The Family That Forms Us.

Happy Sunday. We are in week two of our new series called This is My Story. If you missed last week, it'll be helpful if you listen to all the messages in this series so it all comes together. But if you didn't listen last week, one of the things we talked about is we started talking about this idea that we were all born into a story. When you entered into this world, you were born into a family. You were born into a people that formed you, that shaped you. When you walked into this room today, you're all carrying a story. Some of us know each other's stories. Some of us don't.

When we come here together, all of a sudden our stories are clashing and intersecting. Sometimes it's really good and beautiful. And sometimes it's messy because we are all walking in with a story and entering in each other's stories. But the beauty is that we are a part of a greater story that God has been writing for all of eternity.

Our stories shape us

Last week we talked about this and we also talked about a helpful tool called the Genogram, where we start to look back at our family to say, who's in my family? Who's there? We're going to continue that today. Our so what for today is we're talking about the people, the family that forms us, and this recognizing that you have been formed and are being formed by the people around you.

Your so what is this: you have been formed and are being formed by the people around you. Your now what is this: know your role, start to understand who am I, what role do I play in this story, and what's my responsibility.

We're going to start by reading a scripture that's a famous passage. It's in Genesis 16. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Genesis a lot today, between Genesis 16 and 21. Some of you maybe if you grew up in church heard versions of these stories in Sunday school. You might have heard about Father Abraham and his many sons. But maybe it's been a while since you've read it through the adult lens of scripture.

In Genesis 16, it says:

Now Sarah, Abraham's wife had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abraham, the Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps I can build my family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarai had said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, you are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms and now she knows she is pregnant and she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. You're a slave is in your hands, Abram said. Do with her whatever you think best. Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her.

Genesis 16:1-6

Now I want to pause here. Oftentimes we read this story and all these stories in Genesis with kind of Abraham as the main character. But I want you to think as we read the scripture, what was it like from Sarah's perspective as the main character? What was it like from Hagar's perspective as the main character?

Verse seven continues and says:

The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. It was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress, she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, go back to your mistress and submit to her. The angel added, I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count. The angel of the Lord also said to her, you are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hands will be against everyone and everyone's hands against him. And he will live in hostility towards all his brothers. 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. That is why the well was called Beer Lahalroi. It is still there between Kadesh and Bered. So Hagar bore Abram a son and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had born. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

Genesis 16:7-16

The main character is always God

Have you ever been in a group of people and somebody tells you a story and you've already heard somebody else tell you the same story but from their perspective? Like three of your friends were hanging out and you weren't there that night. And then later you're with them and they start telling you about what took place. You've now heard it from all these different perspectives. Typically the details are kind of the same. But the things that shifted, depending on who's telling the story, it's usually centered around their experience, what they were feeling, what they were thinking, how they perceive the activities that took place.

We all naturally do the thing where we make ourselves the main character. This is a hard challenge that we have in life because we are ourselves, we're always thinking about ourselves when we walk in a room. Rarely are we thinking, oh, I wonder what that person's going to be wearing. But we're like, what is everyone going to think about me? We have this tendency to just make ourselves the main character. And in doing this, we can often forget that we also are entering into other people's stories. We can forget that there's also other people around us that are seeing themselves in the same way.

I grew up outside of Chicago and I still to this day feel like I can be a tour guide for all the sightseeing in Chicago. One of the things I have probably taken people to more times than I can count is the Bean. And one of the things I always say, everybody licks the bean the first time they see it. Don't do it. It's disgusting.

But I've taken so many people to the bean, but one of my favorite things to do is after going to the bean, go on Instagram and you can see the tagged locations and see like, did I make it in anybody's pictures? Did I make it in the background? I don't intentionally try to photobomb, but I have caught where I'm like, oh, that's my hair. That's my ponytail in the corner of their picture.

It's this like weird moment where you think about it. Whether it's like Disney or all these big sites, when you have a photo framed and there's all these strangers in the background, you're the center, like we're probably on somebody's wall somewhere. Like there's probably the back of your head in the background of someone's photo there. It's this constant reminder to think about that when we're taking a photo centered around us, there's all these people that we just think are background characters when they're having their own main character moment too. And we're a background character for them.

But the reality is that all of us are all playing a role in God's story and the story that he is telling. When we're reading this story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, oftentimes it's told about Abraham. Yes, all these chapters about God's call on Abraham and the covenant and all of this, and we can get caught up maybe for a moment in believing he's the main character. But it's all about God. It's all about his promises. It's all about how he was and is and will continue to be present and faithful to his people because it's all about him.

