Names of God | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding

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Overview

69 min

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Jun 14, 2022 · 4 min read · 69 min listen

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

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Scripture in this message

Big Idea

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.

Key points

1
1Names of God reveal His character, and El Roy means the God who sees
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.
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2Sarai and Abram forgot God's promise and tried to help Him out, leading to sin
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.
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3Hagar, treated as worthless property, is the one God pursues in the wilderness
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.
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4God asks Hagar where she's going because running to what's comfortable isn't the answer
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.
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5God tells Hagar to go back and submit, giving her enough revelation to take the next step, not the whole plan
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.
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6Hagar names God El Roy, the only name in the series given to God by a human and received by Him
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.

Application

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.

Stop running to your Egypt
When life gets hard, notice the comfortable place, person, or vice you instinctively reach for, and recognize that going back to it won't be what you think it will be.
Be still and trust God's unseen plan
In seasons that don't make sense, resist the urge to help God out or take matters into your own hands; trust that He is working even when circumstances don't change.
Ask God for revelation, not just rescue
When God doesn't change your situation, pray for Him to show you what He's teaching you in it rather than only praying to be taken out of it.
Uncover your face before God
Like Hagar, stop hiding your mistakes and mess; bring them into the open before God this week and let Him begin a new work in you.

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“Today, we're gonna look at a story in Genesis 16 about a girl who goes through one of the darkest seasons of her life”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“It says in verse five, Then Sarai said to Abram, this is all your fault”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Day 1

There is something painfully familiar about Abram and Sarai's decision in Genesis 16. They had a real promise from God — and a real, aching gap between that promise and their present reality. So they did what most of us do: they made a plan. A reasonable one, even. But the plan they made on their own timetable and in their own strength unraveled quickly, producing jealousy, harshness, and suffering for everyone involved, including an innocent woman named Hagar. Pastor Daniel was honest about what this passage shows us — that when we stop waiting on God and start engineering our own outcomes, we rarely get what we were hoping for. We get something more complicated. The pain does not just go away; it multiplies and spreads to people around us. That is not meant to be a guilt trip. It is actually an invitation to self-awareness. Where are you currently tempted to force a resolution — to grab the wheel because the silence feels unbearable? Impatience in a hard season is deeply human. Abram and Sarai were people of faith, and they still stumbled here. The question is not whether we feel the pull to fix things ourselves. It is whether we will pause long enough to ask if God is inviting us to trust Him instead, even when trust feels impossibly slow.

For reflection

Where in your life right now are you most tempted to take matters into your own hands rather than wait on God — and what is driving that urgency?

Pray

Pray for the grace to recognize the specific places where you are acting out of impatience, and for a willingness to release them.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message takes us into one of the Bible's most surprising encounters — a forgotten slave girl in the wilderness, and the God who stops to find her. Before we dig in, what's one word that comes to mind when you hear the name El Roi — 'the God who sees'?

Discussion questions

1
In Genesis 16:1–6, Abram and Sarai come up with their own plan rather than waiting on God's promise. What does this part of the story reveal about what happens when people try to manage their circumstances on their own — and what does the fallout suggest about the cost of that impulse?
2
When the angel of the Lord finds Hagar in Genesis 16:7–8, the first thing He asks her is, 'Where have you come from, and where are you going?' — not a rebuke, just a question. What do you notice about the way God approaches someone who is running?
3
Pastor Daniel pointed out that God names Hagar's son Ishmael — 'God hears' — as a permanent reminder that He heard her cry even before she formally called out to Him. What does that tell us about how God relates to the grief or fear people carry quietly?
4
In Genesis 16:13, Hagar gives God a name — El Roi, the God who sees — and Pastor Daniel noted this is the only name for God in Scripture given by a human and accepted by Him, spoken by a slave girl in the wilderness. Why do you think that detail matters, and what does it say about who God chooses to reveal Himself to?
5
Pastor Daniel observed that when God does not rescue us out of a hard season, He often gives us just enough light for the next step rather than the whole picture. How might that reframe the way we think about seasons where nothing seems to be changing?
6
Pastor Daniel challenged us to stop hiding from God and to come to Him uncovered — real selves, real mess — and respond with 'Here I am.' What might it look like, practically, for a person or a community to move in that direction this week?

Pray together

Pray around the truth of El Roi — that God fully sees each person in the room, hears what hasn't even been spoken aloud, and is already at work in whatever wilderness someone is walking through right now.

Ask Rewind about this message

Scripture in this message

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

Big Idea

Key points

Application

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

7-day devotional

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Small-group discussion guide

Open

Discussion questions

Pray together

Go deeper

Weekday Warrior | Week 1

Distorted | Week 7 | Message

JESUS FOR MESSIAH | Week 4 | Sermon

GOD MAN KING | Week 1 | Sermon

Galatians | Week 4 | Bill Bush | Full Service

Citizens | Week 4 | Daniel Goulding

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

The big idea

Ask Rewind about this message

Scripture in this message

Big Idea

Key points

Application

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

7-day devotional

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Small-group discussion guide

Open

Discussion questions

Pray together

Go deeper

Weekday Warrior | Week 1

Distorted | Week 7 | Message

JESUS FOR MESSIAH | Week 4 | Sermon

GOD MAN KING | Week 1 | Sermon

Galatians | Week 4 | Bill Bush | Full Service

Citizens | Week 4 | Daniel Goulding