The God Who Sees: Hagar and Invisible Work

No. This is twenty minutes by the well. This is twenty minutes a day of you receiving what God has for you. It's twenty minutes a day of being seen and known by your creator, and it flows into the rest of your day. Your work may be invisible to everyone else. You may feel unseen and unknown, but you have a god who sees you. [00:45:40] (32 seconds)  #TwentyMinutesByTheWell

Have you ever had a season that feels like it drags on forever? Like, you can't get a reprieve? Like, it's just endlessly hard. I've had I've had so many seasons like that. I've had seasons where as a as a teenager, my brother needed my parents' attention more than I did, and I felt invisible. And I've had seasons in parenting where it was so difficult and no one saw it. And I've had seasons in ministry where it was it was so hard, but I knew and God repeatedly told me, this is where I have you. Keep going. [00:38:40] (40 seconds)  #KeepGoingWhereGodHasYou

At that time, right, I'm not condoning this, but at that time, Hagar was a slave. She was owned by Sarai, and that meant everything that she owned was also Sarai's. Okay? So twisted thinking, but we're we're getting there. Right? Sarah is thinking, I'm gonna have a baby through Hagar. And Hagar, she is used, she is overlooked, and she is alone. She's been placed into someone else's plan for her life. Right? She didn't sign up for this. [00:33:57] (36 seconds)  #OverlookedButKnown

And I love this. Sometimes in the middle of our mess, our grief, all the things that we carry, we can find ourselves in the middle of the wilderness, and we can have a really hard time seeing that well. It's too hard. All we see is the cloud of the grief and the mess and the to do list and all of the things. And god sees us. He reminds us of his promises. He gives us what we need in that very moment. [00:41:29] (28 seconds)  #GodSeesYouInTheMess

Through all those seasons, I can tell you with certainty that god saw me, and he sees you. He sees you through the late nights, the mental list, through the quiet sacrifices, that invisible work that no one else sees. He sees you, and he sees all that you carry. And that's not the end of Hagar's story. We're gonna fast forward to chapter 21. Sarai and Abram have been renamed by God to Sarah and Abraham, [00:39:22] (32 seconds)  #SeenThroughEverySeason

You ever had a moment like that, the time when you're just really struggling and someone texts you and is like, hey. Just thinking about you, and you're like, oh, okay. I feel seen. Right? Or I've had moments where I feel so stuck in where I'm at, and god will provide me a fresh perspective. He'll give me something new to see, kinda like this well. It might be in the passages I've been reading a 100 times, and it's just something new. [00:42:14] (29 seconds)  #FeelingSeenMoments

So she runs away. She flees into the wilderness, and the Bible says, the angel of the Lord meets her by the spring. And some translations say the messenger of the Lord, but many scholars believe that when it says the angel of the lord, it's the pre incarnate Jesus. He has the son of god before he was on your mantle at Christmas time. Right? He would come to Earth and talk to people in human form. [00:34:48] (32 seconds)  #EncounterAtTheSpring

Right? Like, he is so good. He's gonna remind you. He's gonna be patient with you. He's gonna keep reminding you who you are and what your role is, and then he's gonna say, get up. Let's keep going. Let me remind you what you're doing. Small step forwards, daily sustaining us. Here at Lake Point, we talk about a daily 20. This is not like some cool Christianist thing that we are like, you should do this because it's the it's what you're supposed to do. [00:45:10] (30 seconds)  #SmallDailySteps