Expectations in Crisis
Notes
Transcript
Don’t rock the boat. That is a saying we often use when a situation is calm and we issue a warning to someone who is about to mess it all up! They’re meddling! The boat we call life is currently stable. There’s no drama. There are no fires to put out. There are no people screaming at us. Nothing but peace and tranquility. We love those moments no matter how long they last. But it never stays that way.
In Genesis 21, the promised child Isaac is born! Abraham and Sarah finally have what they had been promised. All seems to be going according to plan. That is, until it wasn’t.
As we continue the story, we see a familiar story, but now it is a different set of circumstances. Relational conflict developed between Sarah and Hagar and Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away. Let’s read verses 8-14 to set the sage.
The child grew and was weaned, and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking.
Therefore she said to Abraham, “Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.”
The matter distressed Abraham greatly because of his son.
But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the lad and your maid; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac your descendants shall be named.
“And of the son of the maid I will make a nation also, because he is your descendant.”
So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.
Remember that in Genesis 16, Hagar was sent away because Sarah was jealous. She had concocted this plot to use Hagar as a proxy for herself in order to produce a child for Abraham. Once Ishmael was born, however, Sarah was jealous of her and sent her away. Now, Ishmael seems to be laughing at Isaac’s expense, which sets Sarah off again. Abraham seems reluctant to send her away, but it is through God’s reassurance that he does so.
For the second time, Hagar finds herself in a crisis. She exists in a world where she has very few rights. All her securities are gone. It is her, her son, and her provisions. That’s it. She is in a desperate situation that is beyond her control. We find ourselves in those situations in the course of our lives. Some of you have survived cancer. Some of you have lost children. Some of you remember hurricane Bula like it was yesterday. But when crisis comes knocking, we have a choice in how we respond to it. As we look at the remainder of this passage, we are going to see how Hagar handled crisis and three things we should expect when crisis comes that will change the way we handle it.
Expect crisis to come.
Expect crisis to come.
Life is not a picnic. It is filled with challenges and hurdles. There is no such thing as an easy life. Because life is a rollercoaster, we should expect that crisis will come. When you wake up and realize that everything is calm, that is the time to take a look around and look for vulnerabilities. Nobody can cover every vulnerability in every area of their life, but we can be alerted to where they are and anticipate that those will be attacked.
Hagar was sent away with provisions, but look at what it says starting in verse 15:
When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes.
Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, “Do not let me see the boy die.” And she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept.
“When the water in the skin was used up...” She ran out of water. There is no store to go to. She is all alone out in the middle of nowhere. She is in grave danger and so is her son, who must still be very young because she leaves him under a bush and walked away. She didn’t want to watch him die. This is a crisis.
What is happening to Hagar is not really her fault. This was the hand she was dealt. Most of the crises we face are not a direct result of something we did. In other words, we are not always the cause of our difficult circumstances. Sometimes we are susceptible to environmental or economic factors.
This week, a friend of mine lost his entire back yard and a portion of his house’s foundation to flash flooding out in Florida. His wife is 34 weeks pregnant, they have a two year old, and their house has been deemed unsafe to occupy while insurance and repairs get worked out. Everybody is safe, but there is nothing he did to get into this situation. He is truly a victim of circumstance.
But things like insurance are there because we all know that it is not if crisis comes, but when. So expect it. Be alert. Look around for where the enemy might try to attack you. Don’t expect to be able to fend off all attacks; just expect the attack to come. Crisis will come whether you are ready or not. Just don’t be surprised by it when it does. Acknowledge it, and then move on to the second expectation.
Expect God to show up.
Expect God to show up.
When Hagar had gone a way off to wait for her son to die, she began to cry her eyes out as any mother would. But it was in that moment God showed up.
God heard the lad crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.
“Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”
If you remember the first time this happened, God made a promise to Hagar. Let’s go back to chapter 16 and see what he said then.
Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur.
He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.”
Then the angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.”
Moreover, the angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.”
The angel of the Lord said to her further,
“Behold, you are with child,
And you will bear a son;
And you shall call his name Ishmael,
Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction.
“He will be a wild donkey of a man,
His hand will be against everyone,
And everyone’s hand will be against him;
And he will live to the east of all his brothers.”
There are promises made to Hagar that haven’t been fulfilled yet. Ishmael is about 16 or 17 years old in Genesis 21. He hasn’t done any of the things God said he would do in Genesis 16. But crisis has a way of taking our minds off the promises of God and onto the problem itself. God stepped in to remind Hagar he wasn’t done with her or Ishmael yet.
