Sermon Transcript
You can pick them up today at Burkhardt Hall after our service. Thank you so much. Scripture today, scripture today is from Genesis chapter 16.
Now Sarah, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abram, the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build a family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarah had said.
So after Abram had been living in Canaan 10 years, Sarah his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarah said to Abram, you are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me.
May the Lord judge between you and me. Your slave is in your hands, Abram said. Do with her whatever you think best. Then Sarah mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert.
It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarah, Where have you come from and where are you going? I’m running away from my mistress Sarah, she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her. The angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.
The angel of the Lord also said to her, you are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael. Now, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.
She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: You are the God who sees me. For she said, I have now seen the one who sees me.
She’s coming up, I promise. We are, we are just starting— last week we started a sermon series for the summer called This Is My Story, and the intent of this is for you all to hear from some of our elders and staff about their own faith journeys. Because what we found as we explore how God works in our lives is that the same thing that God did in the Bible is the same thing God does today. He’s drawing people to know Him, and there’s different parts of the Bible that really resonate and intersect with our lives in a special way. And today we’re going to take a look at a woman named Hagar and a really fascinating story.
But Alba and I were talking before she comes up and shares her faith story, we were just sort of thinking about what a— what an odd story this is. It would be weird for us to just read this out of context, and so I’m going to start with just some very brief comments about some observations about the text, and then we’re going to move into bringing Alba up here, and we’re going to talk about implications and principles for our lives. And that’s really the good, good, good, good stuff. But we need to start with the overall context, and the overall context of Genesis chapter 16 is part of what God did at the end of Genesis chapter 11, where God speaks to a man named Abraham. And I’m saying Abraham even though at this point he was Abram, and his wife His wife was Sarai.
We’re going to say Abraham and Sarah, because it’s just too confusing to do back and forth. But Abraham is called by God at the end of chapter 11 to go and to— into a new land that God was going to provide for him. And God makes a series of promises at the beginning of Genesis chapter 12. And you may be familiar with some of these promises, but the promises that God makes to Abraham are not promises like you and make to one another where we might keep them. They’re not totally like 100% sure.
When God makes a promise, He keeps it. And so God is making a series of really amazing promises in Genesis chapter 12 to Abraham. He says, first of all, I’m going to make you, Abraham, into a great nation, and I’m going to make your name great, and I’m also going to promise to bless— to bless you. And the reason why God is going to bless him and do all these other things is because, as God tells us in Genesis 12, it’s so that others, including you and I, could be blessed through the family of Abraham. And that’s really the larger context of what we’re looking at here.
And this is an important story that unlocks the rest of the Old Testament. Depending upon how long you’ve read the Bible, sometimes the Old Testament can be really confusing, and it is no matter how long you’ve been reading the Bible. The Bible. But this is a key moment here— God speaking to an individual, saying, I want to bless you and I want to bless others through you. That helps unlock a lot of understanding, I think, throughout the rest of the Old Testament.
But none of that is really clear just yet at this point in the story. If you read through Genesis, it’s not totally clear how God is going to do this or what God is going to do until the story later on unfolds. But here in the middle of Genesis, we’re a little bit confused because one of the first core things we see throughout the story of Genesis is repeated moral failure, quite frankly, on the part of Abraham and on his family and the generations that come after him. They do a really, really good job, like you and I do, of, of departing from what God wants them to do and departing from what God wants us to do, and it turns things into mess, and it makes things a lot worse, and it puts our own lives and hope in jeopardy, and it also jeopardizes God being able to fulfill His promise. That’s a prominent theme throughout Genesis.
But there’s another prominent theme, and that is the faithfulness of God, that despite the world’s rebellion against God— and the world today still rebels against God— despite that, God is faithful. And time and time and time again, He renews His commitment He renews His promises, and He says, I’m holding true to what I promised to do. And He invites us again to just return, to come back to Him. So, that’s the context here of Genesis chapter 16, when we meet a woman named Hagar. And what chapter 16 tells us is that Hagar is a young Egyptian slave who is serving under Abram’s wife, Sarah.
And whenever we meet them, we find that there has been 10 years years that have passed from the time that God makes the original promise to Abraham to bless him and to raise up this huge family through him. There’s been 10 years that passed from then until here in chapter 16, and still no baby. That’s kind of a problem, because if God is saying you’re going to have a huge family, well, where’s this child going to come from? Abraham and Sarah are advancing in their age. It, it just seems like this is not working.
