Names of God | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding | Full Service

There's one of those things that we don't talk about a lot inside of church, right? There's a lot of people talk about like the prosperity gospel. Hey, what do you get when you give your life to Jesus? It's like, is it a big house and a bank full of money and nice cars? It's like, man, I wish that's what it was.

But one of the greatest things, one of the most undervalued promises that those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, one of the most undervalued promises that we've been given is that you and I can have a heart and a soul that is at rest. That you can have peace when life is completely chaotic.

You can have a soul that is still when circumstances around you are saying you should freak out. Here's the big idea I want to spend the next few moments looking at. If you're taking notes, write this down. Because God sees, because God is El Roy, I

can be. Well, what can we be? Here's what the Psalmist says is kind of the goal for you and I when it comes to being. We are called to be a people who are still because we know that He is God.

When you look at almost any person in the Bible, and I would venture to guess the same is true about you and I, when we make the biggest mistakes in our life, we stop forgetting who God is and we begin to take matters into our own hands. And instead of just sitting and being still and trusting

that God is working even when I can't see it, we try to give God a hand. We try to help him out. We're going to see a story today in a few different people where that's exactly what they do. When they were called to just be still and know that, hey, even when you can't see it,

God sees something that you can't see. It's your job to be faithful, to be obedient, to be still and trust that He is God. When we forget that, it's where we get ourselves into some of the most dangerous waters out there. Genesis chapter 16.

Here's how the story starts in verse one. It says, Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had not been able to bear children for him, but she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, the Lord has prevented me from having children. Go and sleep with my servants.

Perhaps I can have children through her. And Abram agreed with Sarai's proposal. So Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, the Egyptian servant and gave her to Abram as a wife. This happened ten years after Abram had settled in the land of Canaan. So Abram had sexual relations with Hagar and she became pregnant.

But when Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress Sarai with contempt. Let me give you some context into the story, man. We just read a lot. There's like six different sermons in here that we don't have time to go into. But for those of you who are newer to faith, right? All of us who've in church, we've heard the story of Abram and Sarai who eventually God renames to Abraham

and Sarah. This is the person, the family, the couple that God is choosing. He has chosen to be the patriarch of the faith. Three world religions, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim all trace their lineage back to this couple, this man Abram. He said, through you, I'm going to birth a nation. He found him when he was 75

years old. God literally went to like the geriatric wing and said, hey, I'm gonna bring a birth announcement to this place. Right? Like, it's an it's an odd couple to choose, but God, that's what he's always doing. Right? God is in the business of doing the supernatural.

And he goes to a 75 year old man who has a 65 year old wife who is barren, and he says, through you, I'm going to birth a nation. Well, the story we read in Genesis 16 is some ten years past that promise and yet there still is no child.

And if we don't read the rest of Genesis, we could think that God told them something ten years ago, just forgot about him and said good luck, but that's not how the story of Genesis goes. Abram and Sarai have had multiple moments over these ten years where they've gone, maybe we misheard God.

Maybe God was talking to our neighbor when he said he's gonna birth a nation through us. There's six or seven times between then and now that God shows up to the two of them and reminds them, hey, I know you're really old. I know you don't get it. I know it makes no sense to you, but I promise you through

you, I'm going to birth a nation. He takes him outside the tent and he says, look up, you can't even count all the stars. You'll have more kids than that. But immediately they go, I don't know, maybe God's talking to somebody else. So Abram and Sarai come up with the craziest plan that we've ever seen.

Sarai is like, man, I've been going, I've been playing pickleball with the girls. There's some other old ladies that have been struggling with infertility as well. Right? They don't have IVF and all the crazy things that we have today to battle infertility. So what do they do? She said, well, a bunch of my friends,

they're using their maid servants, right? We're talking about really wealthy families. They have servants, they have slaves, they have all these people that live in their household that are genuine and just pieces of property to them. She said, a lot of my friends are just using their maid servants,

having her sleep with their husband. And then when the baby's born, we take it, that becomes our baby. Maybe just maybe that's what God wants us to do. So Sarai comes up with this whole plan after ten years of waiting,

after ten years of wondering, God, have you forgotten me? God, I thought you said this. I thought you had spoken that we were going to have children, yet it seems like nothing has come to pass. She goes, maybe I should help God out.

