Glance Backward; Go Forward; Gaze Upward - Genesis 16 - Skip Heitzig
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Great to be with you. Would you turn in your Bibles, please, to the Book of Genesis-- first book of the Bible-- chapter 16? We're going to be looking at that chapter this morning-- Genesis 16.
There was a man that was reading the newspaper. And he was looking through the obituary column. Can you imagine how surprised he was when he discovered his name was in it?
And he went to the newspaper office, all upset that his name was in the obituary column. And the editor smiled and said, relax. I'll put your name in the new birth column tomorrow, and you can get a brand new start.
We love the idea of a brand new start. And New Year's, for a lot of us, represents exactly that. But I've noticed that every time we get to a new year that we say the same thing every year. Every year, we say, man, did this year go by fast. Or can you believe it's already 2019? We say that every stinking year.
And it is true that as you age, it seems like time goes faster. Am I right on that? Now, there's a reason for that. I did a little research and discovered that we view time from two different perspectives-- either prospectively or retrospectively.
Prospectively is viewing time as you're going through an event. Retrospectively is when it's all done, and you're looking at it. And our ability to remember the past largely depends on those two vantage points.
For example, when we're young, or younger, there's a lot of firsts that we go through. Our first day of school is usually memorable. Our first date, as much as we hated it or liked it, it's memorable. The birth of our first child-- memorable.
So those are unique experiences. And our ability to remember them, or have a vivid memory of that time, largely depends on experiences with that. Once we go through events and we repeat them over and over and over again-- not so much. It's not so unique.
So looking at time in both those ways has the illusion, the older we get, of going faster. And there's another factor in it. If you're enjoying the experience or you're not enjoying the experience-- you've heard the old saying that time flies when you're having a what--
Fun.
A good time, or fun. That's actually true. It does fly by. Now here we are, at the end of a year. And boy, did the year go quickly. And we're on the precipice of a brand new year. We call it a year.
In our culture, every January 1 begins the rotation of the Earth around the sun that takes 365 and a third days, or exactly 8,765.8 hours. That's how much unspent time you have ahead of you in the year.
Some of you have already filled in your calendars. You've already scheduled appointments. You've already made plans and written those plans in.
But I've discovered that counting time is not nearly as important as making time count. So how do we live those 8,765.8 hours? What decisions do we make, or what vantage point do we have as we enter?
Well, there's a question in our text that I'm going to draw your attention to. And it's a question that is asked by the angel of the Lord to a woman, who's highlighted here, by the name of Hagar. Hagar was an Egyptian gal.
And the question is, where are you going? It's a question I ask you today. Where are you going? On one hand, you cannot answer that question. On the other hand, you definitely can answer that question.
So this angel of the Lord asks Hagar two questions in the same sentence-- where have you come from, and where are you going? I'm going to ask three questions based upon our text-- those two questions and a third based upon the revelation that the angel gives to Hagar.
So for outline's sake, it goes like this. Where have you come from? Where are you going? And what can you expect in this new year? Those are the three questions.
So let's begin by looking at Genesis chapter 16 verse 1. "Now Sarai, Abram's wife"-- her name will be called Sarah later on, that's probably how most of us remember her-- "Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar.
So Sarai said to Abram, 'See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.' And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.
Then Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife after Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan. So he went into Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, 'My wrong be upon you!'"
Boy, it was her idea. And he's-- well, it was a rough day at home. "'My wrong be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between me and you.'
Abram said to Sarai, 'Indeed your maid is in your hand. Do to her as you please.' And when Sarai dealt harshly with her, she fled from her presence.
Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, and by this spring on the way to Shur. And He said, 'Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?' She said, 'I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress.'"
So so far, we get the picture. Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Sarai, was sort of an innocent bystander. Sarai has been told by the Lord she's going to have a baby-- hasn't happened yet.
She figures, look, it's never going to happen. I gotta help God out a little bit. So to help God perform what He said He would do, I'll use this gal. She'll be a surrogate mother. And we'll call that a fulfillment of the promise.
So Abram goes along with it. Hagar goes along with it. Hagar gets pregnant. There's a confrontation between Sarai and Hagar. Hagar leaves. She runs away-- really, not a logical plan.
