Power Walk Ministries

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us for today's Power Walk Ministries broadcast. We're so glad that you've tuned in to join us as Reverend Paul Cannings continues with the series titled Relationships, Marriage and Family. We're in volume two titled God Sees You and Pastor Cannings takes us to Genesis chapter 16 to continue teaching on the life of Hagar.

What is our response to tragedies in life? Like Hagar, are we running away from our problems and possibly even walking away from our faith in God? Here's Pastor Cannings now, encouraging us to grasp lessons from Hagar's submission to God during a critical turning point in her life.

Dr. Paul Cannings: What happens when your life is turned upside down? When people get into comfort zones and use you as an exploit? This is what you find in this story. The first thing you see is that Hagar got caught up. She is caught up. Her situation is worse because she's a slave.

Most likely she's picked up in Egypt when he goes and lies. He goes and lies and said that Sarah is his sister and when that happened, God protected Sarah, only for her and her husband to leave Egypt—basically kicked out of Egypt. Apparently, what is given to him is this woman named Hagar.

And this woman named Hagar is thrown into this family, probably a servant of Pharaoh, thrown into this family. And now Hagar, who is an Egyptian, is now in the midst of all of this and she doesn't get to say nothing. Chapter 16 of the book of Genesis, watch it carefully. She does not get to say a word.

In verse three, it says Abram had lived ten years—he's chilled out now in Canaan, he's found his niche. And Abram's wife, Sarai, took Hagar. Did she ask her permission? She's a servant, she's a slave. She just took her and she puts her in this mess.

Watch what she says: "You are his wife." What she doing? She's functioning with a law called Nuzi Law or Nuzola. What it is is if the woman can't have a child, then you can grab a servant, the closest servant that you feel would provide the kind of kids that you would like to see, and then you can give that to your husband as a wife.

So she gave him—and notice what she said—"She is his wife." Meaning, this is not a one-night stand. And here came Ishmael. They were husband and wife. And you would think right then and there that Abraham would go, "Hey, wait a minute. I need to, you know what? I just met up with this guy..."

I have known about this guy named Melchizedek. Let me go seek some godly advice. Let me go pray about this. Let me call to God. No, he doesn't do nothing. The very next verse, what does Abram do? He listens to the law, tired of a nagging wife.

And the Bible says—the reason these words are careful is because it's a narrative and therefore what it's saying is to get you to understand there's intercourse. It says he went into Hagar. Okay, didn't say he prayed. They didn't say this righteous man sought the Lord God, called the prayer ministry, and asked the prayer ministry what to do.

He didn't find somebody to pray with him and to seek godly advice. He didn't go back to God, set up an altar, and ask God's advice from the altar since God speaks to him directly. No, Abram listened to the laws of the day. He listened to what common sense says and Hagar became a story.

Now, many times we'd see we don't actually ask for problems. Sometimes other people's decisions give us problems. We could go to a job and people make decisions to merge a company and there you go, the company moves somewhere. You could decide that you want to be just as single and happy as ever, but somebody drags you into a relationship not telling you that they are married.

What do you do when you become Hagar? This is what we're going to study today. Hagar is thrown into this. She's caught up into this. Well, guess what God decides to let happen? A baby came. You know, God, you could have let her be barren because in Psalm 127:3, it says every child is a gift from God.

You are not an accident. That was a decision that God made for you to be here. God made that decision for us to be here and how long we live here, that's His decision too. There's a time to live and a time to die. God allowed this to happen.

And when He allowed this to happen, guess what happened? Hagar got an attitude. Where'd she get this bad attitude from? You see, a woman is technically not a great wife until she produces children in this culture. She's not.

So to Hagar, your God gave me a child, so technically I'm the wife and you're not. It's huge, it's a big deal. And Sarai don't have a child, but Hagar does. So Hagar says, "I'm the wife. You're not." And Hagar gets an attitude.

And the funny thing about this when they get caught up like this, Sarai is about to have no beef with this. She is not going to let this happen. I want you to see, Abraham is interesting... this gets worse. Here's a key thing when this gets worse: is that the husband gets quiet. He don't want to say nothing.

He's trying to keep the peace on this side, the peace on that side, and he is backing up. The man—anytime you see sin proliferate itself, in the Garden of Eden, when you see sin proliferate itself, it's because the man was at the tree and said nothing.

