One Hot Mess!

“The LORD has kept me from having children. Go…perhaps I can build a family through her’…Then Sarai said, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.’” Gen. 16 2, 5

This story is one of long-suffering, unmet needs, manipulation and calculating without God. It could be your story and it has been mine. It is a story about a woman whom had decided that her identify would be found in producing a family. Her timing was not the same as God’s timing. She took matters into her own hands and created a situation filled with pain and despair for all. After she demanded Abram, her husband, to sleep with Hagar, their maidservant, Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael. Hatred, jealousy and dissention followed suit.

Sarai had a deep desire in her heart that went unmet for years beyond the practicality of it coming to pass. God had previously given His promise of conception and motherhood to her, but Sarai was impatient and unbelieving. She jumped ahead of God and built her own Ishmael which turned out to be what my children call ‘ONE HOT MESS!’

Turn ahead to Gen. 21:1 – ‘Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised.’ There we have it – many times God is going to give us the desires of our heart if it aligns with His will, but we must wait upon His timing. There will always be purpose in our wait. We cannot jump to Chapter 21 in our lives when God has us in Chapter 16. We must sit in wait and allow God to turn each precious page in our lives according to His will and His perfect timing.

Many times in my own life I have created my own Ishmaels requiring God to clean up my messes. The name Ishmael means God hears. How amazing is His grace that from the depths of the Ishmaels for which we create He hears our cries. He sees our pain resulting from our own manipulation and puts in place a recovery plan…a plan of love, restoration and blessings.

The LORD will do what He has promised if we will allow Him full access to our book of life. We must exist within the pages for which He orchestrates and not try to live in a future chapter. It is when we try to write our own book in our own timing that Ishmaels are born.

‘…and the LORD did…what he had promised.’