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Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday and I want to welcome you to our study through
the book of Genesis in Daily Drive Time Devotions. This is week four and we're
going to be looking at chapter sixteen to twenty this week. A chapter a day
instead of a chapter a week as we're walking through this Old Testament book of
Genesis.

Last week as we began our look at the life of Abraham, we saw the life of
someone who's called the father of our faith and he's called the father of our
faith, we learned together because of two simple choices that he made. He moved
to the promised land and he trusted God for a son. Very simple promises and the
realities of life but right there, those are the defining moments of Abraham's
life.

In your life, my life, our lives have a few defining moments. Many of us, we
spend a lot of our time trying to manage the minutes of our lives. It's most
essential to manage these defining moments of our lives.

Part of good time management is learning to see and to seize these defining
moments. It's not good to be great at the details of life while managing every
hour, every day, every minute and to miss how you define these moments of your
life. Genesis is about how Abraham handled with faith these defining moments of
his life.

Defining moments like his greatest dream, his greatest weakness and his greatest
sacrifice. Those are the defining moments that you face, I face, your greatest
dream, your greatest weakness, your greatest sacrifice and how you handle that,
whether it's with faith or with fear, is going to determine everything about
your life in Christ. We began our look at defining moment number one in
Abraham's life this last week, his greatest dream and how he handled that and we
saw together, we began to learn together that he struggled his way to faith.

His first answer to this dream of God's going to make of me a great nation and
the fact that there was not a son, a child being born into his life, his first
answer was I'll have to settle for less. This relative in my house, Eliezer, you
remember us talking about him last week. And then we began to talk about a
second answer that Abraham had.

A second answer is I'll have to get it myself. Not settle for less, but God,
it's taking too long, it's not working out, I'm going to have to get it myself.
We saw that begin last week, but it really comes into full form in chapter 16.

Let me read for you Genesis 16 verses 1 to 5. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne
him no children, but she had an Egyptian maid servant named Hagar. So she said
to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having children.

Go sleep with my maid servant, perhaps I can build a family through her. " Abram
agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years,
Sarai, his wife, took her Egyptian maid servant Hagar and gave her to her
husband to be his wife.

He slept with Hagar and she conceived. When she knew that she was pregnant, she,
Hagar, began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are
responsible for the wrong that I am suffering.

I put my servant in your arms and now that she knows that she is pregnant, she
despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me. " Now these verses are all
about faith and Abraham deciding he was going to find a way and Sarai with them
that they were going to get for themselves what God was not giving.

I want to talk about that in just a moment, but before that there are some other
issues in these verses. Many of us read this and we question the morality of
these verses. Even though in Abram's day it was a common practice for a woman to
give her maid servant to a husband and to have children through that maid
servant, we see God even blessing some of those families, some of those children
throughout the book of Genesis.

Even though this was a common practice, these verses show us how dangerous this
immorality really was. You see it in Abram's own household. In fact, in all that
happens here, you realize and recognize the dangers of what I would call a
do-it-yourself faith.

Instead of trusting in God, they're trusting in themselves. Instead of trusting
in God's plan, they're saying, "Well, God, here's our plan, and now let's say
that this is your plan. I'll have to get it myself.

" What are the dangers of a do-it-yourself faith? Well, there are four of them,
shortcuts, short-sighted, short-term, and short-changed. Those four things.

First, you recognize a do-it-yourself faith and the danger of it. I'll get it
myself faith and the danger of it when you see shortcuts. Instead of waiting for
what God wants, you find the easiest way, you find the quickest way to get what
you believe God wants in your life.

It may truly be what he wants in your life, but you feel like if I can't get it
the shortest way, it's never going to arrive. You don't have to read the Bible
for long, beginning in Genesis and reading all the way through the book of
Revelation, to realize that waiting is a part of God's plan. There is no doubt
about it.

God has us wait many times for his plan to come into fruition in our lives. It's
obvious there are many reasons for that. While we're waiting, we're growing.

While we're waiting, we're trusting. While we're waiting, God is stretching us.
There are many things that are happening as we're waiting, but we don't like to
wait.

I don't. I guess that you don't either. And because we don't like to wait, we
look for shortcuts to get to God's plan, what we think is God's plan in our
lives.

Getting to God's plan does not involve shortcuts. Getting to God's plan involves
God's plan going his direction. But here's Abram and here's Sarai saying, "Well,
God, here's our shorter way to get to what you want.

" Now, the question for me, the question for you is, where are you taking a
shortcut right now with God's plan? God's plan for your ministry, God's plan for
your family, God's plan for a business, God's plan for your education, God's
plan for your life, how he wants to use you. How are you taking a shortcut?