Because when the angel of the Lord says, where have you come from? she can answer that question-- I'm running away from home. When the angel asks the second question, where are you going? she hadn't really thought about that. She's just in the desert, in the middle of the open field by a well, getting refreshment, waiting for the next step.
So she runs away from home. We continue, verse 9. "The angel of the Lord said to her, 'Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hand.' Then the angel of the Lord said to her, 'I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so that they shall not be counted for a multitude.'
And the angel of the Lord said to her, 'Behold, you are with child,'"-- you're pregnant. You're going to "bear a son. You will call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man; and his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.'
Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her You-Are-The-God-Who-Sees, for she said, 'Have I also here seen Him who sees me? Therefore, the well was called Beer-Lahai-Roi. Observe it is between Kadesh and Bered."
That doesn't help many of us out. "So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael. Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram."
Now, just a note before we get into our little outline. Sometimes in Scripture, you will discover that God asks questions to people, which is kind of weird, right? Why would God ask a question? Oh, I assure you, it's not to get schooled. It's not like God needs the information and is going to get it from a person that He made.
God asks a question, typically, to jog the memory or the experience of the person that He's asking the question to. And here, there is an interrogation meant to stir up a contemplation that will lead to transformation. God wants to change this gal's heart and the way she sees life.
So I'm going to use God's technique in asking questions to all of us. And those questions are as follows. Where have you come from? Where are you going? And what can you expect? Let's begin the first.
Where have you come from? Now, asking that question was designed to get Hagar to identify her past. And notice what she says. After the angel said, where have you come from? where are you going? she said, I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress, Sarai. That's verse 8.
So she is called to look back from where she came to get in touch with that experience of pain and misunderstanding and oppression. And she says, I'm running away from home. I'm leaving all the mess that I came from.
Now, usually, it's dangerous to tell somebody to look backward when you want them to go forward. But it's healthy if it's a glance-- not a fixed gaze but a glance. To glance backward in order to go forward means that we quickly get our bearings, our orientation, make sure we're not running in circles, so that we can make progress going forward.
So as you glance back over this past year, as you glance back-- quick snapshot-- what was it like? I can answer that. I bet it was a mixed bag-- some good, some not so good, some great, some not so great, some encouraging, some discouraging, some ups, some downs, right? It was a mixed bag.
You have seen over the past year, as you glance back, both man's unfaithfulness and God's utter faithfulness at the same time. Hopefully, you've been able to frame it in Romans 8:28-- "We know that all things work together for good to those that love God and are the called according to His purpose." That's probably your glance backward.
But it's a good question to ponder where have you come from? Because different people will answer that in different ways. Some will answer that literally, geographically. I'll tell you where I came from. I came here from Texas or from Arizona or Colorado or Oklahoma or whatever state.
And now I'm in this state. And things haven't happened the way I thought they should happen and-- and you're blaming the state for it. It's this state's fault. Ever since I've been in this state-- well, Paul said, I've learned in whatever state I'm in to be content.
[LAUGHTER]
Or you might answer that question relationally-- well, I've come from a broken home. I've come from a broken marriage. I've come from strained relationships. Emotionally, I've come from difficult situation.
Others of you are going to answer that question medically. I've come from a lot of doctors' appointments, and I've been given not-good prognosis. That's where I've come from.
Wherever you've come from, my question to you is, will you let God be the God of your past? Will you allow God to be the God of where you've come from to sort through the rubble of the past year and use that somehow for your highest good and for His glory?
Now, once you glance backward-- it should just be a glance, not a fixed gaze-- once you glance backward, you want to quickly pivot so that you can go forward and make progress. You've gotten your bearings. You've gotten your orientation. You're making sure you're not just going in circles.
The glance helps the going forward. And that's important. If you want to be miserable, spend the rest of your life looking back over your shoulder. We would never tell a runner to look backwards continually while you're trying to move forward. That would be the end of the race, at least.
Well, there's a principle for that. In Philippians 3:13, Paul wrote, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the goal of the high calling in Christ Jesus."