I know God has promised to give me a guy that's gonna fear God and lead me and go to church and love Jesus, but I'll find a guy at the bar. I'll get him saved. I'll help God out a little bit. Maybe God just needs

a little bit of help right here. Right? And so Sarai comes up with the craziest plan ever. She goes to her 75 year old husband. She goes, hey, Abram, check it out. I've got this 18 year old, good looking Egyptian servant. Do you wanna sleep with her? And he's like, is this a trick? Do

not answer. Right? I don't know. She's like, no. This is my plan. This is how I think God can do this. She packages it like it's this God thing. Right? Like, we can fulfill the promise that God has on our life through this. And he's like, most understated verse in the entire Bible says that Abram agreed with her plan.

Alright, babe. I'll take one for the team. Okay? If you say so, if this is your if this is your plan, I'll do it.

And the part that's crazy when you read this story, not once as Hagar brought in and asked, hey, Hagar, how do you feel? What do you think about this? Are you open to being a surrogate for us? She's just a piece of property.

She's a Jewish girl that they kind of picked up when they were in Egypt having made some other mistakes. She was just kind of baggage that was there. And they come up with this plan and Hagar gets pregnant. And the Bible doesn't tell us what happens, but somehow between Hagar and Sarai, a bunch of tension begins

to take place. And this is the danger of what happens when you and I, as followers of God, as God's people, we forget that we're called to live to a different standard.

For those of us who have put our faith in Jesus and we say, yes, this is who we are. This is the governing authority over our lives. We have to be really careful not to do things that are just culturally accepted that we know are not biblically accepted.

Culture is continuing to say these things are good that you and I, if we're honest, we know that we know that we know. Scripture hasn't changed. We know what we've been called to live to, but if we're not careful,

we will do what they do and they'll take something that's just culturally accepted and they'll go, maybe we should try this. And it leads to massive tension between Sarai and Hagar. And eventually it's gonna get so bad, we're gonna see in the next verse that Hagar is eventually gonna leave. It says in verse five,

Then Sarai said to Abram, this is all your fault. Classic, right? Classic lady problems, right? You come up with a plan. You come to me. I say yes to your dumb plan. And now it's my fault that it didn't work. Like, homie, this was you. You did this, right? I just said yes.

But Sarai is now blaming her husband for the plan that was hers. She says, this is all your fault. I put my servant into your arms, but now that she's pregnant, she treats me with contempt.

Now she's gonna go to the Lord. Right? After all this, she's like, I'm gonna pray about it. Okay? I'm gonna go to the Lord who will show me who's wrong. You or me. No possible chance that it's both of them. Right? Verse six, Abram replied, look, she's your servant. Deal with her as you see fit.

And Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away. I hope you see the parallels to the story in the Garden of Eden, where Eve has an idea because the enemy tricks her and says, maybe God's keeping something from you. Did God really say this?

And he convinces Eve to convince her husband of a plan that ultimately the responsibility for the failure of the family falls not on Eve or Sarai, but on Abram and Adam. Gentlemen, we have to remember, we are called to be the heads of the home. Two times Abram, the pioneer of the faith,

had an opportunity to tell his wife and to remind her, hey, I know it's hard. I know it's really scary right now wondering if God's gonna do this. And I know how badly you wanna have a kid. But what we can't do to accomplish what we want,

we can't do it in a way that is outside of the confines of which God has given us. Because what happens every time we take something that's supposed to be a blessing, but we do it outside of the order upon which God has created it, what was supposed to be a blessing will become a massive burden.

It won't be what you think it will be. But Abram doesn't do that. Two times he just tells his wife, whatever you want to do. She's just a slave girl. She means nothing to me. Mind you, this girl is carrying his child. She's pregnant with his son.

And he goes, she's just a servant to me. I don't care what you do with her. And the Bible doesn't tell us explicitly what happens, but it gets really bad. The tension between Sarai and Hagar gets bad enough that Hagar decides that she has to run.

And I don't know how bad it would have to be for an 18 year old girl who's far from home that knows nobody to decide I'm just going to run away. I would imagine it has to get really bad.