And back then, you need to understand that in that culture, that they set aside a certain role for women. And this won’t surprise you, but in that culture and in that time, the primary role, really the only role for women back then, was to do what Sarah says in verse 2, to build a family. To build a family. That’s what people said was your job, women, was to— was to get pregnant and have children and then to raise those children, period. That was it.
And so this must have been really frustrating for this family, and especially for Sarah, to not have a child by this point, in part because, again, of this psychological role that culture was putting upon her, and because women were— a woman’s capital, so to speak, meaning her significance. When a woman didn’t have children, it reflected on them in that culture. They appeared worse worthless and really didn’t have a whole lot to be able to offer. And so all of this is piling up on Sarah, so she takes matters into her own hands and says, I have a plan. And they depart from God’s plan, and Sarah says, I’m going to give my slave to you, which sounds really, really weird to us today, but that not only was a common practice back then in that time and in that culture, it was a universal practice.
And what would happen is this person would then get pregnant, and then that child could then be more or less adopted, so to speak, into the life of the master. And again, that was that time. That was in that culture. It doesn’t mean God condoned it. It doesn’t mean that God supported it, but it was what was happening at the time.
And so, Sarah says, I’m going to give you, Abram— Abraham, Hagar, my slave, and you’re going to sleep with her, and then you’re going to get pregnant, and then that child will be my This is how God’s promise is going to be fulfilled. But when Hagar gets pregnant, she begins to despise Sarah. And it doesn’t really tell us why, but you can begin to kind of read through the lines as to what is happening here. And so Sarah then says, hey, Abraham, this is all your fault. Okay?
I gave this woman to you, and now she despises me. What are you going to do about it? This is all just a giant mess, is it not? And so Abraham like, like the strong leading man that he does, he says, well, do whatever you want, I guess. And so she mistreats Hagar.
Hagar then flees, and she’s out there alone. Like, imagine what Hagar is dealing with. She’s vulnerable. She’s a foreigner in a strange land, in a strange land that already had a low view of women to begin with, but a female slave on top of that, somebody who’s unmarried, and is, you know, carrying a child and all of these things. And it says that she flees from her.
But then in verse 7, it says that the angel of the Lord finds Hagar. And that’s really significant, because what you’re going to hear this summer in people’s faith stories is that it’s not so much us finding God as God finding us.
If you are a follower of Jesus and you have come to faith and you’ve placed your trust in Him, it’s not because you found God. God. It’s never that way. Any of our knowledge of God or relationship with Him is at His initiative. And it says the angel of the Lord found her.
He saw her. And I think that that’s significant there, because other people didn’t really see her, but God saw her. Who is the angel of the Lord? Well, what we know from the Old Testament is anytime it says the angel of the Lord, like with Moses at the burning bush, he encounters the the angel of the Lord, or someone like Joshua in Joshua 5 encounters this angel of the Lord, or Jacob wrestles with the angel of the Lord. Every single time somebody encounters the angel of the Lord, these people go away saying, I don’t know how I just survived that.
They’re meeting with God’s representative. It’s the power of God intervening here, and this is what the angel of the Lord says to Hagar. The Lord has heard of your distress. Or it doesn’t even actually say of your distress. It says that in the NIV, but if you read the original Hebrew, it says the Lord has heard your distress.
It doesn’t say the Lord has heard of your distress in the original language. I think that that’s significant because nobody ever tells the Lord of something that he doesn’t already know. It’s not like you and I when somebody says, hey, did you hear about such and and such? Or have you heard of this? No, like, nobody has to inform God about what’s happening.
He hears her distress. And that, I think, is significant because it doesn’t say, Hagar, you were praying so well, and so God decided to just move in and to hear your plea. It doesn’t say, you were living such a moral, upright life, and so God looked and said, I’m so impressed, I’m going to come in and answer there. No, the Lord heard her distress, and He met her in a really, really personal way. Again, the angel of the Lord intervening.
Now there’s a lot we could say about Abraham and Sarah and how they were drastically departing from God’s intentions for them, and their story goes on. But we want to focus in on Hagar today, this idea that the Lord found her and that the Lord sees her, that the Lord hears her distress. And to help us get into the text a little bit. I’m going to invite up my friend Alba Collegian. So Alba, come on up.
Can we welcome Alba up here?
