September 28, 2021
God Never Forgets an Outcast
“Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! (Isaiah 49:15 NLT)
My beloved child no one gets to choose who their parents will be. Learn a lesson from Abraham and Sarah. God promised Abraham and Sarah a son when she was well past childbearing years. (Genesis 18:10-14 NLT) Sarah got ahead of God and arranged for Hagar her Egyptian servant girl to sleep with her husband Abraham to conceive a child. He didn’t argue with her! They committed adultery, and it was all Sarah’s idea – big mistake! (Genesis 16:1-4 NLT) Then Sarah shouted, ‘Abraham it’s all your fault’! I put my servant in your arms, but now that she’s pregnant she treats me disrespectfully. Abraham told Sarah, ‘deal with Hagar as you see fit’! Sarah was cruel and unkind to Hagar to the point she ran away! (Genesis 16:5-6) Then Hagar had a divine encounter with the angel of the Lord beside a spring of water in the wilderness on the road to Shur, and the angel said, ‘Hagar where have you come from and where are you going’? She declared: ‘I am running away from Sarah’! The angel of the Lord said, ‘return to Sarah and submit to her authority for I will give you more descendants than you can count! You are pregnant and will give birth to a son, and his name shall be Ishmael which means ‘God hears’ for the Lord has heard your cry. This son of yours will be a wild man, as untamed as a wild donkey, he will raise his fist against people, and everyone will be against him including his relatives’! (Genesis 16:7-12) Hagar said, ‘You are the God who sees me’! (Genesis 16:13)
In the middle of your mess, God sees you, and He will hear you when you cry out to Him. Before all this, the Lord had promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land. (Genesis 12:7) God didn’t mention a wife so, Abraham assumed that the child born to Hagar would be his promised son. Then the Lord visited Sarah as He promised. She conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him, (Genesis 21:1-2) and said, ‘you will name him Isaac.’ The Lord told Abraham, I will confirm my covenant with him and his descendants as an everlasting covenant. As for Ishmael, I will bless him too, just as you have asked. I will make him extremely fruitful and multiply his descendants. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation, but my covenant will be established and deeply rooted with Isaac! Ishmael became a great archer, and he lived by it, so he must have learned to hunt. He didn’t give up on life just because he was an outcast. Why? Because the Lord was with him and he is with you too! (Genesis 21:20) Just because life has not been good to you and you have made some mistakes, call upon the Lord for He is with you and He can turn your mess into a message, your pain into purpose and heartbreak into a blessing!
