SoulFit: Hagar: Seen in the Wilderness

We turn to Hagar’s side of the story and name the quiet pain of feeling used, rejected, and forgotten. We hold onto the truth that God finds us in the wilderness, opens our eyes to provision, and reminds us that we still matter. 

• revisiting Sarah’s impatience and how Hagar gets pulled into it 
• defining hard seasons that are quiet and isolating 
• tracing Hagar’s first wilderness moment and how God finds her 
• exploring El Roi as “the God who sees me” 
• wrestling with the pain of obeying God and ending up in the wilderness again 
• learning to “open your eyes” when provision is already present 
• choosing hope when we feel unseen in relationships, waiting, and effort 

I’ll see everybody next week. 

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome To SoulFit

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to SoulFit. Thank you so much for joining us today. If this is your first time, welcome to SoulFit. Each week we just take some scripture out of the Bible and talk about, as we join our live call, how we apply that to our everyday life. So let's join our live call. We talked about when we talked about waiting and waiting on God. We talked, we had a whole session, whole talk on Sarah and Sarah's impatience. And we mentioned Hagar that that that her impatience was wanting a baby. And so as the story goes, that she was impatient and she got tired of waiting. And so she told Abraham, go, you can have my servant Hagar sleep with her and she'll have a baby. So she did have a baby, and we just kind of talked, really focused more on uh Sarah and how that really is about waiting, need to be in control. But today, because we know every story has two sides, and maybe there's a third side too, but we're gonna talk about we're gonna talk about Hagar and her side of the story. And because as we start this series of She Matters, we're gonna see how Hagar really matters when there's times that she didn't think she did. And you know, some of our we talk a lot about seasons because why do we talk about seasons? Because seasons, just like throughout the year. We have winter, we have fall, we have spring, we have summer, and you do different things in those. In the wintertime, you prepare, in the spring you plant, in the fall you harvest. So there's different seasons that do different things. And sometimes we have seasons that are really hard, but they're not always loud. They're not always really noisy. They're just sometimes hard seasons that it's not, there's not some big commotion about. It's just kind of a hard season. They're kind of quiet. And sometimes we can feel invisible during that season, not invisible from people, but sometimes invisible from God. We might sometimes feel like we're kind of overlooked, that we're not, you know, is anybody paying attention to me? Does God know I'm here? And then sometimes we think, you know, is this, you know, why am I having to go through this when it was somebody else's thing? And now I'm having to go through it. And I think sometimes we go through those things. And we're gonna talk about Hagar. She went through exactly that. Hagar felt she felt used. I mean, because her master, Sarah, told her husband to go sleep with his her servant to get her pregnant. She does. And we're gonna talk about how she gets chased off. Then she comes back, she gets chased off again. So she feels used. How would I mean I think at times we've all kind of felt that way? She felt very rejected, she felt very forgotten. She was doing, I mean, was she doing anything wrong? Her servant told her to, her, or her master told her to. I mean, it wasn't like she was sneaking around. That was what was told to do. And so she felt used, she felt rejected, she felt forgotten. Yet she's the first person in scripture to give God a name. And she felt all of these things, and yet she still had a big purpose and she still mattered. And so, you know, initially, Sarah gets kind of all bent out of shape. Abraham did exactly what she told him to do, did exactly what he was told to do by Sarah. And then Sarah starts, then Hagarby gets gets pregnant, and Sarah starts to get a little jealous. I mean, could we blame her? At first, we're like, I can't even believe that she told Abraham to go sleep with his servant. And then we can kind of understand, oh, now she's getting jealous and upset. Okay, we kind of can get all that. As humans, we kind of understand that. And so she sends her off because now she's kind of jealous that she's pregnant and Sarah has not conceived. So why she sends her out to into the wilderness. And so why she's out in the wilderness, Genesis 16, 7 through 8 tells us the angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the di in the desert. It was a spring that was beside the road to Shur. And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarah, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I'm running away from my mistress Sarah, she answered. The angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that will be too numerous to count. So did she find God? Or what happened? God found her. To the angel of the Lord, found Hagar near a spring. And what does what does sometimes our wilderness look like? What it might look kind of like what Hagar did. She felt very isolated. He he found her near a spring in the desert. So she was probably exhausted. And I'm sure we have felt exhausted. He found her rejected because he said, you know, what are you doing? And she said, I I ran away from my mistress. I feel rejected. And and of course, she's again by a spring because, again, she feels I have to survive, I have to have a drink. And our wilderness that we walk through as we explain all of those things may look like our wilderness that we're walking through might be in our relationship, in a in a marriage. It might be in motherhood. It might be in loneliness. It might be in some unanswered prayers that we have. It may be in body image. And so when she went out in the wilderness, it doesn't mean that God left. And she gives him the the name El Roy. I think I said that right. But that means the the God that sees me. And the God that sees me tells her to go back to all of that. He says, Go back, and I will create many descendants of you. So she obeys and she goes back. And then what happens again? She goes back, and now they Sarah has now conceived, and they both have a child, and Hagar's child, Ishmael, is making fun of Isaac. Isaac the chosen one. So Sarah gets bent out of shape. And Sarah tells, tells her to go away. And so again, in Genesis 24, 11 through 19, there's kind of a lot of verses, but I think it's very important that we understand what's going on as she goes out into, like, can you imagine? Like, this is my wilderness, and I ran away from being rejected and lonely and used. God tells me to go back. Like, why would I go back? And then she goes back, and they send her out to the wilderness again. And so Sarah says, you know, sends her out to the wilderness. And so Abraham, starting in Genesis 11, uh 21, 11, says, The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. But God said to him, Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring. But again, he tells Hagar, God tells Hagar that Ishmael he's going to be wild as a donkey. He's a wild man. But picking back up, early the next morning, Abraham took some food and skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her on the way with her boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert in Bathsheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. And think about this, as you have little kids. