The Mind Body Project
The Mind Body Project
SoulFit: When We Try to Help God
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We explore how waiting moves to worry and then to control, using Sarah and Hagar’s story to show why shortcuts look smart but fracture trust. We lean into grace, name our modern shortcuts, and practice stillness as a better strategy than speed.
• the pull to control when timelines slip
• Sarah and Hagar as a cautionary case
• the hidden costs of shortcuts in relationships
• how worry fuels overwork and snap choices
• grace that keeps promises despite mistakes
• practical ways to pause, pray and delay
• Psalm 37:7 as a daily anchor
• questions to spot where we “help” God
Thank you all very much. Have a wonderful Friday, and I'll see everybody next week
Welcome to SoulFit. Thank you for so much for joining us today. If this is your first time joining us, I just welcome you here. Each week, I just share a little message, a little from some scripture, and really how do we make that applicable to our everyday life and put it into those things that are biblical and how do they fit into our everyday activities, our everyday hustle and bustle. So I just share that each week as we join our live call each week as I share that message with them. And thank you so much for joining us. And let's go ahead and join the live call. So just a little overview. Last week we talked about why waiting is hard. We oftentimes think maybe God forgot about us, maybe he wasn't paying attention, maybe he was dealing with somebody else because when we look around, everybody else is getting what we want. So he must be with them. You know, it must be a line, and our number hasn't been called yet. So we talked a little bit about why it's and we like to be in control. So we talked about why that makes it so challenging to wait. And so we're on week two of our series of waiting on God. And so this week we're gonna talk about learning to trust God's timing. We're gonna talk about a story from the Bible, as I mentioned, Sarah and Hagar, we're gonna talk a little bit about that and kind of the example that that shows us and sets forth. You know, what you know, what do we, if somebody's not doing something right, what do we typically want to do? It's maybe, maybe it's somebody in your house, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a coworker. If they're not doing something right, what do you want to do? Tell them that they're wrong. Tell them that they're wrong. You want to do it for them. Like, how many times when our kids don't do things right? Never mind, I'll do it myself. And it may not be our kids, it may be our significant other. Never mind, you can't do it, or you're not, or what if we when we ask them to do it, especially as someone we love, and they don't do it fast enough? Well, never mind, I'll do it myself. And do we usually do it with a good attitude? No, no, it's usually kind of with a little bit of resentment, a little bit of huff and puff, maybe an extra slam or two, just so they're aware that this is going on because they didn't get to it fast enough. And so we're gonna talk about really how that happened with Sarah and Hagar. We're gonna kind of talk about from Genesis 16 and 21. We're gonna talk about what happened there. So Sarah and Abraham, they're old. God tells Sarah she's gonna have a baby. And he doesn't say when, he says you're gonna have a baby. So, I mean, I think in this, she's in her 70s. Well, what if God told you you're gonna have a baby? Some of you might be thinking, even currently, there's no way. Think about when you're at 70 and she hasn't had any children. I mean, she's always wanted children. And God says, You're gonna have a baby, and she's waiting and waiting and waiting, and nothing happens. And so, what happens when we get tired of waiting? Like you said, we take matters into our own hands. So she hasn't been able to get pregnant, so how is she gonna do that? So she gets her servant Hagar, because in those times your servant was your property, so she got her servant Hagar to go in and sleep with Abraham. You can tell how this is gonna work out, not good because in those days, since you owned the servant, when the servant had a baby, you now own the baby. So Hagar goes in and sleeps with Abraham, she gets pregnant. Somebody needs to mute, somebody might need to mute, they're kind of scratchy if you're doing something. Perfect. Y'all are quick on that. I like that. Because this is too good a story to miss out on. So, of course, Hagar goes in and sleeps with Abraham. Hagar gets pregnant, and what do you how do you think Sarah begins to feel? A little upset, a little bit, and and guess who she gets mad at? Hagar. Yeah, but she also gets mad at Abraham. He's like, wait, you send her in here, she's your servant, and so Hagar gets pregnant, and they have some issues, and she's and and she's mad at Abraham, and Abraham goes, It's your servant, do what do whatever you want with her. And so she sends her away, and she has a baby, and it the baby's name is Ishmael. And guess what happens eventually to Sarah? She gets pregnant, just like God promised, but not quite in the timing that Sarah had hoped. But she does get pregnant and she gives birth to a son named Isaac. And I think by the time she gets pregnant, I believe she's in her 90s. I believe. And can you and so and then also talking about nursing a baby at 90s? Can you imagine how that all looks or how she feels? But is is what Sarah was trying to do is she's trying to get a shortcut, like we often do. And you look at that story and you go, I mean, you could see where that was going. How is that gonna work out? We know that, we can tell that, but in that, but we do the same thing as Sarah does. So, and we think, why would Sarah not wait? Because we look at that as Sarah taking control. Why would she take control? It wasn't because she was being rebellious, it was really because she was tired. She