I want you to do me a favor. I want you to take your hand and hold up your index and middle fingers. I want you to take those fingers and rest it on the side of your neck. Do you feel that? It means you have a pulse. You have listened and responded to commands. You have the capacity to hear and respond to God. Do you know what that means? God is no done with you yet.
You might be here today feeling like you disappoint God more than you make him happy. Do you feel your own pulse? You have the power to change that today. Maybe you are in a crisis right now. Do you feel your pulse? God is not done with you yet. God will show up or he already has, but you haven’t been listening. You have the power to change that today. Maybe you want to do something, but you never quite figured out what God wants you to do. Do you still have a pulse? Expect God to show up.
The Holy Spirit of God is with you at all times. There is nowhere you can go where God is not with you. He is in every high and every low. He is in every calm and every storm. We simply need to recognize it and lean into it. Expect God to show up in crisis, because he does. My friend in Florida is able to stay with a friend nearby while they work through the aftermath of this flash flood. God is showing up.
God shows up through meal trains. God shows up through hospital visits. God shows up through food banks, benevolence, prayer chains, helping hands, and countless other ways. What we can be assured of is that when we go through crisis, God will show up.
Expect God to provide.
Expect God to provide.
When we go through crisis, God doesn’t just show up and remind us that he’s got our backs and then dips out as fast as he showed up. He doesn’t pop in and say, “Don’t worry. Help is on the way!” No, when God shows up, help has already come! God didn’t just pop in to remind Hagar he still has plans. He provided on the spot.
Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink.
God was with the lad, and he grew; and he lived in the wilderness and became an archer.
He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
There was an immediate solution to the immediate problem. Ishmael needed water and God provided water. Does it solve every problem? No, but it solved the immediate crisis so that she could focus on her next step.
The trick to being a good chess player is outthinking your opponent. It requires thinking ten moves ahead. We can do the same thing with the crises we face, but this backfires. We see the ideal outcome in our minds and can’t figure out how to get there. So that’s the thing we aim for and in our fast paced society, we are often hoping that one simple step or shift will get us from A to B. We assume that B is the destination, but really K is the destination. So it is true that our next step is to get to point B, but there are 9 more steps to get to point K.
Hagar has a lot of work to to to get on the other side of the crisis. They have water, but they’re still in the desert. They have to keep moving. God will always provide just enough for you to take one more step. After you have taken that one, take one more, then one more. When you are in crisis, you don’t need to think ten moves ahead. You just need to look where God is providing one move at a time. But know that he will provide.
Crisis hurts. It is not fun, but it is going to happen. Thankfully, God has a lot to say about it and the biggest thing is that crisis is not without purpose. Most of my growth as a person has come through crisis. It is not purposeless, so that leads us to the final expectation.
Expect what crisis produces.
Expect what crisis produces.
You are going to be hit with a few scripture passages as we wrap things up here. Expect crisis will come. Expect God will show up. Expect God will provide. Expect what Crisis produces. The short answer is endurance.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Faith needs testing for it to grow. It needs to be stretched, pulled, pressed, challenged, so that you will grow as a believer. As you endure crisis, it produces greater endurance. Jesus says that he who is faithful in little will be faithful in much. We often think about these things in terms of material assets like money or property. God trusted me with $100 so he gave me $1000, or God trusted me with two acres, now I have 200. But the same is also true of faith. I trusted God with X, now he has given me Y. What does that tell you? God has more to give you, but he has to stretch you to grow your capacity to receive it.
Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
There is a reward of the crown of life for those who endure to the end.
For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
God has a lot for you. He has promised a lot to you. But you are not yet ready to manage the burden that comes with it. So you must experience times where your capacity is stretched so you have more to bear. Don’t you want more of what God has for you? If so, be ready for the trial that will come that will stretch you so you can handle what God will give you. The blessings of God come with responsibility, and responsibility is grown through testing.
We all have work to do. This life is not our own. God has placed people in our lives to reach with the gospel of Christ. Let’s remind ourselves that the race we run is not race for ourselves, but a race to impact the world around us.
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
I don’t know where you find yourself today, whether in a crisis, coming out of a crisis, or going into a crisis, expect it, expect God will show up, expect him to provide, and expect it to produce endurance in you.
What action do you need to take? Do you need to listen for God’s voice? Do you need to look for the next step he is asking you to take? Do you not know him personally and therefore are walking through crisis all alone? Our closeness to God in these situations matter, and quite frankly, our lack of closeness comes from failure to prioritize it. I love helping people develop the skills and disciplines that lead to closeness with God. If you need that, come meet with me and I will help you.
If you don’t know Christ, you have the opportunity to know him today and start a journey with the one who will walk you through every crisis you will ever face.