And this is really where the story for us takes a turn. These next few verses is one of the most incredible encounters you see almost anywhere in scripture because it comes to a girl, it happens with a girl that in the eyes of the world has absolutely no value. She's just a piece of property.

Abram and Sarai at this point haven't even referred to her by name. They just call her the servant, the slave girl. And the slave girl goes on the run and we see what God does to people who are on the run. The question that you and I have to ask, that Hagar is in the middle of asking and answering herself,

is what do we do when we end up in spots in seasons of life where life just makes no sense? For Hagar, she's like, I didn't even do this. This was all done to me. These were choices that somebody else made that affected my life yet here I am.

I know sitting in this room right now are a bunch of people who maybe because of choices that you've made, you're sitting in a season going, man, what do I do? Life just makes no sense. For some of you, it's not even decisions that you made.

It's decisions that somebody around you has made that has led you into a season of wondering, God, how can you be good? When all of this is happening? I've been praying for them to get better and they're not getting better. I've been praying for my job to change, yet it stays the same. Friends, what do you and I do

when we end up in spots where life makes no sense? I think the keys are in the story of an 18 year old slave girl that ran away and had a powerful encounter with the living God. Look what happens next. Verse seven.

It says, The angel of the Lord found Hagar besides a spring of water in the wilderness along the road to shore. And the angel said to her, Hagar, where have you come from and where are you going?

It says that as Hagar runs, she finds a well, she finds a place where she can get some water and she sits down and the angel of the Lord shows up and meets her there. Now for us to really understand who this angel of the Lord is, you have to

narrative. But as we read the rest of the Bible, we understand that this angel of the Lord is not just an angel. This is the angel of the Lord. It's the same angel that shows up to Moses in the burning bush. When Jacob is wrestling with this man all night and he realizes there's something to this, this is actually God.

The angel of the Lord, the rest of the Bible tells us this isn't just an angel. This is what's called a theophany. This is the pre incarnate Jesus. And this is hard for us to wrap our brains around, right? Because Jesus wasn't born and created

two thousand years ago when he was born to a lady named Mary. That's when Jesus took on human form in flesh like you and I. But Jesus has always been, he always will be. He's the second part of a triune God. And every now and then in the Old Testament, he would actually show up in human form to random people.

And we see what's called a Christophany, a theophany where Jesus actually shows up to a person before he's coming to the world to be the redemption for you and I. And the part that's crazy to me is this is the very first one we see in the entire Bible. God has not walked on the earth with humanity

since the Garden of Eden when he walked with Adam and Eve. Yet the very next time God shows up is to a slave girl named Hagar in the middle of the desert who to the world has no worth and has no value.

You know what's crazy is again, this is a parallel of a story in Luke chapter 15 of Jesus one day finding himself at a well with a Samaritan woman who has no value. She's at a well by herself because the rest of the village wouldn't go to the well with her. Do you realize that that's the first person that Jesus announces to the world? I'm not just a good teacher. I'm not just a moral

person. I'm the Messiah that the entire world has been waiting for. The nation of Israel, they've been waiting for me. I am that Messiah. The first person Jesus declares who he is, is to us a girl that has no worth and no value. And we see the same thing happen in Genesis 16. What is God trying to tell us?

God is saying is that the value system that you and I use to try to associate worth to people fails in comparison to how God sees worth and value. It doesn't matter who you are, what you've done, the family you come from. There is immeasurable value in who you are.

Even if you feel like most of your life, you've just been running from God.

Hagar is not Jewish. Hagar is not somebody who has been trying to get to God. She's just running and it says, the angel of the Lord finds her. It indicates that he was looking for her. And he finds her and he asked her a question and goes, Hagar, where did you come from? And more importantly, where are you going?

God doesn't ask questions because he's trying to get clarity. He doesn't actually need the details. He's trying to get you and I to admit where we are and where we're trying to go. The Bible tells us she's on the road to shore. She's going back to Egypt.

She doesn't know what's going to be in Egypt. She doesn't know what awaits her. She doesn't have a life there. But what does she do when life gets hard? She does the exact same thing you and I do. She reaches to the thing that's comfortable. All of us in this room, all of us have an Egypt in our life.