One of the reasons we take a shortcut is the second major danger in what I would
call a and that is short-sighted. We take shortcuts because we're short-sighted.
Great ideas, our greatest ideas as human beings are often short-sighted.

You and I as human beings, we can only see so far. We can't see the future. We
certainly can't see eternity.

Just think with me for a moment. What if you read this story today of Abraham
and Sarah and Hagar and you recognize that the way that God's promised one came
into their lives, this one who was going to foreshadow even the promise of Jesus
coming into our lives, was through a maidservant, not even being born, not even
having to wait for Sarah to have a child. What if today we read this story and
that's how it had happened?

Abraham had no idea, Sarah had no idea that one day thousands upon thousands of
years later you and I would still be reading this story as a story of faith.
They were just trying to get to what they thought was God's answer for their
lives. They didn't know how it was going to affect others.

They were short-sighted. And when you and I get in a hurry with God's plan, we
always get short-sighted. And one of the ways we always get short-sighted is we
forget how much it's going to affect other people, how my getting to God's plan
more quickly, even if I succeed, is going to affect my kids, my friends, my
small group, the other people in my life.

It's short-sighted. The third thing about a "I'll get it myself, I'll do it
myself" faith is it's always short-term. It doesn't last.

Oh, they had this great plan and for a moment it even seemed like it was going
to be successful. Hagar becomes pregnant. She has a baby.

But even before she has the baby, even the moment she knows that she's pregnant,
she begins to despise her mistress. They had this momentary release of pressure
when they realized that Hagar was pregnant. Wow, maybe this is the way that
God's going to accomplish His promise in our lives.

But it immediately sets off this nuclear reaction of stress in their lives. Them
trying to release the pressure of waiting for God's plan created greater stress
in their lives than they could have ever imagined. And not only in their lives,
but we're going to talk about in a moment, also even in our lives today.

That's how it often happens. We think we want to get to God's plan. So we say
the way for me to get to God's plan for my relationships is to cut off that
relationship, maybe even that marriage, or maybe even that relationship with one
of my children.

I will never talk to them again. And you might feel better for a moment. But
what happens in the long term is deep pain, deep loss.

It's a short term solution, but it creates a long term pain. It's short term.
That's what happens when we do it ourselves.

How could anything else happen? We just can't see the future. It's shortcuts.

It's short sighted. It's short term. And because of all that, we become
shortchanged.

Nothing happens like we thought it was going to happen. Abram and Sarai, they
thought, we're going to build a family. We're going to build God's promise.

And they almost destroyed two families. They almost destroyed our view of God's
promise. If God had allowed them to do this, it would have done that.

He would have had to work through someone else. In Abram's own family,
immediately there was stress. There was fighting.

We're going to see even more of it in the verses to come and the weeks to come.
There was immediate stress in their family. And that stress has continued to
today.

So Hagar does have a child, a child by the name of Ishmael. And Ishmael becomes
the father of the Arab nations. And I don't want to let you in on too much, but
I think most of you know that Sarah and Abraham are going to have a child, and
they're going to name him Isaac.

And he's going to become the father of the Israeli nations. Arab and Israel
still fighting today. A family squabble that started back then multiplied into
the thousands and millions today.

Why? Because Abraham and Sarah trusted themselves instead of God. Now, am I
saying that exact kind of terrible result is going to happen when you do that?

No. Abram and Sarah stood at a hinge point in history, and everything that they
were going to do was going to affect people for thousands of years to come. It
may not affect as many people, but it will affect people.

It will affect your family. It will affect your life. What am I saying?

I'm saying God's plan is worth waiting for. I'm saying that to myself as well as
to you. We get tired of waiting.

So we want to get there more quickly. So we think I'll do it myself. And God
says, no, I've got a better plan.

Let's take a minute to talk to this God who loves us. And as we pray, Lord
Jesus, today, we want to recognize together that your plan is a plan that we can
trust. There are so many times when we want to rush ahead.

And you know, sometimes it's just because we're impatient. We just get tired of
waiting. Other times it's because we have great passion.

We really want to do something for you. And it's not happening as fast as we
want it to happen. Whether the motivation is selfish or whether the motivation
is thinking about others.

You know that really it's focused on us and not you. So I pray right now with
whatever we're having to wait for. Whatever plan we're making to take the place
of your plan, God show us.

Help us to see it. And as we see it, help us to trust you instead. Instead of
trying to get it myself, Lord, help me to trust in you.

I pray this, Jesus, in your name. And we'll see you back tomorrow. Tomorrow,
we're going to see in Chapter 17 how God helps us to deal with this tendency
that we have to do things on our own power.