was tired of waiting. So she thought, I'm getting I'm I'm in my 70s. TikTok, tick-tock. Uh hey, God, if you hadn't noticed, every year I get older, I'm getting closer to 90. I'm getting pretty old. Even if I'm gonna live a long time, I'm still getting old. And so she's thinking, time's running out. And then then she begins to think, well, maybe I misunderstood God. Maybe, maybe I didn't get it. And so then so then she does what a lot of us do. Well, maybe I misunderstood God, so maybe it's up to me. And so that waiting turned into worry, and that worry turned into control, and and I think we can often see that pattern in our life. It's not because we're trying to be rebellious, I don't think. It's because we start to worry because we're waiting and we think those things is is time running out? Did I misunderstand something? Because, you know, it, you know, I didn't get a written note that said follow these steps. Well, maybe then it was up to me. Maybe I was supposed to do something. And so we start to worry, and then we take control, and that where the problem begins to happen. And so we're gonna look at some what are some side effects? Because when we try to take control and we don't trust God's timing, we always have side effects. There's always side effects to it. What did Sarah's decision cause? It caused her some real jealousy, some real problems, not only with Hagar, but also Abraham. Like, and and he was like, I was just doing what you told me to do. And then she started being resentful to Hagar, like now she, you know, and then also as the boys get older, Ishmael kind of kind of gives Isaac a hard time, and then she she sends her away, and and God talks to her and says, you know, he's gonna be, he's gonna be a wild cat. Ishmael's just gonna be wild. Everybody's gonna be after him. He's just, you know, like Isaac, you have this perfect son, and then Ishmael's the son that is like is just, I mean, you think if I had this child first, I'd never had another one. You know, and we've all, you know, we might have kids like that. That, you know, thank goodness they're the second one because they're so wild. But God said, Ishmael, I mean, he's gonna be, everybody's gonna be against him. But between Hagar, but Sarah had resentment towards Hagar and Abraham. So then it, you know, it started breaking up relationships, emotional pain. So at first, when Sarah came up with this genius idea to take control because God wasn't doing his thing, it looked like it really made sense. Like, oh, this looks good, this is a good idea. So shortcuts often look good at first, until we have to live with them. So think about this. So her decision to do this, to have Hagar go and sleep with Abraham, Hagar get pregnant, and not wait on God, that happened all these years ago. Guess what we still deal with today in this world? Muslims are descendants of Ishmael, Jews are descendants of Isaac, who are always in conflict in current times, Muslims and Jews. Do you think they're ever gonna sort it out? As much as they want to try to sort things out and make it better, it is God ordained that they will not until He says, and that is from that is from one decision that Sarah wanted to try to speed up the process because God wasn't paying attention. And so, and so not only did she have to live with the those consequences, Hagar had to live with those consequences, Abraham had to live with those. Guess who else gets to live with those? We do, everybody, everybody, everybody has to live because Hagar didn't have, or I mean, uh Sarah didn't have, she couldn't wait. And we think, why would she do that to the world? She didn't know that, she just wanted a baby because she didn't have one, and there's things in our lives that we are no different. There are things that we want so bad that we're tired of waiting, and so we do what Sarah did. We we we try to take control because we are worried because all of the reasons that Sarah had, we have. And then we go, well, if I'm gonna worry, I'm gonna take control of that. Because God sees everything. What do we see? We just see what we want. A lot of times we can't see what is a result of that. No way Sarah saw all the snowball that could have happened. Everything, the way she felt, the way she what God, God did, the world as it is now. She didn't see any of that. She didn't have the the magic ball, the world globe from beginning to end to see how that was going to play out. She didn't see that. Just like we don't. We don't have that. We sometimes want to take the shortcut. And in Proverbs uh 14, 12, it says, There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. So basically, that says that the shortcut may look right for the short term because she was gonna get a baby because she owned the baby according to law at that time. She would now own the baby. So that was it appeared right. I can do that, but in the end, it led to so much more than her being happy. And and was she happy from that? No, all these things happened, happened as a result of that. But the great thing is, is even in that mess, Isaac was blessed, born to Sarah and Abraham, and and God still shows grace because even in that mess, God saw Hagar, and he protected Ishmael that no harm would come to him. And guess what God did? God didn't say, Oh, Sarah, you didn't wait, so so sorry for you, you get no baby, no baby for you. You already messed up your chance. He didn't say that. God kept his promise to Sarah and gave her Isaac. And I think sometimes we think, well, I I rushed it, so now I can't receive that blessing. I can't receive the promise that was given to me. And that's the great thing that even when we make mistakes, God redeems that. But wisdom avoids them. So if we use wisdom in our waiting, we can avoid those. And so as we look at grace, we think it's not a permission to rush into things, it's more of an invitation to trust, that trust to things will get better. And when we think of learning to