I’ll tell you about Alba in just a moment, but Alba and I have been friends for about a decade, and she’s been here on the staff. And I feel like we’re like Regis and Kathie Lee here with this table. Like we need a coffee mug here, like a morning show. Show. And talking to Alba, she thought this would really go best, because we’re friends and because we’ve worked together for so long, to just sort of do a Q&A interview.
But I want you to know that Alba’s— like, we are so fortunate to have her here on staff to be our— yeah, to be our Director of Family and Children’s Ministries. So I want to start with this, Alba. For those who don’t know what family ministry is, what is, what is family ministry? Well, I’ll just give the quick answer. The simplest answer is that family ministry is an umbrella ministry, and under that umbrella is our ministry to children, and that starts in the nursery and it goes through preschool and elementary.
It also includes our ministry to students, so our middle school ministry and our high school ministry. But there’s also this part of family ministry that is focused on adults. We wanna partner with parents and encourage them and equip them to be the primary spiritual leaders in their children’s life, and we wanna create opportunities and environments for this family right here in this room to have relationships with those young families, to pour into them, to counsel them, and to help pass on faith to the next generation. And we were talking last week about how that’s just a biblically founded concept. It’s not that Alba came up with family ministry.
You know who came up with family ministry? It was God. We read Deuteronomy 6, and the people are about to enter into the Promised Land, and he gives some final instructions, and he says, listen, adults— and this is not just parents, but grandparents and the surrounding adult community— these things that I’m teaching you, God says, are to be upon your own hearts. And then you’re to pass them along to the next generation. And you’re to integrate these things into your conversations when you lay down, when you get up, as you go about the day.
You’re to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. If you want the next generation to do that, adults, that starts with you. I love that picture of a family ministry. Well, talk about your own upbringing. I know that you’ve been in California your entire life.
So, for those who don’t know, talk about your immediate family first. And then we’ll kinda broaden out. So like, let’s, yeah, let’s start with your immediate family. Sure. I’m married to the person that most of you know as DK.
I call him Dave, but hopefully I won’t confuse you by that. I’ll try and just refer to him as DK as opposed to Dave. But we’ve been married for just a few weeks shy of 29 years. We have 2 sons. Thank you.
We have 2 sons, Clay, who’s 31, is 21 and he attends Baylor University, um, and he just has one more year there, um, out in Texas. And then Deacon, who just finished his junior year at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, which is where we live. And actually, that’s the high school that I went to, um, and he’s on his way right now going to Hume Lake with DK and all the other youth. Yeah, that’s fantastic, and we love that the Lord has brought your family here. Well, talk about your, your, your growing up, uh, years and about your, your broader family.
I know you were born in San Francisco and you’ve been here— yeah, again, right? I’m very much a local girl. Um, I have spent my entire life here on the peninsula. Um, I was, uh, born in San Francisco to Nick and Myrta Singaris. I think we might have a picture of them, I don’t know.
Well, if not, that’s okay. Um, my dad came to this country when he was only 16 years old. Uh, he came from Greece and he didn’t speak the language. And my mom came from Guatemala when she was about 18 or 19 years old. She was orphaned at a young age and was raised by nuns, and then she came here to work and support her sister and sponsor her to come to this country as well.
They met in San Francisco, they got married, they had 4 children, of which I am the youngest and I’m the only girl. And so, we’ve talked a little bit about, you and I, sort of the similarities in sort of a humorous way between your family and the family from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because of the Greek family in which you grew up, without the Windex, right, that they’re spraying everywhere. My dad liked Ajax. Yeah, exactly. So, talk about your faith journey and how you came to faith.
Sure. My parents didn’t raise me in the church, but they did raise me with a deep respect and reverence for God. They taught me that there was a God, and I knew him as the Creator. And we went to church on holidays, we went to lots of weddings and baptisms because I’m from a big Greek family, so we were often in church. But my knowledge of God was mainly a few Old Testament stories, and like I said, an understanding that he was the Creator.
But I had this desire to know God, and so I started going to the youth group at the Orthodox Church that my dad attended. But it was so steeped in rituals and traditions, and because I didn’t speak the language and I hadn’t fully embraced that culture, it was somewhat empty to me. I had a hard time pulling meaning out of all of the things that I was being exposed to. But thankfully, 2 of my older brothers started attending a youth group at First Baptist Church in San Mateo, and they reluctantly let their little tag-along sister join them occasionally. And so that’s where I got to see people who had a real relationship with Jesus, and I saw what I wanted.