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, I cannot watch the boy die. As she sat there, she began to sob. God heard the boy crying, and then angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation. Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. So how would you feel if God sent you back and then you got sent out again? And then you think, so I went through all this just so I could watch my child die. And I think a lot of us feel that way. Why did I go through all of this in my marriage? Just so it looks like it's gonna end again. Why did I go through all of this with my child again and again just to look like it's still not gonna work out? Why did I, you know, go through this financial hardship, this when I got through it and it's just again, it's just something else. Why did you take me through it to happen this again? Because she finds herself right back in the wilderness, and now it's even worse than before because her son's about to die. And that's when God calls to her and says, Open your eyes. Because when she opened her eyes, did the well just magically appear? The well was already there, and sometimes the provision is already present, but sometimes we can't see through it because of the tears. And the tears may not be those physical tears, it could be those tears of thinking, I'm not wanted, those tears of this is unfixable, the tears of this is never gonna get any better, the tears of I can't handle another moment. But God provided in the wilderness, He said, Open your eyes. And when she opened her eyes, she saw what was right before her. Not once, but twice. And said, Go back, go back to all that trouble again. And she goes through all the trouble, gets sent away, back in the wilderness again. But God finds her again, and God says he's gonna make her son a great nation. And she is the first to give God a name because she might not have mattered to Sarah. Um, I think Abraham had a heart, and that's why he gave her water and sent her on the way. But who never lost sight of her? Who always had his eye on her? And that was God. He always kept an eye on her. He was she was seen by him. She mattered to him. So sometimes we're unseen. Maybe it's an unseen by a partner, maybe it's an unseen in a relationship, maybe we feel unseen just by people. We're like, I'm in such pain and hurt, and nobody sees me. Nobody sees what I'm going through. But God sees it. And just as the wilderness season for Hagar was not wasted, it is not wasted in our wilderness season. Because, again, she mattered to God. It wasn't a wasted time because she learned through the process and she and and she realized in the wilderness that her son was going to be a great nation because he was a descendant of Abraham. And so God saw her. And still, did he use her? He did. He used Hagar. Even in, and when she thought nobody else cared, she felt rejected, unseen. Like, how can this be happening? I did exactly what I was told to do. And maybe many of us feel like that. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. Exactly. And I did exactly what God told me to do. How about that? I did exactly what God told me to do. I went back to where I was supposed to come from, and then this happens again. And how many times do we do that and go, well, I listened to God, look where that got me. It got me in this mess again. But again, it's because we have a short-sighted vision. God has a vision, a vision from the beginning to the end. And we can't see what the end is sometimes because of our wilderness. And sometimes when I think of a wilderness, I think of just like you can't hardly see. There's trees and briars and all kinds of things. And have you ever been in woods so thick you can't see the other side of it? But if you're in a plane, you could see right on the other side of these lines of trees or thickets, there was a clear pasture. And I think sometimes we get caught up in those briars and the thickness and the I can't see anything. And so we go, He got me here again, not knowing that all we have to do is go through this wilderness and right on the other side is what he promised us. And we also have to remember that God sees us before he moved us. Saw her again. I hear you. I'll save you. And then he he saw her, said, Open your eyes. And then he moved her. So the the challenge really is to remember that the God that sees me, it's not the God who fixes everything immediately. Always. Sometimes that's what we want. We want an immediate fix. It's not the God that always does that. It's not the God who removes every struggle. Because I think sometimes as Christians we think, oh, I should have an easy life. Oh my gosh. Good luck with that. I think Christians have a more challenging life than others. So it's not the God that removes every struggle, but it's the God who sees us. It's the look at check this out. It's the same God that sees us that saw Hagar in her wilderness. It's the exact same one. So he may be telling us in our wilderness, go back. And you go, ah, okay. And then it happens again, and we find ourselves in the wilderness. And maybe we have to we keep he tells us to go back and we keep finding ourselves in our wilderness. And as we've talked about hope, don't lose hope because we are seen. And as Hagar, she mattered. We mattered. Sometimes we may feel unseen in a relationship. We may feel unseen in our efforts. We may feel unseen in our waiting. But there's going to be a time when God says, open your eyes. And in that moment, when we open our eyes, we see what he has promised us. We see what he is going to help take care of us and provide for us because he will not leave us. He will find us and because he sees us. So that's really the challenge. If if there's a place that you're feeling unseen, rejected, lonely, you're, you, you're not, you don't matter. I challenge you is to remember Hagar, that she mattered. And she and we are seen by the exact same God that Hagar was seen. And I think that's gives us hope and just gives us a lot of comfort to know that it doesn't mean it's going to be easy. It just means that he's got us. He's got an eye on us and that you matter in whatever season, what wilderness season you're going through. So we'll finish up in prayer, and then you can be on with your fantastically hot Friday. Dear Heavenly Father, we just come to you and so thankful that you see us, Lord, and that we just come to you and pray that even in our wilderness seasons, even when we we struggle to ask those questions of why am I in the wilderness again, to know that in those seasons that you do see us. And you see us through the wilderness, you see us through the green pastures, you see us through all of it. I mean, just remind us of Hagar and her wilderness and how faithful you are to find her and allow her to open her eyes to see what you had already provided that that sometimes we do have to go through that before we are moved. So, Lord, um, I just ask that you be with each one of us as we go out. Whatever season we're in, just bless us and remind us that we are seen. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you, everybody. Hope you have a great Friday, and I'll see everybody next week. Thank y'all. Thank you. And thank you to each of you for joining me on this week's Soul Fit. And I look forward to seeing right here next time on Soul Fit.