Missions Paul

Your plan B may be great, but God still works with His Plan A.

The following verses show that God will bless what we create, but He still asks us to trust Him for what He will create.

“Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. ²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. ²¹ But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” ²² When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him.” (Genesis 17 v 19-22)

God tells Abraham he has been heard. Plan B has been seen, but God still wants plan A.

Suddenly, after years of waiting, the promise is given a timeline, ‘by this time next year’. God has increased the stakes of faith. Everyone can believe in something that will happen in the future, but when a time is given, it brings a challenge. If next year comes and there is no baby, then the promise is false.

God gives a time, and then at the end of v22 we have the hard part – ‘God went up from him’.

No more talking, confirming, negotiating. God has gone. God leaves Abraham with the promise for the next 12 months and then leaves.

This is faith, and where it lives in the waiting and in the silence.

Abraham is 100 years of age, and now he has to wait one more year. How did he wait?

All he had were the words that God said to him.

I will establish …

I will surely bless him;

I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers.

I will make him into a great nation.

I will establish my covenant with Isaac.

Perhaps today all you have is what God said to you, “I will.”

You’re not responsible for making His will work. You are responsible for holding the ‘I will’ of God in situations within your life.

That gap between God’s word and God’s fulfilment of that word is called faith. It can be one of the most difficult times of your life, especially if all that you can see is impossibility.

“God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. ¹⁶ I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” ¹⁷ Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” ¹⁸ And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!” (Genesis 17 v 15-18)

Abraham is again on his face. He’s back down on the floor, lying before the presence of God. He is laughing, not out of joy but out of sheer disbelief. He’s 100 years old, and Sarah (God changed her name) is 90 years old. We understand that, don’t we? It is the most ridiculous thought. Abraham probably had many reasons running through his mind, all connected to one big question: how?

Maybe you are asking that simple question today: how?

If you are, then it could be that you are also thinking the same thought that Abraham had next. How can I help God out?

“God, we have sorted it already, we have a boy, he is my son, Ishmael, that was a miracle in itself, let’s work with what we have got.”

Maybe the math doesn’t work for you either? But you have a backup plan. It’s as if God has forgotten. He must be impressed with our wisdom!

Thousands of years later, nothing much has changed, in that we still struggle to live between promise and fulfilment.

And like Abraham, we too wrestle with the impossibility, and we too come up with plan B, C and sometimes the whole alphabet, and yes, our imagination can cause us to disbelieve that we find the whole thing humorous.

God seems very gracious, and we see His response tomorrow.

Perhaps the lesson is that faith isn’t the absence of doubt, the thoughts of trying to get to fulfilment with human wisdom, or even the act of laughter. But faith may be holding those responses, but doing so, face down on the floor, prostrate in worship to God.

That’s the gap of faith. It can be challenging. The way forward is to fall before God and to keep talking to Him. He is patient, and He will speak.

Salvation is purely by grace and cannot be earned through actions. You may not think circumcision contributes to salvation, but neither do practices like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church attendance. We must avoid legalistic teachers; they distract from grace. Moses and Jeremiah emphasised the need for a heart change, a view supported by the Apostle Paul, who stated that the Spirit performs true circumcision. I say all that before we read this:

“Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. ¹⁰ This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. ¹² For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. ¹³ Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. ¹⁴ Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (Genesis 17 v 9-14)

Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, a physical mark pointing to the spiritual reality that God declares people righteous before Him. Significantly, Abraham was counted as righteous before he was circumcised, proving that the outward sign didn’t create the inward reality. If circumcision itself made someone righteous, then only men could be righteous, an impossibility. Righteousness comes by faith alone, not by works. It is God’s act, not ours. Circumcision was simply the sign pointing to what God had already done.

Has the Holy Spirit circumcised your heart, the real you? That is the question.

This isn’t about outward performance or public display. It’s a private, personal question: Has the Spirit of God marked you with a genuine encounter? Has He removed something from your life? Have you surrendered something precious? Has He painfully broken you—yet brought healing?

Is your heart truly obedient to God? Do you genuinely desire to walk before Him in faithfulness?

If you can answer yes, then your life becomes the sign—a living testimony to Christ and the new covenant. You embody the forgiveness of sins and the gift of righteousness that comes through faith in Him.

You don’t have to prove you are His, and doing so becomes impossible.

Your best attempts to prove you belong to God are futile.

If those who don’t belong obeyed God’s laws (and no one can be that obedient), they would belong more than those who say they belong to God and try to prove it by their efforts.

The verses we will read will make sense of the question.

“Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham,for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ⁸ The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17 v 3-8)

Look again at the position of Abram and let that image sink into your mind. At 99 years of age, he is on his face before God. Things change for characters in the Bible when they’re on their faces.