Now, when you hear that word "forget"-- we say that a lot-- well, forget about it, forget about your past-- in the Bible, forget does not mean lacking the ability to remember as much as it means don't let it control or influence you now. Don't let it control your present.
Don't let the past so influence your present that it paralyzes you. That's why you need just a glance, not a gaze. You glance backward that you might go forward.
If there's one person that I can think of in Scripture that embodies this principle best, it's a guy by the name of Joseph, who had bad thing after bad thing after bad thing happen to him. Joseph was sold by his brothers to the Midianites, who took him to Egypt.
He became a slave in Potiphar's house. He became a prisoner in Pharaoh's prison. He had one bad turn after another until, eventually, things turned for him. He became prime minister. You know the story.
But do you remember his reaction when the brothers who betrayed him stood before him? Now, he has the power to get back at them. And so, what does he say to them-- you're getting yours, buddies?
No. He said-- remember what he said? He said, as for you, you meant this for evil. But God meant it for good to save, as it were, many people alive this day. I know what you had in mind. But I'm not going to let the past control my present or my future. I'm not going to let it influence it to that degree.
There's a great story about Thomas Edison. In 1914, his shop was burned to the ground. His laboratory in New Jersey was burned. It was December, by the way-- December 1914.
Thomas Edison, the next day, after it burned down, is walking through the rubble of his burned-down laboratory. You would think that would be enough to devastate anybody. As he's walking through, he turns to one of his assistants. And he smiled, and he goes, there's great value in destruction. He said, all your mistakes are burned up.
[LAUGHTER]
Isn't that a great perspective? All the mistakes I've made that people don't know about, they'll never know about it now. All your mistakes are burned up. So you want to have a great new year? Forget last year, and find out what God has for you this year.
So that's the first question-- where have you come from? Second, where are you going? This is contemplating your future. The angel calls Hagar to do that, also, in verse 8. Hagar, Sarai's maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?
So if I were to ask you right now, hey, where are you going this year? you can't answer that exactly. You can't predict that precisely. You don't have a clue specifically. And not knowing the exactness of it drives some people crazy. Sort of fun to watch them get driven crazy over this.
Because every year about this time, I watch people try to get all the experts' predictions of what's going to happen in 2019. All the news outlets put experts on their shows and then say, OK, tell us. What's the money market going to do in 2019? What will happen to the interest rates and the stocks? And give us your prediction.
They're doing that so they can make their decisions of what they're going to do with money. And if it's not just generally, people want to know sometimes very specifically what's going to happen in my life. This is why horoscopes are popular. This is why people go see psychics, or even psychos, just to get any kind of guess to help them predict their future. What does the future hold?
By the way, this is not new. It's happened in ancient times. The Greeks used to have people they called oracles. And an oracle was somebody who could communicate with the gods.
And they would get, usually, under some hypnotic state or drug-induced state. They would get in touch with the gods. They would deliver the message of the god to the person who came to consult the oracle. That was in Greek times.
In Roman times, they had a very interesting method of predicting the future. I could only describe it as prophecy by chicken. They would put a hen in a cage with food.
And-- get this-- if the hen ate the food enthusiastically, that was a good omen. If the hen ignored the food, it was a bad omen. They would predict and make decisions based upon that fowl turn of events-- sorry, but--
[LAUGHTER]
--I couldn't resist that. Here's a question. Do you really want to know the details of your future? Would you really want to know this is the year you die? Would you really want to know the diagnosis in 18 months or six months?
Would you want to know that the very plane that you bought that ticket on for that trip coming up is the one going down? Sorry to even bring that up. No, you wouldn't. Would you want to know that the earthquake that's going to happen is when your relatives are going to be-- you would not want to know those details.
And God, in His mercy and grace, withholds information so you and I will not be overwhelmed. Solomon wrote this in Ecclesiastes 7 verse 14. "When times are good, be happy." Some of us could just stop there and try to apply that.
"When times are good, be happy. But when times are bad, consider God made one, as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future." Yet we try. This week, all the apps on my phone were predicting a blizzard.
[LAUGHTER]
I got all these little things-- it's going to snow in five minutes or in one hour. And it's going to be 8 inches. And it's going to be whiteout conditions. I was so excited for that-- a blizzard, here in New Mexico.