trust God's timing, what kind of if if we take try to take shortcuts, what could that, what could that result in? Maybe not in the world, but maybe in our relationships, maybe in future relationships, all those things that could snowball, how could that affect? Because we couldn't be patient and we couldn't wait. It doesn't make and and waiting is still challenging. It's still hard in the moment because what kind of short take cuts do we make? Maybe it's waiting, you know, wanting to get married so bad. And we settle in relationships. Like, I guess nothing better will ever come along. So I guess I'll just take this. Maybe it's rushing in a business decision and a job, like I guess nothing better will come along. So I guess I'll take this. Maybe it's compromising values. I'll take this shortcut. Maybe it's overworking instead of trusting. Because over the years I've I've noticed patterns in my life. And typically when I begin to worry about different things, I begin to do more work because I figure surely maybe I misheard, I'm kind of like Sarah. Maybe I misheard something, maybe I didn't understand. So maybe if I do some more work and work harder and focus on those things more, maybe that's what I'm supposed to do. Very rarely, when it comes, I want to, when I'm my worry, I want to take control. And so I'm not a very good waiter. I don't wait very well because I I so or trust is really what it is. And so I think if I'm doing something, then I'm moving. But really, it's uh avoiding that and not trusting, waiting on God's timing because we talked about last week. Sometimes when we're waiting is really when the work is happening, but we don't feel that's happening because we're doing nothing. But there's really things going on that we don't know about, and it's very challenging to just sit and do nothing and trust. But that's oftentimes how our current uh shortcuts look like. Let me just do this one thing, let me just take this off God's hands for a real quick second. I'll take control of this thing. And we look at it, you know, and the and the question is is where might we be trying to help God right now? Is there somewhere in your life that right now you you're you're trying to help God? Yes, I think we need to put in some work and do some things. He does ask us for that, but is there somewhere that we're trying to take over? We're kind of like Sarah and saying, you know, let me handle this. Does God need our help? No, he doesn't. He's got it. And he's gonna put the people and things in place that need to happen. And oftentimes it's in the waiting that we get to see those. I mean, again, it's easy to look in retrospect, look back and see how that works out. It's easy to look back and and look at Abraham and Sarah's story with Hagar and Isaac and Ishmael and look back at that and go, oh, I could see that playing out, no problem. But how many times do you see it playing out currently in your life? But you don't see the end. You just see the next step. And then looking back, you go, wow, I really messed that up because I didn't wait. If I had waited a little bit longer, the story would have been different. And so the challenge really is this week to look at that, say, where am I trying to help God right now? Where am I trying to kind of take it away from Him? And maybe pause before you make some decisions. Maybe it's praying before reacting, maybe it's delaying impulsive moves because sometimes when what what happens when we snap back at things, it's probably not the right response or the right action. And maybe it's just repeating this week that God's timing is better than mine. Abraham and Sarah's story was not put in the Bible by accident, it was to show, and as as God spoke to Hagar, he spoke to Sarah, be patient, and I'll give you what you want. To Hagar, I'll I'll make it right. Your son will be protected. God spoke to them and said, and and that's I mean an example to us to have faith and trust that but we think, oh, if he's gonna talk to them, he won't ever talk to me. He will. They were everyday people that still had problems with trust. And guess what? He still talked to them and he still loved them. And all we need is that faith of a mustard seed. Um and oftentimes we think, well, if it creeps in that I don't have faith, I'm I've lost it all. But that's not true. Just the size of a mustard seed is enough. And the last scripture I'll leave you with is 37 7. Be still before the Lord in Psalms 37, 7. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. I really like the first part. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. And that is so much more challenging to do than just to read it. And so that's my challenge to you. Can you be patient? Be still before the Lord, be patient, and ask what he might be having you wait for. And maybe be prayer that you're appreciative that you can wait and to give you strength in that. So I'll just close in prayer and then we can get on with our wonderful uh Friday. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for joining us, being a part of our conversation today, Lord, that that we may see the stories you put before us as examples of how we need to live out our life all those years ago, then it's still applicable today, that we apply that scripture to our life and that it may impact us. That you know, we know that your timing is the perfect timing, and give us that strength not to rush that time, Lord, just to be to sit in in silence and in patience and to lean on your trust, lean on you that that we trust you wholeheartedly. So I just pray for each one that's here today to go out and and be patient and wait because your plan is so much better than our plan. And Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Have a wonderful Friday, and I'll see everybody uh next week. Thank y'all. Thank you. Thanks. And thank you so much today for joining us on SoulFit. I look so forward to seeing you right here next time on SoulFit.