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

The big idea

Because God is El Roy, the God who sees, we can be still and trust Him even when life makes no sense.

No matter how alone or forgotten you feel, God sees you and hears your cries even when you're not calling out to Him. Through Hagar's story in Genesis 16, we learn that when circumstances don't change, God still has a plan—and He invites us to stop hiding and let Him see us fully.

Point 1 of 6

Pastor Daniel opens the series by explaining that names in this culture carried deep meaning, showing the very nature of who God is. El Roy, the name given in this story, means the God who sees, which becomes the anchor for the whole message.

Point 2 of 6

After ten years of waiting for the child God promised, Sarai devises a culturally accepted plan to have Abram sleep with her servant Hagar to produce an heir, and Abram agrees. Pastor Daniel draws the parallel to Eve convincing Adam in Eden, showing how forgetting who God is leads people to take matters into their own hands instead of staying still and trusting Him.

Point 3 of 6

After Sarai treats her harshly, Hagar runs toward Egypt, and the angel of the Lord—identified as a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus—finds her at a well. Pastor Daniel notes this is the first theophany since Eden, and it comes to a slave girl with no perceived value, paralleling Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.

Point 4 of 6

God's question isn't for His own information but to get Hagar—and us—to admit where we are and where we're headed. Pastor Daniel points out she was running back to Egypt, her comfortable place, and applies this to how we all have an 'Egypt' we reach for when life gets hard.

Point 5 of 6

Rather than rescuing her from the hard situation, God gives Hagar a promise of descendants and a son named Ishmael, meaning God hears. Pastor Daniel shares his own story of staying in a toxic church job because God gave him revelation rather than rescue, comparing scripture to a lamp that lights the next step rather than a floodlight into the whole future.

Point 6 of 6

After the encounter, Hagar responds by declaring, You are the God who sees me, and asks herself whether she has truly seen the One who sees her. Pastor Daniel highlights that every other name of God is self-revealed, but this one was given by an overlooked slave girl who realized she was never alone.

Take it into your week

Pastor Daniel's charge is to stop covering your face like a child playing hide-and-seek and let the God who sees you actually see you.