comes on the other side of getting really uncomfortable and going all in and going, God, here I am”
Application
Pastor Daniel's challenge is personal and direct: stop hiding from God. Many of us, because of our past mistakes, family backgrounds, or long seasons of pain, approach God with our hands over our faces — unable or unwilling to let Him truly see us. But Hagar's story proves that God already sees us completely, hears the cries we don't even voice aloud, and is actively working a plan that is bigger than anything we can comprehend. The invitation is to do what Hagar did — have an honest, uncovered encounter with God and respond, 'Here I am.' That means bringing our real selves to Him in prayer, opening His Word to receive the lamp-light of the next step, and trusting that if He is not rescuing us from our current season, He is likely doing something in us through it that will matter for generations to come.