Moses encountered God at the Burning Bush and hid his face in reverence (Exodus 3:6), setting the stage for his leadership of a nation from slavery.

Joshua fell facedown before the Lord’s army commander (Joshua 5:14), learning that the coming battles were God’s to fight.

Ezekiel repeatedly fell face down in God’s glory (Ezekiel 1:28, 3:23, 43:3), each time being commissioned to deliver difficult messages.

Daniel also fell facedown when the angel Gabriel appeared (Daniel 8:17), receiving strength and insight for exiles.

The Apostle John fell at Jesus’s feet on Patmos (Revelation 1:17) and received visions of hope for the church.

Saul’s blinding encounter on the Damascus road changed him to Paul, a key figure in Christian history (Acts 9:4).

Peter, James, and John fell facedown at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:6), receiving reassurance from Jesus to strengthen them for future challenges.

On each occasion, the position was accompanied by an attitude:

• You are Almighty – I am not.
• You are Holy – I am not.
• You have the best plans – I do not.
• You are the giver – I am the receiver.

There are times when the position of our body helps to create the attitude of the heart. Hands raised, kneeling, sitting, standing and also lying prostrate on the floor. Maybe this is something we should consider in our private moments before God to cultivate humility, reverence, surrender, and readiness for whatever God has for us next.

Again, he’s 99 years of age. This was not a young Abram. He’s elderly, and his body is aching. Getting down is one thing, getting back up another. This position cost him. Almighty God speaks a revelation to an old man on the floor, perhaps aching, maybe struggling to breathe. On the dirt floor, we have a picture of complete surrender. He has come to the end. He is waiting. True worship. The God of gods speaks to this man in that position and gives him a promise; he makes a covenant with Abram. When he eventually gets up, he will never be the same again.

Was it his position on the floor or was it the attitude of his heart?

Maybe it was both.

“Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham,for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ⁸ The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17 v 3-8)

Throughout this passage, God makes eight promises to Abraham:

1. “You will be the father of many nations” (v. 4)
2. “Your name will be Abraham” (v. 5)
3. “I have made you a father of many nations” (v. 5
4. “I will make you very fruitful” (v. 6)
5. “I will make nations of you” (v. 6)
6. “Kings will come from you” (v. 6)
7. “The whole land of Canaan… I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants” (v. 8)
8. “I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you” (v. 7-8)

Clearly, these were for Abram and not for us. We are not all literally promised to be fathers of many nations. We are not all receiving the land of Canaan as our inheritance. We are not all being renamed Abraham. We won’t all have kings descending from our bloodline.

So what for us?

Relying heavily on the New Testament, in Galatians, we find that we “who have faith are children of Abraham” (3:7-9) and in v29 “and in v29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

In the Genesis account, we can see our promises:

• “I will be your God”

 This is the promise that echoes throughout Scripture for all God’s people. In 2 Corinthians 6:16, God says, “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This is the new covenant promise. He has promised. Whatever path you are on today, He is walking with you, for He is your God who promised you He would walk with you. There is no place that you tread that God doesn’t go with you. If you are entering a new job, a new season of opportunity, or even walking into uncertainty and challenge, He is walking with you.

• Fruitfulness

Not necessarily in physical descendants, but in spiritual fruitfulness. Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches… those who remain in me… will bear much fruit.” In effect, Jesus said, “I am the true vine. Not you. Me. Remain in me. Then you will bear fruit. The world will see you as my disciples, and the Father will be glorified. Relationship with me, not empty rituals.”

• New identity

Just as Abram became Abraham, we receive new identities in Christ. We are adopted as God’s children, called saints, made new creations. God still renames His people. Whatever you are going through today, one of the roles of the Holy Spirit and the reason God sent Him is to remind you of who you are. It is to say to you that ‘you are no longer a slave’, but you are an adopted child of the Father. 

• An everlasting covenant

Hebrews 13:20 speaks of “the blood of the eternal covenant.” Through Jesus, we enter into an everlasting relationship with God that cannot be broken. Because we have our great priest, our High Priest, Jesus Christ, who gives us confidence based on what He has done, never on our performance, we don’t prepare to come into His presence; what could that preparation be? It would never be enough if we had to prepare. But we draw near because our High Priest has opened the way and has already prepared us.

• A promised inheritance

Peter writes of “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” kept in heaven for us (1 Peter 1:4). Our inheritance is not earthly land but eternal life in God’s presence. We have future security which our sin, decay or death will not destroy, for it is not held by accomplishments or protection on earth but in heaven.

These are great promises, and they belong to us today!

I’m not sure if any 99-year-olds are reading this today, maybe you feel 99, so we will hold that thought whilst we read a couple of verses from Genesis 17.