So one night, just after attending just for a little while, One night on my own, I prayed and I asked Jesus for forgiveness and I committed to follow him. And it wasn’t a scripted prayer or a guided prayer, but it was a sincere prayer. And after that, I started attending church more and reading my Bible. And there were some great female volunteers at that church that really poured into me. We would meet before school in the morning once a week and we’d have a Bible study.
I’d go to youth group and we’d meet before that as well. So it was a great time of learning and growing in the Lord. I was able to enter into high school and go through high school knowing and growing in the Lord. And as I added to my understanding of who God was, it made me realize how little I knew when I first prayed. And so just like many people, there were several times where I felt the need to recommit my life because I knew that I, I knew so little when I first committed to follow Jesus.
But God is gracious and has added to my understanding and helped me understand that there is so much that I don’t know, and I will spend the rest of my life learning more about him. But I am so thankful for those early years. Well, and so grateful for what God did in your life at an early age, and again, how God used all of these different individuals. Well, let’s talk about Hagar, because people who just read this story might be curious about how your story here in California, the 20th and 21st century, intersects with someone like Hagar that we don’t know a whole lot about. How does your story intersect?
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but, but there are some overlaps and some intersections, right? There’s not a whole lot in my life that— it doesn’t parallel Hagar’s. But there is something that Hagar says that really has always resonated with me. It’s when she calls God the God who sees me, and that is a name of God that I just, I love. It’s just a great reminder of God’s love and care for his people.
Being the youngest of 4 kids and the only girl growing up in a Greek family, It was very male-dominated, so I was the only girl. So there were a lot of times where I felt like I wasn’t as important as everybody else, or ignored, or just, just not appreciated or seen. There’s a story from when I was about 5 years old that kind of illustrates this. My family took a trip up to the snow, and we were there with some other friends, and the kids were all playing in the snow and sledding. And like I said, I was about 5 years old, and my parents had made it known that I was too young to go sledding by myself.
So I went to my 3 older brothers and I asked each one of them to take me down the hill on the sled. And I don’t remember if they said no or if they just ignored me. It could have either— it could have been either one. But regardless, nobody was gonna take me down the hill, and I just felt so left out and unseen, and it angered me. And so I went ahead and I grabbed that sled and I went up the hill by myself and nobody really noticed.
And I got to the top and I sat on that sled and nobody stopped me because nobody saw. And so I took off down that hill on the sled and it wasn’t until I was about halfway down and I realized that I didn’t know how to stop this thing that was picking up speed. I started screaming and that’s when people noticed. Thankfully the sled did come to a stop but I— it’s It stopped when I crashed into a parked truck, but I hit the rubber tire of it. It was a big rubber tire, so the sled bounced back and the sled went in one direction, I went in the other, and the snow cushioned my fall.
So I wasn’t injured. I might have been shaken up, but I was fine. But I was hurt in that my feelings were hurt because I went through all of that and nobody saw me until it was like too late.
That’s just one example of a time where I just felt like I wasn’t appreciated or recognized or seen, but God in his goodness over the course of my life has shown me in his word so many times that I am seen.
I look at scripture and I see that he has shown me in even in Ephesians that before the creation of the world, he saw me and he chose me. I know like many of you, I have gotten to be a part of BSF, that’s Bible Study Fellowship. I have been able to study God’s Word through the many years that I’ve, I’ve been in BSF, and I love when we study the book of John, and especially when we get to chapter 17, because I see that as proof that God saw sees me. In this chapter, Jesus is meeting with his disciples and it’s his last meal with them and he is talking to them and trying to prepare them and then he prays for them and he prays, he prays for their protection, he prays for their unity and he prays for their sanctification and then he shifts his prayer and he says, I’m not just praying for these people in this room, I’m praying for those that are gonna believe because of their message. And when Jesus says that, when I read his words, it’s like he’s looking up from my Bible and making eye contact with me because I’m like, I’m one of those people, those people that believe because of their message.
I believe because of the disciples’ message. And so even then, God is showing me that he sees me. He saw me before the creation of the world, and Jesus saw me the night before he went to the cross. And to me, that is just so powerful and so reassuring that he sees me. Another example of God seeing me is that I know that God formed me, and therefore he saw me when I was in my mother’s womb.