The sooner that we can realize that it's not about us, the sooner that we can realize that it's not about anybody in this room but about God and his purpose and his plans, and we're able to surrender to what he is doing, the sooner we're going to feel that weight lifted and the freedom to then be and enter into who God is inviting us to be and the roles he's inviting us to play.

God provides even in our disobedience

Let me summarize a lot of scripture here. In Genesis 13, 14, 15, essentially what we see is that God had this call on Abram. Abram left and went to Egypt, but God didn't tell him to go to Egypt. Egypt is a place where a lot of bad things happen for Abraham. He would still have been Abram at this point, but a lot of things happen. In this place in Egypt, this is where he lied and there's a story of him telling people that Sarah was his sister when she was really his wife. This is an interesting thing too, because she was his half sister. So I always think this is a fascinating thing where it was kind of like a half lie, which is still a lie, right?

He creates a lot of strife on the land of Egypt because of all the things that he was doing. There's the separation that takes place from Abraham and Lot. But God continues in Genesis 13 and 14 to have these moments where he gets close to Abraham and he reminds him of the call. He reminds him of the promise. He reminds him that he has a chance to turn and to be obedient.

What I love about this is this continues to show us that God will continue to guide us in our wandering, that God will continue to come after us and to go with us in moments, even when we go to places he told us not to go or never told us to go in the first place. He will still be there reminding us of the call. We also read here that Abraham builds the altar where he has that first tithe moment. He gives a tenth of his goods back to God when he decides to turn and to go where God is asking him.

Then we see in Genesis 15 that the covenant with Abraham is kind of like restored. But before we dive more into this story, I want to talk about Egypt for a moment. Egypt was a wealthy, flourishing place at this time. Egypt would have looked fulfilling. And remember, Abram knows like there's this massive promise on his life. Generations are going to be blessed through him. So he's now living his life with this identity of, like, God's going to use me to do some really great stuff. So you can kind of start to see him in that humanization of, he's probably looking now, well, where's the big things, God? Like, if you're going to use me to bless people, I probably need some blessings myself, right?

So you can see this draw to go to Egypt. You can see this draw for him to go to the wealth and to the blessings and the possessions. We see here that it's known that in Egypt, Abraham acquired great wealth. One of the things that he's known to have acquired during this time is Hagar as a slave, as Sarah's maidservant. Yet this was not where God called him to go. But he's there and he's accumulating all of these things during this season of disobedience.

So God promises him a son. We see now in Genesis 16, he's like ready to obey. He's ready to get on the right path. He's like, okay, I've been waiting. I've been trying. But like, I know that I need a son.

It's notable here to know that Hagar is believed to have been acquired in Egypt. What I think is important for us to note here is that when we're picking up in Genesis 16, Abraham is returning back towards God and the path that God has invited him to live. Yet there's still some residue and some things he's carrying from his season of disobedience. I wonder for anyone else today, if you feel like you're in a place where you're like, I'm trying to turn back towards God and I'm going and I feel like things still aren't quite feeling right. Could it be that there's still some residue from the seasons of disobedience? Could it be that we're still trying to carry through some things into this season that we needed to leave behind?

The role we play in God's story

When we're reading this, we think it's just Abraham as the main character because God has great promises for him, right? And this is true. God is going to use him. But God's going to use him to play a role in his story. God's going to use Abraham to bless generations and nations for God's glory.

So today I wonder, who are the characters in your life? When you think of the people that have come before you, who are the people that have formed you? Because Abraham had people like Sarah in his life as his wife, who is now forming him and starting to shape him. And they're kind of in this moment where they're like, okay, we know we need a son to make this happen. How are we going to get this done?

You can imagine being in that moment where in a way that was, again, kind of fulfilling the promise that God had given them. And they're even having this moment of back and forth of like, well, God didn't technically say it has to be through Sarah? Like, how can we make this happen?

The people around us, as we follow God, form us and shape us. Are they people that are forming us into the likeness of Jesus or not? What's happening here in this story is so many different dynamics. We see Sarah here who's desperately wanting to bear a child, and it's just not happening yet. She's growing weary. She's growing tired. She's growing impatient.