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. ² Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” (Genesis 17 v 1-2)

We have to pause for a moment. We are about to see, for the first time, this amazing name of God being revealed, not to a young man, but to someone in their old age: El Shaddai—the One who is more than enough and who has absolute power. It isn’t just a revelation of who He is but an invitation to walk with Him. Again, this old man is given a revelation and an invitation. How amazing is this? There can be a temptation to think, as we get older, that God is getting quieter, that He only works with the young; it’s not true.

The invitation is still before us. It means to live your life with the awareness that you are doing so in His presence. To be faithful to God is to make your decisions not based on social pressure or convenience, but out of your love for God. To be blameless isn’t to be perfect, but it is to have integrity.

Even at 99 years, Abram has still got things ahead of him on this earth. Whatever age you are today, there is still more for you. For Abram, he would soon have a new name signifying a new identity and a covenant for an inheritance he would leave behind for the nations. For that to happen, God is asking Abram to be ready. Even at 99 years, we need to be prepared for God’s next move.

If God appeared to you today with the same request, what would you change?

Perhaps He is, and you need to choose today to walk before Him, be faithful to Him and have integrity. Then you wait for God to do something new with you.

As we have been reading this story, I hope that one of the many beautiful lessons has emerged for you: God cares for you. He sees you. He hears you. He is there, more near than you realise at times and again – He cares for you.

Today, I write a prayer, formed from the story of Hagar. I hope it blesses you, and maybe even just one of the lines can be made into your own prayer.

Prayer of the God Who Sees

El Roi, the God who sees me,

I come to You today, feeling invisible, unnoticed, knowing the wildernesses of life. I desire to escape from everything that I know, but You promise to meet me wherever I am.

You are the God who seeks those who are running away from their disappointments, who have been cast aside, discarded, feeling forgotten by heaven and earth.

Lord, I have come to the end. The end of my tether. I have run out of what I need, and this time feels different—it feels worse than before. The pain and despair have been so traumatic that I cannot see what might be in front of me.

But You are a promise-making and promise-keeping God. You found Hagar on the desert road, and You will find me, no matter where I am today. You see me and You hear me—my pain and my hopes.

I may be crying out to You, but I trust that You have heard me. I am not unknown to You. I am not forgotten.

Help me to remember: this place I am in right now may not be the end, but the beginning of a new chapter in my life. The desert doesn’t win. It becomes a servant for You in my life. Being cast out, losing everything, isn’t the last sentence in my story.

The trauma is real, but so are You, my God.

Like a spring in the desert, bring living water to my driest places. Open my eyes to see Your provision that may be closer to me than I realise.

You don’t wait for my life to be sorted out. You step into my family and into my world. You have the last word on my life, not anyone else.

No pain that I experience has the last word over my life.

You are El Roi—the God who sees me.

Amen.

Hagar’s story has been told through generations, and the Apostle Paul drew upon it centuries later to address a theological truth to the Galatians. Paul did not want to undermine her but to use her story as a comparison to two different ways of serving God.

Paul presented Hagar and Sarah as representing two covenants: the old covenant of law and the new covenant of faith in Jesus Christ. But to understand Paul’s allegory, we must remember who Hagar actually was. She was a woman caught in circumstances beyond her control, used by others to accomplish what they believed God had failed to do quickly enough. Hagar bore Ishmael through human effort and planning, not through patient trust in divine promise.

Paul was addressing those who insisted that followers of Christ must prove their relationship with God through strict adherence to the law. He pointed to Hagar’s story—to her position as a slave woman whose child was born through human striving rather than divine promise—as a picture of those trapped in performance-based religion. These people were carrying burdens God never intended them to bear, just as Hagar carried burdens she never chose to bear. Paul acknowledged he was using the story figuratively, and he didn’t shy away from the uncomfortable reality of Abraham’s choices.

“Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.” (Galatians 4:21-25)

Paul wasn’t criticising Hagar herself; she had done what she was commanded to do. Instead, he was critiquing what Hagar’s situation represented: a covenant that produces slavery, a reliance on human effort, and an attempt to accomplish God’s purposes through our own strength and timing.

The Jewish believers understood themselves as Abraham’s children through Isaac, heirs of God’s promises, recipients of the Law given at Mount Sinai, centred on the Temple in Jerusalem. Many also believed Gentile converts needed to adopt these same markers of identity to belong truly.

But Paul’s argument was startling. He suggested that, despite viewing themselves as Sarah’s descendants, their insistence on works and performance actually placed them in Hagar’s position. They were living out the very situation they thought they had achieved.

In the last few days, we have reminded ourselves of the story of Hagar. One of the main points of that story is that Abraham and Sarah couldn’t wait for God’s promise of a son. They did it their own way and used Hagar to bring about the promise. They could do it. They didn’t need God; they had Hagar.