All of us have a place, a person, a thing, a vice, a struggle that when life gets really hard, we reach for because we think it's going to provide some temporary comfort and relief. But the truth is the reason Jesus asked her the question, where are you going?

Because he's trying to get her to see it's not gonna be what you thought it was gonna be. He says, Hagar, where'd you come from? The very next verse she says, I'm running from Sarai. It was really bad at Abram's house. I just have to get away.

You and I have to realize that one of the most dangerous places that we can find ourselves is when we're in the middle of running from a hard and difficult place that we're supposed to be sitting in. And I know that sounds weird because my knee jerk reaction when life gets uncomfortable is to leave as well.

But oftentimes, some of the greatest work that God will do in our lives is in the middle of the most difficult seasons. And sometimes God will change your season. He will change your circumstances. He will rescue you from them. But other times he's going do the exact same thing that he does to Hagar.

And this next verse is one of those verses that almost makes no sense to me because look at what Jesus says to Hagar in verse nine. He says, The angel of the Lord said to her,

'return to your mistress and submit to her authority.' It's like Jesus, you went all the way out of your way to come out of heaven, show up as a human, meet Hagar here and your great advice is just go back where you came from.

Like no clarity. What about Sarai? You're gonna do something with her? Like, hopefully showed up to her and talk to her before you're talking to me. Right? Like, gotta change some stuff if I'm willing to go back. But here's what God does. Here's what God's trying to tell her that I'm trying to tell us this morning.

When we find ourselves in seasons where what we see goes, no, no, no. I don't like this. This doesn't make sense. This is hard. This is difficult. This this is uneasy. I I don't see the plan here. We have to understand in that moment, we have an opportunity.

We have an opportunity to trust in what we see or to trust in the God who sees something we don't see. What God is telling Hagar is you have to learn to be still and understand that I have a plan.

Hagar, I have a plan. I'm working and I know you can't see it, but I'm working and I'm doing things in the unseen. I'm working and I'm moving things and I'm making things happen. I'm working all things out for your good. Abram taking you, making you have a baby with him. That was not good.

That was humans doing what humans do. That's called sin. But what God does is He takes the mistakes that we make and He writes it into a restorative plan that eventually at some point will make sense and it will be for your good. But there will be moments that you sit there and you go, God, I don't see what you see.

Friends, where faith is really built is when we find ourselves in seasons where we don't see what God sees. And despite how much we pray and ask and move and try, it seems like God doesn't change our circumstances. Part of the most difficult aspect of following God on this side of eternity

is God is writing a narrative that will play out over hundreds, if not thousands of years. And you and I are just a small little piece of the overarching plan.

Here's why he doesn't go to Hagar and tell her the entire plan. He does tell her, Hagar, I have a plan. I'm working. I'm doing things. You either have to trust what you see or trust that I have a plan. What's crazy is that we're going to see in a second. Hagar is pregnant with a son and his son's name is Ishmael.

And Ishmael, God's gonna tell her, through you I'm gonna birth a nation. And the Muslim faith all traces their lineage back through this one kid and through Hagar into Abram. And there's a really incredible story because we know through Abraham's

line is eventually going to come the savior of the world. Well, if Hagar had just left, if Hagar had just gone away and never had Ishmael and Ishmael was never raised in Abram's home, then eventually when Abram has a son named Isaac and Isaac has a son named Joseph, Joseph would eventually never have been created.

Because Joseph, if you know the story, his brothers try to kill him, but eventually they decide, you know what? We're gonna just sell him into slavery instead. They see a random group of people walking by. The people that were walking by that Joseph saw, that his brothers saw, those were descendants of Ishmael.

And because they were there, his brothers don't kill him and they sell him into slavery and they preserve the line that eventually Jesus comes from. The reason that I say any of that is because you and I have to understand the plan of God is so much bigger than anything that we could ever even begin to comprehend.

And I know oftentimes we go, God, just show us the whole picture. But the truth is it would freak us out. And we would hit the eject button and go, never mind, this is too much.

So what you and I have to do when life makes no sense is we have to realize that God has a plan. Do you really believe that God's plan for your life is better than your plan for your life?

Because if you do, then maybe, just maybe, when you're in difficult moments, in difficult seasons, you can go, God, I don't have to know it all, but I can trust that you do. But here's the hope. Here's the part that I love about who God is, He doesn't ask us to do it just completely blindly.