And proof of Psalm 139, because when my mom was pregnant with me, early on in her pregnancy, she was in a car accident and she sustained some serious injuries to the point that the doctors were advising her to end the pregnancy and have some major surgery so she could recover and take care of the 3 young children that she had at home. But God saw me in my mother’s womb and he moved in her heart. She had planned to take the doctor’s advice and was— has made arrangements, but at a certain point she just recognized that regardless of how much pain and suffering she she had to go through, she wasn’t gonna end my life, and she didn’t. And she did suffer because of it. She has chronic back pain because she carried a baby to term with a back that she needed surgery.
But again, that is just proof to me that God has seen me. And there’s many times in my life where God has just seen me in my need. He has protected me, and I have a long-running list of those. I’d be happy to share more, But in the interest of time, we’re going to keep going. Well, and I do want to just though hit the pause button because on the, on the discussion questions that you all have on a little sheet out there in the lobby that has the message, uh, place for message notes, on the back there’s little discussions.
One of the questions that I think is important for each of us to wrestle with is what does it mean to be seen by God? And I think Alba just illustrated it in a beautiful way. We can see people, but we don’t sometimes really see them, right? We sort of just kind of go about our day. And in the case of Hagar, we were talking about how Abraham didn’t really see Hagar except in a way that sort of met his own needs.
Sarah didn’t totally see Hagar unless it was about, again, something that she thought was in her own best interest. God saw Hagar. He found her. He saw her. And I think that there’s a difference between, again, just seeing somebody but really seeing them, or really being seen by a person.
And that’s just, again, a miracle of how God works. Well, let’s talk about some of the implications of what it means that, that, that God sees, and that God sees you, and that he sees each person here. How has knowing that God sees helped you as you’ve gone through different trials and challenges in your life? Well, I know this is going to come out sounding kind of strange, but when I think about challenges or uncertain times or pain, my mind goes to my children. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I haven’t known pain or the same level of joy prior to having children.
I mean, there’s just a new experience with pain and joy and uncertainty once you become a parent. And after both of my pregnancies, I went through postpartum depression, and that was a new experience for me. I had never been depressed before in my life, and so it was strange because it wasn’t something that I could just kind of will myself out of. I had to walk through that, but throughout that time, God was faithful and showed me that he wasn’t a very present help in my time of trouble, and he gave me glimmers of hope and an understanding that that was gonna come to an end, that the rest of my life wasn’t gonna be like that. I also think about during my pregnancy with Deacon, I had some alarming test results that really, really rattled me.
There was a high likelihood, according to one of the tests, there was a high likelihood that he was going to have this condition that meant that he probably— I wouldn’t be able to carry him to term. And if I did and was able to deliver him, that he probably would only have a year, 2, maybe 3 years max of a life. And that was an overwhelming thing to kind of wrap my brain around. I was so scared. And thankfully there were tests that I could schedule that would kind of give us a definitive answer, but those were like weeks away.
And so there was this period of 3 weeks to a month of just not knowing the health of my child and whether he was going to live. And I remember many sleepless nights. A lot of times I would wake up in the middle of the night and just cry and not be able to go back to sleep, and I would just cry out to God. And I remember one specific night night that I was praying, earnestly praying, and it was as if I was holding the burden of this news in my hands. And I remember just feeling so overwhelmed that I, I remember physically just pushing it away and telling God, like, I can’t handle this.
This, this news that I have, I can’t bear this, and you’re gonna have to take it. And I physically pushed it. I remember that. And I remember just saying, Lord, you’re gonna have to bear this weight for me because I cannot. And at some point in that prayer, I must have fallen asleep because I don’t remember ending it.
But what I do remember is right after that, having this strange peace. And it wasn’t that the circumstances had— they hadn’t changed at all, but I had this peace in knowing that God had heard my cries, that he had seen me and that he was in control. I’m sorry if I get emotional, but I just, I knew that I had this peace that was rooted in the fact that he was in control and that he was gonna give me the right child for me regardless of whatever his condition was, regardless of his lifespan. This was the child that God had picked for me, and so that gave me peace. I knew that God was in control and that he heard my cries and he would give me what I needed to walk through that time.
And thank God, a few weeks later we did have those tests and Deacon did have some health issues but nothing was life-threatening and they all resolved early on in his life. So we can praise God for that for sure. But I’m so thankful for that time because it really proved to me God’s faithfulness and that he did see me and he heard my cries. And another kind of landmark example of God seeing me and giving me what I need happened about 10 years ago. And I know there’s a lot of stories here, but this one has to do with Bridges, kind of, so that’s why I’m saying it.