Paul challenged those who used circumcision to validate their conversion. They were, in theory, Abraham’s children through Sarah, Isaac’s descendants. But in practice, by relying on their own efforts to earn God’s approval, they had placed themselves in Hagar’s position, bound to human effort.

Culturally, they identified with Sarah, but their lifestyle mirrored Hagar’s story, trapped in slavery to performance. This is what happens when people seek to live with their own righteousness through effort, while being blinded to what Christ has done.

Hagar’s story, then, becomes not a story of personal failure but a powerful reminder: What God promises, only God can accomplish. Human effort, no matter how sincere or well-intentioned, cannot substitute for patient faith in God’s timing and provision. Hagar didn’t fail; the system that used her failed. And Paul warned his readers not to return to that same broken system.

What you see and hear is not everything.

You may think you are only experiencing a dry place, a desert-like experience where your needs outweigh the provisions you have. You may think you have lost friends, even family, or perhaps you are watching from a distance a loved one who is experiencing their own hell, and you are afraid to watch. Even though God may have helped you in the past, it may seem that today is different.

We read the final few verses that tell the story of Hagar, which have been passed down through the generations, so that even the Apostle Paul speaks of her (Galatians 4 v 21-31). Hagar is back in the desert experience.

^“14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba. ¹⁵ When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob. ¹⁷ God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. ¹⁸ Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹ Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰ God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. ²¹ While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.” (Genesis 21 v 14-21)

Do you know when you have come to the end? The end of your tether? That rope tied to an animal will keep it in order. But there’s no rope left.

She had run out of water, and though she had experienced the desert before, this time it was different; it was worse than before, and she had a son with her.

Abraham, the man of God, the one who had great wealth and many servants, sends Hagar and his son away with meagre supplies. I still meet men and women of God who seem to be blinded by their actions. They have the ability to help, but they don’t. In fact, doing nothing or very little appears to be unkind. Blindness affects the most spiritual.

Hagar, who had named God ‘El Roi’ because He is a God who sees her, has reached the lowest point in her life. God might have seen her before, but now she cannot even face seeing her own son die before her eyes. God seems blind, deaf, and she has to blind herself because she cannot bear hearing her son cry from thirst. She begins to cry.

Then comes the turning point: “God heard the boy crying.”

Who did God hear? Not Hagar, though surely He did. Just like his mother, this next generation, her son, also had to experience El Roi, the God who sees.

God brings hope, a destiny, and a simple command to obey.

Where did the well come from? Did God create it there and then? He could have done. Or was her pain and despair so traumatic that it had blinded her to what was in front of her? In front of her, all the time, was the well. She had come to the end of her life at the very place which would save her and her son.

This place you are in right now may not be the end, but the beginning of a new chapter in your life. Dry your eyes and look up. God’s provision may be closer to you than you realise.

So Hagar’s story comes to an end, for what we know at least. Ishmael grows up in the desert, presumably with his mother, and she finds him a wife from her home nation. God keeps His promise about Ishmael, for he too births a nation.

 The lesson is this: The desert doesn’t win. It becomes a servant for the purposes of God in your life. Being cast out, losing everything, isn’t the last sentence in your story. The trauma is real, but so is your God. He sees you and hears you. He has the last word on your life, not anyone else.

We like stories when we know who is right and who is wrong. We want them to end well. But that’s just not always how things work out.

“The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned, Abraham held a great feast. ⁹ But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, ¹⁰ and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” ¹¹ The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. ¹² But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. ¹³ I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.” (Genesis 21 v 8-13)

A party is taking place, for Isaac was born a few years ago, and everyone is happy. The promised child is the focus, Isaac, Sarah’s pride and joy. But. That word. The juxtaposition between what is good and what is spoiling. Hagar’s son, Ishmael, was older, probably around 14 years older. In the place of celebration … but. Ishmael’s youthful immaturity was belittling Isaac, and Sarai was protective. Abraham is given the command – get rid. But Ishmael was his son, and this command was too much. He is caught between the two, and God steps in, revealing the future for both boys.

Broken families, mixed families, mixed-up families, flawed relatives, situations broken by jealousies and fear. Even at Christmas, a season of peace and goodwill to all men, brokenness is evident all around. Who is right and who is wrong? This is not the question. Instead, can God step in? Can God bring sense from confusion and a future from a mess? The answer is YES, he can. He doesn’t need perfection from us. Ishmael’s mocking, Sarah’s scorning, Abraham’s distress and Hagar’s fate and yet He is still faithful to His promise.

Perhaps you have a fractured family, and maybe in this season, you are navigating impossible decisions and even hurting from other people’s choices. It’s not easy, and God doesn’t promise it will be. There’s no simple answer. But what you need to know is that God does step in, and sometimes He does that in response to our distress. But maybe you need to invite Him today to step into your family and into your world.