The Directions

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

THE DIRECTIONS

Gen 16:7-16

7 The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered. 9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." 10 The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count." 11 The angel of the LORD also said to her: "You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers." 13 She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me." 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. 15 So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

NIV

The encounter with this angel of the LORD sounds like what happened in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were hiding when they heard God in the garden and he asked them, “Where are you?”. Except this angel of the LORD asked her where she came from, as if he did not know, and where she was going. Perhaps the angel nor Hagar knew where she was going, for all she knew was that she was running away. We know that our Lord and God know exactly where we came from. In fact, he formed us in our mother’s womb, which tells us that we were placed in the precise family God intended us to be in. We were raised by the very parents that God determined and our past with all its experiences is what brought us to the point of our salvation. We cannot know the past of all our fellow believers, but they do, however, we believe we too were running away, not from our mistress as Hagar was, but from God. It could have been an angel of the Lord, however, it had to be the Holy Spirit who finally got through to us, convicting us. Still, we know it was the Lord who ordered our footsteps to the place of our confession of faith in him. He knows where we came from and he knows where we are going, both in a physical and spiritual sense. Just as Hagar followed the directions of the angel of the Lord, it is always good for us to follow the directions of the Lord. Sometimes he may require us to backtrack or go back a few steps if we get ahead of him and start following our own path. It is always good to wait upon the Lord, to be still and know that He is God, and He has us in the palm of his hand, and that He will direct us in the way we should go. Living a Christian life is more than just being a Christian. We have noticed Christians who seem to live their own lives, follow their own plans for life, and add Jesus to their lives. We wonder if that is true, or just our perception. We cannot help but think that Hagar was not exactly pleased to go back to submission to Sarai, but that is what she did, because of the directions of the angel of the LORD. Let us always be willing to go or stay only because of the direction of our Lord. Let us always be willing to follow the directions.