Um, so about 10 years ago, DK and I felt like God was calling us away from our previous church where we both served in ministry there. And there wasn’t a reason that we could see that he was calling us away and it was such a strange thing. It was, I describe it as like a sad knowing ’cause we loved our church. It wasn’t perfect but we loved it and we just had this understanding that God had, was kind of putting an end to our time there and what we really struggled with, I mean we prayed about it for a long time but what we really struggled with was that it meant that we were gonna be taking our young boys out of the only faith community that they had ever known. Deacon was in 2nd grade at the time and Clay was in 6th grade.
And when I tell you that our boys loved their church family, I don’t just mean that they loved playing on the playground and that they had a few friends that they liked to hang around with. My boys had friends in every age group at that church. They loved those people. Those were their people. And so I could not bear the thought of taking them away from those people that were family.
And so I sought some counsel from a pastor that was a friend of my brother’s, and we sat down to just kind of have a meeting and for me to just tell him what was going on and get his take on it. And as I was explaining the situation to him, I got to the point where I was— I told him what my objection was, basically. That I was having a hard time taking my boys out of the church. And I said, if I could just have this picture of what life would be like after we leave and once we land, like when we’re on the other side of this transition, if I could just paint this picture for my boys so that they know it’s gonna be okay, maybe I can tell them this. And as I said those words, it’s like those words were still in the air.
I felt like God spoke to my heart. And he said something to the effect of, yeah, but if I give you that clear picture, we’re gonna be robbing your children and your family of an opportunity to take a step of faith together. And that really convicted me. But I was also so blessed because I, I was asking God for this one picture that everything was gonna be okay, but God gave me a better picture, and that was of my family holding hands and taking this step of faith together because that’s the way we want to raise our boys is to walk by faith, to follow God wherever he’s leading. And they were so young but we were gonna— God was giving us an opportunity to practice this with them.
And so that new picture that God gave me of us holding hands and taking this step of faith was what fueled me to have the conversation with our boys and tell them that we were leaving And the conversation was a difficult one. I mean, I had this great picture, but it didn’t make it easy. Those boys cried. They cried like somebody died. But God in his goodness, he gave me just a glimmer of like just proof that he was at work in all of this.
Even the very night that we told the boys, my boys were crying, and my youngest— my mom was there, and so my youngest went to her to explain what all the emotions were about, and I wasn’t in the room, and I was approaching the room, but I wasn’t there yet, so I was kind of eavesdropping. And I overheard my 2nd grader tell my mom, we’re crying because we’re sad because we’re leaving our church family, but we’re gonna be okay because God is with us. And at that moment, I just dropped to my knees because I was like, God, you’re giving me proof that you’re at work in this. My 2nd grader gets it. He is indeed taking this step of faith knowing that you are with us.
And so for me, that was just a beautiful time. It was a heart-wrenching time, but it was a beautiful time because it was so faith-building and faith-shaping for me and for my boys as well. So I just thank God that he saw us in our need and gave us everything that we needed to do what he was calling us to do. Yeah, God’s, God’s rescue can help us through those moments of just knowing that he sees us even when it’s not solved immediately. It’s just incredible.
Talk about looking at the future, because none of us are promised tomorrow. How— what are some of the implications of knowing that the God who sees is watching you help you to face the future? Well, God has a great track record in my life, so I can look back and see his faithfulness, and that really shapes how I go through just even today, let alone the future, but what challenges I face today, the way I see them are shaped by how faithful God has been in the past. Just knowing that he is with me and that he hears me and he sees me. Current situations that I’ve gone through that, or that I’m going through that are really difficult are like caring for aging parents, the loss of my dad, having a child move away to college and recognizing that he’s probably not coming back.
Those are heart-wrenching things for me, but I know that God is in it and he’s gonna— he sees me and he’s gonna give me all I need to walk through those times. The God that created the universe, the God who calls the stars out by name, knows my name, and he knows what my days consist of, and he’s gonna give me all that I need. Now that doesn’t mean that I am 100% unwavering in my faith. There are times that I, I panic or that I stress out, but thank God he is faithful even when I am not. And so I can look to the future with a confidence And I’m so encouraged when I think about the fact that God is aware of everything that’s going on in my life.