So much of your identity as a woman was wrapped up in can you bear children? If not, like you were at risk of being thrown out and completely betrayed. We see Isaac and Ishmael who are about to be born into these situations that they didn't ask for. Like they did nothing and they're just born and they take their first breath into chaos without having anything to deserve it. I wonder today if anyone can relate to that, where maybe there's situations that you stepped into and you're like, I didn't ask for this. And now what is my response?

And then you have Hagar who is here being mistreated and abused, something that she didn't ask for. And what is her response?

You don't choose the family that forms you, but you can choose to be transformed. We have a choice to step into transformation that only Jesus can give us. We can't choose our family of origin. We can't choose the family we were born into, but we can choose how we respond to that.

Sarah and Abraham, they're here. They're justifying their sin. They're saying those things like, well, technically, does it have to be you? And we always think of like the great father Abraham and all of his sons. And it's like, well, not all of what he did was great. There were some things that he did that were not so great, and some of his sons that were not born in such holy and incredible ways.

Here, especially in this moment, it's like the sin was not just sleeping with a woman that wasn't his wife. There was so much more that was happening here in this story. But what we see after that is in Genesis 17, we see that there's a new covenant made, the covenant of circumcision. This outward expression now of this internal covenant where Abraham is turning back to God. And it's that reminder for us that no matter what and where we find ourselves, that there is an invitation for us to come and to be transformed by the power of Jesus and to step back into that relationship with him.

You can't control circumstances, but you can control your response

We see this now in Genesis 21, verses 1 through 21. We see the story of Hagar being cast out. What happens here is Sarah sees the son and she says to Abraham, she goes, get rid of this slave woman and her son. And Abraham listened. God then tells Abraham, you can listen, which is a really tricky thing to navigate.

These are still part of that consequences and the residue of sin. It's important for us when we're reading scripture like this, especially in the Old Testament to recognize a lot of times we're reading these like historical stories of things that happen, right? It's not like prescriptive for us, but it's describing these stories. So we look at it through a lens of the whole Bible, not saying like, this is exactly how we're supposed to make decisions and live today.

Abraham, he's promised the father of many nations, but then we see like he took on an abusive role with Hagar. And now he's coming back and he's turning towards God and he's trying to provide and he's trying to navigate things with his wife, Sarah. We see Sarah shifting blame. We see Sarah abusing and mistreating Hagar, but we also see a lot of times in the story, she's cast as like this leading lady. And then we see Hagar here, who is now this mother who has been the victim to all this abuse.

And how does she respond to it? Well, we see Abraham continues to walk in faith and he does repent. We see Sarah kind of struggle back and forth with this blame shifting of what took place. Because she's still not satisfied even after she had Isaac and got what she longed for. Which is always telling us that sometimes the things that we think are going to satisfy us are still just pointing us to Jesus, the only one that truly can.

And Hagar, we see her continue to walk and continue to turn to God because God heard and God saw and God never left her.

Every role carries the responsibility to change the narrative

The last thing I want to talk about today is this idea that no role is removed from the responsibility of changing the narrative. This is a tough one to think about because I think about Hagar in this story and I think about how she's often painted in this whole narrative. Yet she continued to lean in and to take responsibility for things that weren't even her fault. But she recognized the opportunity to turn towards God anyway.

Some people could say, and oftentimes when we look at situations like that with Hagar, like she had every excuse to say things like, well, this isn't my fault. I didn't ask for this. But instead she kept going and kept looking for where God was at. She had every excuse to stay stuck in the shame that she would have been feeling.

And sometimes we find ourselves there where we think, well, I'm not really the main character here. Like this wasn't really my fault. I didn't ask for this. So somebody else should fix this or somebody else should be responsible for this. Or we say like, well, I'm not the main character and like it's all on them to take care of it.

But the reality is that it's not about us. It's all about God and his plan and his purpose and his promises. This does not negate the pain that we walk through. OK, I want you to hear that. We need to grieve. We need to lament. We need to bring our pain to God. But it does mean that God sees us in the midst of that. And he has purpose that he's going to use that for, even if he didn't purpose that pain to happen to you.

God tells Abraham to listen to Sarah and to send them away. And then verses later, we see him saying, once again, what is the matter? And open her eyes to see water.

It's only a few verses later in Genesis chapter 21 that we read this account happening, but we have no idea how long she was wandering. We have no idea how long she was out there. What we do know is that now Hagar is a refugee. She was a slave that's now out on her own. She's now a single mother with a son. She has no place to lay her head. They've been walking for, we have no idea how long.