See, we go to the woman and we want to blame the woman. The first thing is, how did they get to the tree? There was a tree of life and a tree of good and evil. What were they even doing at the tree? And the man is quiet. What is Abraham doing here? Quiet.

"Woman, this is your problem. You started it. I didn't start it." Wait a minute. You still had a free will to decide whether or not you go to this woman or not go to this woman. You still had a decision. Aren't you the one listening to God? Aren't you the one going and hearing God speak to you directly?

God didn't come speak to Sarai; God came speak to Abraham. Aren't you listening to God? You're the one going to church. You sit right next to me at church. You go to the Bible and you say you're reading the Bible, having devotions when you fall asleep—I still believe you read it even though I saw your eyes closed. I still believe I had a godly man.

And now you're telling me that when this situation happened here, you ain't going to do nothing? No, you started it. You finish it. So Hagar is out here and guess what Sarai do? Two women in the kitchen is not a good experience. So Sarai treated her what? Oh, you got to study that word in Hebrew.

Sarai start putting out some blows. I mean, Sarai wasn't playing. The word literally means Sarai got a little violent. She wasn't harsh to her husband. Guess who she was harsh to: Hagar. So you got now two women fighting.

And what does Abraham do? "I love the Lord, He heard my cry. Hallelujah." Abraham don't say nothing while this mess is happening in his house. That's why the problem gets worse: it's because there's no leader. People are sinning and it gets worse.

Many times relationships get worse when people are not willing to stand up and do what is right, no matter what it cost. God is not expecting us to be perfect every day. But when we recognize what is wrong, do we stand up and say, "I messed up. I'm wrong. I should have done it this way"?

Or do we sit around and just play house? The comfort zones are play house. "I've been here ten years, folks know me, they know God is walking with me, my sheep is doing good, we are happy right now. We're doing good." I'm going to live in the comfort zone that I'm in. I'm not interested in fixing this problem. And sin continues to get like gangrene—worse.

Anytime we have problems in relationships, somebody has to stand up. Situations aren't great; they could be bad. But somebody has to stand up and say, "I'm going to make this right." If it's being right with the kid, if it's being right with the situation in terms of relatives, whatever they may be saying, I got to stand up and speak or it gets worse.

Many of our relationships got worse because nobody stood up to do what God called them do. That's why it's a mess. Not because of God. We knew what to do. We just don't want to do it because our attitudes and our feelings—like it was with Sarai—became our God.

That's why the Bible says, in order to follow Me, you must deny yourself. How you think, how you feel, what you used to do, what happened to you in the past—all irrelevant. Deny yourself and I'm calling it a cross. Pick it up. I didn't say pick up a wonderful experience. I didn't say pick up everything that's going to be great.

Pick it up! It's a cross. But remember, My yoke is easy, My burden is light. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, because then you will find an easier way through in the long run. But when you keep trying to do it your way, it gets worse.

It gets worse. Hagar leaves. Well, that created another problem. Did Hagar leave and go home? No. Remember when you got Ruth's story? The other lady went home. Hagar doesn't go home. Why doesn't Hagar go home?

Hagar doesn't go home because she's an Egyptian and she has a Semite child in her. Remember Joseph? You ever see Joseph eating with Egyptians? No. Why? He's a shepherd. They see shepherds as nasty. And they were. You'd be out in the fields for days and don't take a bath.

Then they would take their garments and stick it up in the sheep's nose because it would get gnats in it and the sheep would be going crazy because they had no defense mechanism and they would fall down and die. Then they had to shave the wool off the sheep or the sheep would fall on the grass and die. That's why the Bible says without God being our shepherd, we are no good. Abide in Me, I abide in you, or you become no good.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Pastor Cannings. It can be difficult to submit our feelings and emotions to God, but we see Hagar set those aside to obey God unwaveringly. And may God give us the grace to do just the same.

Friend, if you have questions about what it is to submit to God and how He can help us, then give us a call. Our number is 281-260-7402. That's 281-260-7402. Or you can log on to powerwalkministries.org to find us online. That's powerwalkministries.org.

Pastor Paul Cannings serves as senior pastor at Living Word Fellowship Church in Houston, Texas. If you're planning a visit to Houston or you don't have a home church there, we would love to see you this weekend.

Worship times on Sunday mornings are at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM. The church is located at 7350 T.C. Jester Boulevard in Houston. We hope to see you there this weekend. And now remember: the Lord delivered Hagar and blessed her son. He's a loving Father and works all things out for the good of those who love Him.