He doesn't just say it's going to stay dark and I'm not going to give you any glimpse of hope. He always gives us enough of a revelation to have something to hold on to. Sometimes God will rescue us from our situations, but other times something that I've had to learn over the years

is sometimes what God will do instead of rescuing you is she'll give you a powerful revelation that you could hold on to in the middle of the darkness. Look at what he says to Hagar, very next verse. He tells her why. He says, Hagar, go back and submit to your mistress. Understand that I have a plan. And then in verse 10, he tells her, I'm gonna give you more descendants than you can count. Okay? God gives her a little bit of the promise. He says, Hagar, I'm doing something in you. I'm working in you. There's going to be a ton of descendants that come from you. This is the first time we see in scripture God telling a woman that through her line

was going to come a nation. Only time we see it in scripture. There are so many firsts in the story of Genesis 16. It's like God was trying to tell us what you see is no values, what you see is worthless. I see immeasurable worth and value in. And he tells her something that man is difficult.

I was at a church on staff in San Diego for a number of years. It took me a couple years to realize it, but the guy that I was working for was a couple french fries short of a happy meal. And we had, and I mean it like he was like borderline crazy, just the most unhealthy,

toxic church culture I've ever been a part of. And he's like the worst of the worst church culture stories you have, I bet you I can trump it, right? Like this was just an unhealthy place.

And pretty quickly me and my wife were like, man, we have to get out of here. This is unhealthy. It's gotten to a place where it's deeply affecting us. It's affecting the people around us. And our prayer was just, God, you got to get us out of here. God, you have to get us out of here. And so we would have a random job offer that would get popped onto our plates and we'd go, Oh, awesome God. This is the lifeline that you were throwing us. I'd go through the interview process. Everything would go great. They're like, This is it. And then one job, there's like this random HR loophole. The last second the door was closed. And that happened like or three times. I was like, God, this doesn't make any sense to me.

This isn't healthy. This is bad for me. This is bad for my family. Yet it seems like at every turn, you close the doors to me leaving. And I will never forget how deeply and intimately God's voice was to me in that season.

And he began to speak to me and say, Daniel, there's something I'm doing in and through you in the middle of this. I'm going to use you to be a change agent in this culture. And it was crazy as I started to get a little bit of the promise of God. None of the circumstances changed.

He was still crazy. The toxic culture still existed. But all of a sudden I started to realize, okay, maybe God, you're doing something in me through this and you're gonna use me in the middle of this. And so when it doesn't make sense,

God, my prayer is would you give me more revelation? Would you show me more what it is that you're doing? And my prayer changed from God, would you get me out of this to God, would you teach me what you're trying to teach me while I'm in this?

My ultimate prayer, if I had a magic wand and could wave it, you would change all of this. But if that's not the plan right now, God, would you show me what you're trying to teach me? And here's the crazy part.

Because of us staying there, we became a change agent and that guy's gone. The church culture there is super healthy now. And I started to watch what God was doing and how he used us to transform that. And then the other thing that happened is I got a PhD in how to not run a church. And you can't learn those things in

a healthy church. And here's the truth of what I've learned over the years of following Jesus. I wish and man, I try to figure it out, but I can't hear God's voice as clearly

when everything is going well. I've got money in the bank. There's no stress happening. My kids are healthy. Life is good. It seems like God's voice becomes distant. But man, I'm telling you, when a season of change comes and difficult things are there,

I begin to hear the voice of God again in a way that I go, man, if this is the byproduct of difficult seasons, maybe I have this whole thing backwards. And there's something about difficult seasons that there's so much beauty in when you can really lean in and hear the still small whisper that exists inside of them.

I say all that to say, maybe just maybe,

the reason that you've been in the season you've been in for a while, the job that you're still at, even though your boss is kind of a jerk to you and it's not a healthy culture and it's not what you want to do long term, maybe just maybe you're in there because God is trying to do something in you. He's trying to reveal a new part of who he is to you. He's trying to work something out in you. If God is not rescuing you out of your situation,

maybe he's trying to give you a newer revelation. If you're sitting here going, man, don't even have any idea of what that revelation is. Here's the beautiful part.