Genesis 21:14-15 says:

He sent her away with their son and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water was gone, she put the boy in the shade of a bush. Then she went and sat down by herself about a hundred yards away and said, I don't want to watch the boy die.

Genesis 21:14-15

She said as she burst into tears. Think about what's happening for Hagar in this moment. She's recognizing there's nothing else that I can do. I find myself in this situation where I'm a slave. I'm mistreated. I'm abused. I now gave birth to a son and I'm mistreated even more because of this. And now I'm sent away and I have nothing. And even the water that I had to sustain us, it's gone.

But there was a bush. There was a bush. Even the smallest bush can provide shade that protects and restores and brings safety in the midst of the wilderness. She ran out of the basic needs to survive. She didn't ask for any of this. And from what she knows in this moment, she didn't do anything to deserve it. Yet she kept on walking and a bush was there.

Genesis 21:17-18 continues:

God heard the boy crying and the angel called to Hagar from heaven. Hagar, what's wrong? Do not be afraid. God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great nation from his descendants.

Genesis 21:17-18

He said, go and comfort him. You have a choice to change the narrative today. Hagar had every single excuse to not keep walking, to not keep moving forward. But do you notice what's happening here? In her moment of being cast out, mistreated, and betrayed, she still sees, I have a son now. I have a generation. I have someone to care for and to comfort. And so she goes and she comforts him.

Genesis 21:19 says:

God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well full of water. She quickly filled the water container and gave the boy a drink.

Genesis 21:19

The water was there just when she needed it. And she then gave it away for her son to drink. I want you to catch here that in her wandering and in her desperation and being tired and thirsty and worn out, that the well was there. And God opened her eyes to see it. But first, the bush was there when she needed shade and protection and safety and rest. You see all along that God is preparing the way, that God was present in the story, that God is providing for Hagar in this story.

But Hagar had to be aware and she had to look and to have eyes to see the bush. Hagar had to allow God and invite him to give her that awareness of the well that was right there, that had the water that she was longing for.

When I say this, this is not like when you're tired and you're desperate, this is not a like, okay, just, you know, snap out of it, keep going, like pull up your bootstraps kind of moment. This is a, I need to slow down long enough so that I can say, God, where are you? I want to hear your voice. I need to slow down long enough and rest long enough so that my eyes can see clearly where God has already provided and what he has provided right in front of me.

God, I'm desperate and I know that your presence is the only thing that can heal. God, I'm tired and I know that you're the only one that can give me rest. God, I am so thirsty and dehydrated. I'm afraid like if I don't have water now that I'm going to die. And the well, all of a sudden is there. It's saying, God, show me how you've gone before. God, show me how you prepared the way. Show me that you hear my cry, that you see my tears in the same way that you heard Hagar and you saw her tears. Show me that you are with me.

This is what we need in our times of desperation. What I love about Hagar and in her role is that she had every excuse not to, but she still took responsibility to heal and to change, even though she was tossed aside, even though she was rejected, even though she had every reason not to, she chose to lean in anyway. To say yes to the invitation to move forward. To say yes to saying this may have been my story before, but it's not anymore. And I'm ready for a better story. She leaned into a story of saying, Holy Spirit, comfort me, heal me, guide me, lead me in your love. Fill me so that I can bring healing to generations to come.

Our invitation to redemption

What I want you to see and to process for a moment is the common denominator in all of these characters. For Abraham, for Sarah, for Hagar, they were all born into stories, born into families that formed them. They were all born into situations that had these expectations of who they were supposed to be, what they were supposed to do.

Abraham didn't just by chance end up going to Egypt, right? There's probably people around him that were like, hey, if God's going to use you to bless people, Egypt's the place to go. Go there, do this. He didn't just have a slave by chance. That didn't just happen, but it was a part of the culture. It was a part of what was happening around him. So it was like, well, I guess this is okay. Well, we never see God saying that that was okay.

So these things that we were never told were of God or were for God's glory became normal for him because of the people around him. They had that common thread. They were all born into stories. And they had a choice in that. They had an invitation in that to say, am I going to really take time to understand the role that I'm playing in this greater narrative?

