Get Me Out of the Wilderness!Muestra

Do you know where your name came from? Were you named for a family member, a friend of your parent(s), a famous person, or a person from the Bible?

Names have great power. Throughout the Bible, we see many names for God. The Good Shepherd. Father. King of Kings. Lord of Lords.

But, do you know where the first name for God came from?

The first person to name God wasn’t a patriarch, judge, king, prophet, apostle, or anyone of high stature. The first person to give God a name in the Bible was a servant of Abraham and Sarah - an Egyptian woman named Hagar.

In Genesis 16, Hagar has a child with Abraham, thinking she has his wife Sarah’s blessing. But, her son drives a wedge in this family and Hagar runs away with him into the desert and takes refuge near a spring.

In the wilderness - the place she never wanted to be - she runs into the last person she expected to find. God spoke to her in a way that let her know that she had not been abandoned. He promised to be with and to bless her offspring. He told her what kind of man this child would grow up to be.

Hagar’s response was the first of its kind in the Bible. "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.’”

When you’re in the wilderness, God sees you. In fact, we may find God closer to us in the wilderness than during our previous experiences of ease and abundance.

Several years ago, I found myself in the wilderness. I experienced night after night of panic attacks. Unable to sleep for hours on end, it felt like a wilderness. I was being tested - a test I didn't want or ask for!

My wilderness with anxiety left me feeling out of control and wobbly. I was uncertain where this anxiety had come from and when it would ever leave. I didn’t know who I could share it with, and prayer felt more difficult than normal. “God, make this stop,” was my most common prayer.

Like us, Hagar ended up in the wilderness asking some big questions.

Does God see?

Does God care?

Can God do anything about my situation?

Her wilderness experience led to a profound encounter with God, which answered her questions.

She named God “El Roi,” which means “The God Who Sees (Me).”

She names her son Ishmael, which means “God hears.”

She leaves the wilderness filled with hope. God has promised to bless her children.

If you’re in the wilderness today, I invite you to consider how God used the wilderness in the life of Hagar, along with countless other people in Scripture. I encourage you to press into God and pour your heart out to Him.

Leave space for God in the wilderness. Like Hagar, what if the place you never wanted to be became the place where you found your greatest prayers answered and your deepest needs met?

I believe God is going to use the wilderness in your life like He did Hagar's. But, that may involve you shifting your expectations of God.

We'll dive into that subject in Day 2!