I'd live for that. I mean, I pray for that. I'd love to see 8 inches, 10 inches, 12 inches of snow. I'm going to go out and play in it. I'm going to go snowboarding. But the promise was made-- the prediction was made.
Then, I go outside-- nothing. An hour later, another prediction-- nothing. Finally, when it came, it was like a little dusting. So I think Solomon was right. Man cannot discover anything about his future.
So though you cannot predict precisely where you're going, on the other hand, you can predict eventually where you're going. Eventually, finally, eternally, where are you going? Your Father's house, or what Jesus called my Father's house. I've gone to prepare a place for you.
Ultimately, eventually, that's where you are going. In fact, in, I think, a church this size, we could safely say some of you are going there this year. You don't know that yet, but it could happen.
So we come to this. As we look to the future, we don't know what tomorrow holds, but we know that God holds tomorrow. We don't know what the future holds, but we know that He holds the future. And that's where we rest.
Somebody once said an optimist will stay up New Year's Eve to welcome the new year in. A pessimist will stay up New Year's Eve to make sure the old year goes out. I'll add to that, a biblicist will go home, get a good night's sleep, because he or she knows God is in control.
[APPLAUSE]
I can live with that. I've always loved what Corrie ten Boom said-- "Never be afraid to entrust the unknown future into the hands of a known God." So we glance backward so that we might go forward. And the only way to do that is to gaze upward.
So now, the angel of the Lord lays down some future revelation for Hagar. This is where you're going, Hagar. Let me tell you what you can expect in your future.
So verse 9, "The angel of the Lord said to her, 'Return to your mistress, submit yourself under her hand.' Then, the angel of the Lord said to her, 'I will multiply your descendants exceedingly so they shall not be counted for multitude.'" In other words, they'll be so innumerable, you can't sit down and figure out how many there are.
"And the angel of the Lord said to her, 'Behold, you are with child. You will bear a son. You will call his name Ishmael because the Lord has heard your affliction. He shall be a wild man. His hand will be against every man, every man's hand against him. And he will dwell in the presence of all his brethren.'
Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees, for she said, 'Have I also here seen Him who sees me?'" OK, really quick, who's this angel of the Lord? The angel of the Lord pops up a few times in the Old Testament. Who is it?
Well, a couple facts about the angel of the Lord. Fact number one-- the angel of the Lord uses exactly the same language and uses the exact same authority as the Lord Himself, who gives the same promise in the very next chapter. So that's interesting.
Number two, Hagar said that in seeing the angel of the Lord, she actually saw the Lord. She saw God Himself. Third fact, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Balaam, Gideon-- let's stop with those five-- all had very similar experiences with the angel of the Lord and came to exactly the same conclusions that I just shared with you.
And a final fact, the angel of the Lord does not appear after the birth of Jesus Christ, which leads many scholars to believe the angel of the Lord is some incarnate form of the Lord, or what they call a Christophany-- a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ, a pre-Bethlehem expression of Jesus in the Old Testament.
Well, all of that to say, after two questions are asked, after the interrogation, comes the revelation. This is what you can expect. Now, what I'm going to do is broaden out what I just read to you into four principles. These are four principles that you can expect in your new year.
Number one, you can expect God is going to be with you in the next year. He's going to be with you. Ah, you go, well, that's no new revelation. I kind of knew that when I came in. But let's remind ourselves of it. Verse 10, the promise is "I will"-- "I will." Now, that's personal interaction. "I will."
Verse 11, the angel of the Lord says-- or in effect, the Lord says-- "the Lord has heard your affliction." Now, if Hagar had any misgivings at all about the Lord hearing her, those just went away. She has come from a painful situation. She's probably poured her heart out, cried out, complained, and thought, maybe God isn't hearing me.
Now she knows that's not true. God just got closer. She just discovered through this revelation that the Lord heard it all. The Lord heard your grief.
Add to that verse 14, where she says, "I have seen Him who sees me." So I am now discovering God hears me, and God sees me. All of this speaks of proximity. You have to be close enough to a situation in order to see it and hear it.