I wonder if they had slowed down, if Abraham would have slowed down and not just been like, well, Sarah's got the answers over here. If he would have slowed down to hear from God before he heard from his wife in that situation, not that you shouldn't consult your spouses when you're trying to hear from God, but if he would have taken that type of time to really say, God, like, what are you saying? Not what are the people around me saying, not what's my go to in this situation, but God, what are you saying in this moment?

How would that have changed the narrative? How would that have prevented the harm that was caused on Hagar, on Ishmael, on generations to come because of some of the choices that were made there? But the next is that they all had an invitation to redemption, not based on the role that they played, but on the role that God played, because his character was consistent to always provide a way out, a path forward, and a redemptive story of healing.

It took all of them saying yes and taking responsibility to continue to live in that story. Because Sarah, she battled with shame. You read that over and over again. She battled with so much shame. But she had to choose to not be stuck in that but to be set free. Abraham could have been held back by the regret of some of his choices, but he continued to move forward in that covenant with God and say, God, use me. And Hagar, she could have identified with the abuse and the mistreatment, but they all moved forward.

So whether you have been the person where you've been mistreated by the people around you or your family, or even you're like, there's things that I've done to people that I need to ask forgiveness for, there is forgiveness found in Jesus. He is the new covenant, the new blood that was shed to pay the price for the forgiveness of our sins. We get to now surrender to not only his death and dying with him, but his resurrection and being raised to walk with him in the new life, the new life that is possible because of his resurrection.

But it takes us surrendering to God's presence, God's Holy Spirit at work. It takes us surrendering the idea that we might not be the main character and that actually might be the best news ever. It just causes you to take a deep breath to realize that there's something bigger happening.

I was thinking about this today. All my stories are about Chicago right now but one of the other things about growing up near Chicago is there's a lot of movies that are filmed there. So I never went downtown to be an extra, but it was like a common thing that people would go and they would be an extra in movies. There's like one famous story where growing up, I always laugh. I was not allowed to wear bikinis as bathing suits, but my mom's famous story is that her bikini was in the Blues Brothers growing up. She'd always be like, if you watch, that's my bikini in the Blues Brothers.

People will like call off work and go to like just be an extra in a movie. It's one of those moments where for so many people it's like they don't even really care like how much they're in it. They don't really care like who else is in it. But it's just this idea of being part of something, right? Being a part of this story. Sharing a screen with you know this celebrity or that celebrity.

What does it look like for us to show up into a room and to say I don't even really care what role that I have to play here God. I don't care what role you're asking me to play. I don't care how much I'm shown or how much I'm not shown, but I recognize that there's something bigger happening in this story and I just want to be here. I want to be in the room. I want to be present. I want to look back and say I was there when God was at work and he was doing those things.

It causes us to surrender to the greater story. To say it's not about me, but it's all about Jesus and what he is doing.

Closing: surrender to his story

When we start to lean into this, we recognize that it goes beyond us. It takes so much pressure off that we try to carry when we think that we have to get it all right. Abraham had many mistakes and many moments, even more moments to turn back to God.

So today, if you're in a place where you're looking and you're like, yeah, I don't love the people that have formed me. I don't love the things that I still maybe carry from those seasons. There's an invitation to surrender that today at the feet of Jesus and to say, take it. I don't want to walk into this new season holding on to the things that I acquired in my season of disobedience.

If you're looking and you're like, I don't love the things that have happened to me, and maybe I've been thinking that it's on everybody else to fix it. There's a moment to surrender and to say, God, I want my identity to be found in you and who you say I am and not this anymore.

Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. God, we thank you today for the invitation that we have to continue to come and to surrender to the story that you are writing and the roles that you are inviting us to play. God, I thank you that you are a God who redeems, that you are a God that restores, that you are a God that continues to change the narrative and you invite us to surrender to that.

So God, I just pray as we move from this place that we continue to move to surrender to you, recognizing that the biggest responsibility that we have is to surrender to your Holy Spirit at work. To continue to ask those questions when we wake up to say, God, where are you? God, what are you doing? God, where is that bush? Where is that well? Where have you already provided? And would you give me eyes to see it? Would you give me ears to hear?

And God, would your Holy Spirit empower me to walk in that direction, to walk in that faith, to not stay stuck in shame or stay stuck in words that have been spoken over us, not to stay stuck in false identities that we have taken on, but to leave it all at the feet of Jesus, to let it die so that we too can be raised to walk with you in that new life. And so we thank you for the story of redemption that we can say today, this is my story. We thank you, God, and we give you all the glory. In your name we pray. Amen.