The scriptures tell us that the bible is a lamp unto our feet. It is the very thing as we read it, as we spend time with God. He'll speak to you. He'll give you revelation. And again, I think it's a beautiful picture that it's a lamp unto our feet. If you hold a lamp, it basically gives you enough light to see the next step ahead of you. I wish you said that scripture was like a floodlight into your future. God gives you all the details, but He doesn't. He gives you enough so you have faith to take the next step.

And then once you're there, you'll be able to see the next step. And the part that's crazy is we look over scripture. Every hero of our faith, that's what they did. God came to Noah and said, Noah, I need you to build an ark. Why? It's gonna rain. He goes, what's rain? I'll show you. Faith,

friends, is the thing that rises up when we still sit in the tension and the uncertainty of the mystery. That's what faith is. And the hard part about it is faith rarely can be built in seasons that are easy. And God does something to Hagar in this moment that you'll see. It changes everything for her.

The story continues in verse 11. It says, The angel also said, you are now pregnant and you're gonna give birth to a son. You are to name him Ishmael, which means God hears for the Lord has heard your cry of distress.

Again, the first time that we see God give a baby a name, He tells her You're pregnant. You don't have to go have the ultrasound. No need to have a gender reveal party. It's a boy. No need to freak out about what you're gonna name him. Name him Ishmael.

And the name means God hears. For the rest of Hagar's life, as she looked to this boy and called him by her name, she would forever remember the God that heard her. And this is the part of the story that is so wild to me. What did God hear? Because it doesn't say that

Hagar ran to the well, she sat down and she said, Oh, you know, Abram and Sarai have been talking about God. I'm gonna cry out to this God and go, God, I don't know if you're real, but if you're there, need your help. Like that prayer is not recorded in scripture. But it says that God hears you, Hagar.

He hears her distress. He hears the cries of her heart. Friends, that's who our God is. 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, being willing to step out of heaven, become human in a moment, thousands of years before the actual moment of his incarnation

to show up at a well to tell her, Hagar, I know who you are. I made you. I have a plan for your life. David tells us in the book of Psalms that God, you see every tear I cry. He actually says that you catch all those tears in a bottle. Friends, there's nothing that you and I go through no matter how alone we feel, no matter how desperate

and by ourselves we think we are. The story of Hagar proves that God hears you. And more importantly than just hears you, He has a plan for you in the middle of your distress if you will just look to Him. He says, Hagar,

I hear you. In verse 12, it says, this son of yours this next verse is kind of a wild one. He says, the son of yours will be a wild man as untamed as a wild donkey. If I read this out of the King James version, for sure some of you would send in complaint cards. So he says, he will rise his fist against everyone

and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility among all his relatives. And again, this verse is kind of weird for you and I, but culturally what he is saying to Hagar

is this son that you're about to have. He will be like a donkey that will never be able to be tamed. What is he saying to her? He says up until this point, your entire family generational cycle has been defined by slavery.

But this son, the son of promise, the son that is going to be the breaker of the chains in your family,

he will be one that will never be able to be tamed. He will no longer be stuck in the cycle that you've been stuck in of slavery. And if you know the story of Ishmael, it's true. The story and the bondage that was on their family is broken with this one moment and this one encounter with God. Friends, some of the reasons that you and I feel so much tension is there's some of what you're trying to do that is literally breaking generational cycles that have been a part of your family story for as many generations as you can go back.

It's something my wife and I talk about often. It's no wonder to us that sometimes life gets so tense, it's because we are intentionally trying to start a new story with our kids. We're trying to break the narrative of the generational cycles that have been a part of both of our families for as long as we can see.

But don't think it'll be easy to do, to write a new story, to create something brand new. It's not something that can just be done without tension. But he tells Hagar, I'm giving you a son and it's a son of promise. Your best days are still ahead of you. And it's this encounter. It's this whole moment where Hagar sees

the true nature of God and then she's going to respond. And this is where we're going to get the name Elroy. Look at Hagar's response

to God. It says in verse 13, thereafter Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord who had spoken to her. She said, you are the God who sees me, El Roy. And she also said, have I truly seen the one who sees me? Guys, this is the only name of God that we will see over this series that a human gives God and God receives.