Never is he unaware of it. Never is he surprised. Never, never does God say, ooh, I didn’t see that coming. I say that, but he never says that, and that is such a comfort to me. I love how Isaiah 49:16 reminds me of that.
Fact that God is always thinking of his people and he knows what they are up against. It says, see, I have engraved you on the palm of my hands, your walls are ever before me. And in Zechariah 2, we see the closeness and intimacy of God to an unwalled, vulnerable Jerusalem. It shows how he wants to be their security and their protector and how he knows what they need. God says through his prophet I myself will be a wall of fire around them, and I will be the glory shining from within.
And that same protective, loyal, and loving God that cared for his people in the Old Testament is the God who sees me. So as I look to the future, there are a lot of big question marks in my life. I don’t know where my boys are going to settle down. I don’t know if they’re going to be close to each other, if they’re gonna be close to DK and I. I don’t even know where DK and I are gonna live in the future. I don’t know how long my mom will live or DK’s parents will live.
Those are all big question marks in my life, but I can face those things because I know that God sees me in those times, or every time, but in those times of need. He sees me and he sees what I am up against. And I remind myself of God’s track record and what he has done. I know my faith in him is well-founded. And so these things that might seem like they could keep me up at night, they don’t really keep me up at night because even though my future on this earth is, is not known and it’s so uncertain, My eternal future, my future with him, whether he calls me home or he returns, that future is secure, and I am so thankful for that.
So trials and difficult circumstances and uncertainty, those aren’t my biggest problem. The way I explain it to the kids I get to minister to is that my sin is my biggest problem, and I am so so thankful that God saw me in my need before the creation of the earth, and he called me. He made a way for me to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. So I can be thankful that Jesus took care of my biggest problem on the cross. Yeah, and I, I think that’s a reminder to us that, that of what Hagar came to this realization of.
She didn’t totally know what had happened, but said, am I seeing the God who sees me? And that to me is the invitation into relationship, to have our sins taken care of, to be made right with God. There’s the Gospel even in this Old Testament obscure story in Genesis of God inviting us to see Him. If God didn’t want us to see Him, He wouldn’t make that known to us. And yet Hagar comes to this understanding that not only did God find her, but God enabled her, and he enables us to see the one who sees everything.
That’s just the gospel right there of Jesus and what he’s done for us, and God inviting us into relationship. Well, what’s a closing word that you would say to anybody who is walking through something, either in the past or now or in the future, regarding this topic? Well, I think we all go through times where we feel we’re unseen or unnoticed or or you kind of wonder where God is in a given situation. And I would say that God does see you and he knows the things that weigh on your heart. He knows what you’re up against.
So pour out your heart to him. You don’t have to inform him of what’s going on because he knows, but you can tell him what it is that you are craving, what it is that you need. Cry out to him and He will answer you for sure. And if you’re feeling discouraged, one of my favorite prayers that I pray when I feel discouraged and unseen or unloved is, God, would you just remind me of your love today? And then I just get to be observant, and I have found that God just lavishes me with examples of how he loves me.
And it could be a beautiful sunset, it could be my beautiful drive on 280 to get here. There’s lots of different ways that he shows me. So I would just encourage you to pour out your heart to him and let him know that you need the encouragement or the affirmation, whatever it is that you need to remember that you are seen by him. Well, I want to say personally, and for me and Shannon and our family, we love you, and this church loves you, and this church loves your family. This church is— yeah.
Thank you. And God knew 10 years ago when you were wrestling with that decision that you and I would be sitting here having this conversation. And so, uh, we, we, we— it is an honor to entrust the children of this church. They’re not just other people’s children, friends. These are, these are our kids.
These are our youth. And so we collectively are grateful and celebrate what God is doing in your life and that God has brought you here. Would you pray for us just as we close our time here? I’d be happy to. Let’s pray.
God, I thank you that you see us and you love us. Lord, I pray that anyone here in this room that needs a reminder of that would, would get that this week. Lord, I thank you for your word and how it reminds us time and time again of your love and your care for us. And Lord, I pray that as we leave this place that we would be encouraged. And Lord, I think of the people that are in the cars right now driving to Hume Lake.
I pray a special blessing over all those youth and leaders. Lord, I thank you for the blessings that are to come in their life, and I pray for their protection, and I pray for their sanctification this week. Week, and I pray that they have a great time of being together and being one in you. I pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