Example-- sometimes I'm watching television. It's very hard for me to stay focused on anything very long, especially a television program or a movie. So I will frequently-- I'm kind of getting the storyline. It's being spoken, and I'm seeing it.
I'll get up. I'm still hearing what's going on. I turn my back. I walk toward the kitchen to get something. I can still hear what's going on, but I'm missing a lot.
I miss seeing body language. I'm missing a frown or a smile, or I'm missing how other people in that scene are reacting. I'm missing some of the communication. Because I'm hearing it but not seeing it.
Conversely, if I'm seeing it, but I put it on mute, well, now, I don't know what they're saying. I see body language, but even if it's down low, I'm not hearing the tone or the inflection. So when I'm hearing and seeing, it's a full, orbed communication.
Here's what I want to say using that. There is nothing you will experience in the coming year that God doesn't hear or see. He is the God who sees. He is the God who hears. You can expect God's presence with you.
Now, a cautionary note-- it doesn't mean you'll feel God's presence all the time. I don't think she did until the angel said, God heard everything you prayed. God sees everything you do. She needed that promise and reminder because she didn't feel like it.
And there'll be times in this next year you won't feel like God heard your prayer, or God sees your plight. But He does. God's with you, not because you feel Him but because He promised He would be. We walk by faith, not by sight.
How weird would it be, and ludicrous would it be, and ridiculous, if I walked out in a cloudy day like we had a couple days ago, looked up in the sky, and said, there is no sun, it does not exist? And somebody said, how could you say that?
Because I don't feel it right now. Goodness, it's 10 degrees, and I don't see it. Well, it's still there, whether you feel it or see it or not. It's just a reality we know.
God will be with you whether you feel Him or see the visible expression or not. You can expect that. What can you expect? God will be with you.
Number two-- you can expect not only will God be with you but God will be honest with you. He'll be with you, but He wants to be honest with you. So look at verse 12-- very interesting.
The angel of the Lord describing her son that she's pregnant with-- "He will be a wild man. His hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him." No momma wants to hear those things about her boy that's about to be born. She wants to hear things like, your son is going to be a famous doctor or an awesome lawyer or a great influencer or an artist. He's going to be loved by everyone.
Rather, the angel of the Lord says, no. He's going to be wild and antagonistic. What's happening? God is being honest with her. God is honestly, accurately, predicting the future that this son and his progeny is going to be a wild and free race of Bedouins that will roam that area.
In your future, expect-- expect-- that God will be present with you, and God will be plainspoken to you. Well, how do you know that? Well, if you read your Bible at all in the coming year, expect God to be honest with you there, right?
If you discovered, you'd read in your Bible-- I'm not going to underline that one. That's pretty hard. That truth is hard. Some people quit following Jesus because the truth was so hard they stopped following Him. They turned away from Him.
You'll find that the Bible is very, very honest. If you don't want truth, don't read your Bible. If you want truth, you'll get it. God will give it to you. It won't always be easy to hear.
And some people, I've discovered, don't like it when God is honest. God's being mean. God's supposed to make me feel good. Ha-- funny.
I went to a dermatologist a few months ago because I had something going on, said, would you check this out? And he looked at it-- yeah, I'll check it out. And he came to me, and he goes, you have skin cancer. And there's a portion that I have to cut out.
Now, what if I said, you're mean! You're supposed to make me feel good! He said, well, I will make you feel good eventually, after I cut it out. But I'll make you feel this good-- if I don't touch you, you will die from this. Oh. OK.
That's what I expect, right? I expect honest communication as he's dealing with an area that I might get better in. So you'll find that God's word will both comfort the afflicted and also afflict the comfortable. If you're too comfortable, bam. He'll be honest.
If you're afflicted, you'll find the comfort of the Holy Spirit graciously on the pages of this book. But other books will give you information. The Bible will bring transformation. That's what God's about.
So you can expect God will be with you. You can expect God will be honest with you. Here's the third thing you can expect-- God will command you. In the honesty of revelation, you will find commands in the Scripture.
Look at verse 9. Here's one to her. "The angel of the Lord said to her, 'Return to your mistress and submit yourself under her hand.'" Don't you think the last thing she ever wanted to hear is that?