Every other name of God is one that God tells us his name. This is who I am. Yet this one, this slave girl out in the middle of the wilderness who had no words and had no value has this powerful encounter with God and she realizes, God, you see me.

I thought I was by myself. And she says, you are the God who sees. You are Elroy. And now it is one of the most popular names of God, yet it was given to him by a slave girl in the middle of the wilderness. Why does this matter to you and I at all? Because the story of Hagar is a really kind of bizarre story.

She doesn't ask God a single question. She doesn't ask for more details. What happens is she in a moment has a powerful encounter with God and she realizes, You've always known me. All those things I thought I was going through by myself, God, you saw me, you were there. You were with me.

And although I felt like I was alone, God, were protecting me the whole time. She says, you are the God who sees me. And then she asks a question at the end that she's not asking God, she's asking herself.

And this friends is where I think this whole thing really is where the rubber meets the road for us. All of this is awesome. Come to church, hear about the God who sees you. You're not alone, you're not doing life by yourself. What do you do when life makes no sense? Trust that God has a plan. Trust that he got promises that are going to come to pass in your life. All of that is awesome. You can walk out of here encouraged,

but all of it will not actually

the we're so

going the one who sees me? Friends, And this whole thing comes down to a simple question for you. God maybe brought you here this morning,

has been speaking to you this whole time to let you know you're not alone, but he sees you. And I know life is hard and your marriage is a train wreck right now, but God is working. He's doing something that you can't see. Trust Him. He sees you. But all of this should elicit a response from us to go maybe just maybe

I can actually see God for who he is. I wanna put this picture back up of my daughter playing hide and go seek. I was talking about the story this week and then my wife showed me this picture.

And the part that was interesting, right? My daughter's doing that thing that little kids do when they play hide and go seek where they're like, I can't see you, therefore you can't see me. And she would sit there like this, right? With her flashlight on telling my wife where she was, but she would be like this. I'm like, what are you doing? Right?

But every now and then, even though I was sitting right here, she would still get nervous and think that I had left. And so she would go like this. She would look, make sure that I was there and then she'd go back to hiding again.

She would do it periodically and and remind herself like, you're still there. It's been a little bit. It's been kinda quiet. I haven't heard him say anything. I haven't seen him move. Okay. He's still there. And it give her enough confidence. Friends, I think this is a picture of so many of us.

Because of the things that have happened to us, because of the things that we've done, because of the families we've come from, because of the issues that we've had for so long, the picture of so many of us before God is just like this. And we go, God, I can't see you.

Doesn't matter how much you talk about how how much you love me. 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. My friends, the God of the universe is here because he loves you. 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. Because you see me, I'm willing to allow you to see me uncover.

My hope, my prayer, my challenge to all of us sitting here this morning is that you would, it's the first time ever or maybe just the first time in a while, that you would have a moment and you would just do what Hagar does in response

to realizing you're in the presence of the God who sees you, who knows you, who sees a way for you, that your response would be, God, here I am. I'm not hiding. Here's all my mistakes. Here's all my issues. Would you begin to do a new work in me? She knew that the presence of God changed everything for her.

My question for us is do we realize that changes everything for us as well? The band is gonna lead us in a song. And I believe that these next few moments is where we can stand together collectively and go, let's take our hands down. Let's remember that as we become people who trust that God sees things that we don't see,

that we can rest in his presence, have a face to face encounter with him and allow him to begin to do the supernatural in our lives. So father, God, I ask, Lord, for every single person that's here this morning. God, I pray that what we would do is come before you with faces that are uncovered, that are unveiled.

That God, there's nothing we have to hide from you because even as we try to hide it, God, the truth is is you already see it. God, all of our mistakes, all of the things we do in the secret that nobody else knows about, God, you see. And you're not mad at us. You're not here to condemn us.

You're here to remind us to bring those things to me. Allow me to begin to do a new work in you. God, right now, would we just spend a few moments in your presence understanding that like Moses, God, that this is holy ground. And God, in your presence, everything changes. So God, would you do a mighty work in our heart?

Would you allow us to show you who we really are? Because the truth is, you are the God who sees. It is in the mighty name of Jesus. Everybody sin. Amen.

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