Go back to the place of oppression. Go back to the place of cruelty and harassment and pain. Go do that. That's the command. But what did she do? She went back.
We know because verse 15, "Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called his son whom Hagar bore Ishmael." That indicates she's gone back under the covering of his authority in his tent. So she went back.
You're going to discover God will be with you. God will be honest with you. And God will give you commands that you will, at that point, have to decide, yeah, maybe not, or, I'm going to obey. And let me just add a layer to this. I don't think you will ever experience the presence of God like you should until you obey those commands.
Because why would He get closer to you and reveal more to you if you won't do that first so that He can give you more? You know, there is that promise in the Bible. Jesus said, in John 14, those who obey My commands are the ones who love Me.
And because they love Me, My father will love them, and I will love them. And I will reveal Myself to each one of them. That's the promise.
Deuteronomy chapter 4, God said, you will seek the Lord, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul. That's the caveat. You want to experience the full enjoyment of the presence of God? Be committed to dealing with honest truth and obeying it.
So you can expect God will be with you. God'll be honest with you. God will command you. Fourth and finally, you can expect God will bless you. He will bless you this year.
Some of you are thinking, why didn't you just talk about that? Because if I only talked about that, I'd be lying to you. All those other are true, as well. But God will bless you. He promises to bless you. Look at the blessing to her, verse 10.
"The angel of the Lord said to her, 'I will multiply your descendants exceedingly'"-- that's a blessing-- "'so that they will not be counted for multitude.'" Notice the angel of the Lord didn't say, I will add. He said, "I'll multiply-- I'll multiply." That's a blessing.
OK, now, I want you to follow this little principle. The instruction was go back and submit, right? So the Lord's saying, I'm going to take away your independence for a while. I'm going to take away your freedom. I'm subtracting freedom from your life.
But in subtracting something, I'm going to multiply something else. You'll discover that when God subtracts from your life, He often does that in order that He might multiply in another area. God will bless your life.
And how will He do it? Well, He says, I will multiply your descendants meagerly. Is anybody going to read that and correct me? I will multiply your descendants adequately. "I will multiply your descendants exceedingly." I'm going to bless you a lot.
Ephesians chapter 3-- "Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us." Expect God's exceeding blessing.
Now, a little warning on this. It does not mean or guarantee that your life will be easy this year. It does not mean that you will be rich this year. It does not mean that you're going to have perfect health this year. Some of God's biggest blessings are disguised as something else.
Funny how we ask, why do bad things happen to good people? Two presumptions-- you're presuming you're good, and you're presuming what God is allowing to come into your life is bad when, in effect, it actually could be really, really good for you. Just hold on, and wait and see. So sometimes God's blessings are disguised that way.
There's an anthem, a two-phrase anthem I want to close with. You know it. Because you're going to speak it out to me in a second. Well, what I want you to know is that this was first introduced not in America, even though it's popular here now and around the world.
It was first introduced in Nigeria. It was developed in Nigerian churches. Christians were persecuted in Nigeria. And during the midst of the highest pinnacle of persecution, a clergyman said to his church, God is good. And they answered back--
All the time.
All the time. That's where it started. And then, he said, all the time. And they said--
God is good.
God is good. God is good all the time. All the time in your new year, God is good. He'll be with you. He'll be honest with you. He'll command you. He'll bless you.
So we glance backward that we might go forward. But our gaze is where? Upward. Father, we close on that note, gazing into Your face. Even as Stephen, when he was actually dying and being martyred and pelted with stones, he had his gaze fixed upward, and said, look, I see Jesus seated at the right hand of God.
Lord, I pray that we will march into this year as a biblicist, confident that You are in control, that You are managing our schedules, our time. Even the things we didn't plan to hear or see, You hear, and You see. And we rest there. In Jesus' name, Amen.
We hope you enjoyed this special service from Calvary Church. We'd love to know how this message impacted you. Email us at mystory@calvarynm.church. And just a reminder, you can support this ministry with a financial gift at calvarynm.church/give. Thank you for joining us for this teaching from Calvary Church.