Distorted Spirituality: Covering over disappointment & pain

Searching for Eden
Understanding and navigating our culture’s cries for life

Distorted Spirituality: Covering over disappointment & pain
The story of Abram, Sarai, & Hagar

What is disappointment & pain?
• Disappointment – the real or perceived shattering of an expectation, desire, or dream (often God-created desires or dreams)
• Shame – the deep-seated belief that something is fundamentally wrong with me (different than conviction or even guilt)

How do we tend to deal with disappointment & pain?
• Denial (or selective forgetting)
• Minimizing
• Blaming others
• Blaming yourself
• Rationalizing
• Intellectualizing
• Distracting
• Becoming hostile

“Abram’s wife Sarai had not borne him children. She owned an Egyptian slave named Hagar. Sarai said to Abram, ‘Since the LORD has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps I can have children by her.’ And Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian slave, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife for him. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan 10 years. He slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. When she realized she was pregnant, she looked down on her mistress.

Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for my suffering! I put my slave in your arms, and ever since she saw that she was pregnant, she has looked down on me. May the LORD judge between me and you.’ Abram replied to Sarai, ‘Here, your slave is in your hands; do whatever you want with her.’ Then Sarai mistreated her so much that she ran away from her.”
-Genesis 16:1-6

What did you see? How did these characters deal with disappointment & pain?

? Abram denied and avoided
? Sarai blamed & abused
? Hagar grew bitter & fled

How can we break the cycle of shamefully covering up disappointment & pain?
Allow ourselves to “be found” by God
o “The Angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness…”
o God finds us in many ways:
? While reading his Word & praying
? Through circumstances
? In the company of loving friends
? Other

Admit the failure of our cover up strategy
o “He said, ‘Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?’ She replied, ‘I’m running away from my mistress Sarai.’”
o Where has your cover-up strategy gotten you?

Face our disappointment & pain
o “Then the Angel of the LORD said to her, ‘You must go back to your mistress and submit to her mistreatment.’”
o At some point we must stare down our disappointment and pain…

Soak in God’s promises
o “The Angel of the LORD also said to her, ‘I will greatly multiply your offspring, and they will be too many to count.’”
o God hears you & cares for you!

Embrace God in a deeper way than we ever have before
o “So she named the LORD who spoke to her: The God Who Sees, for she said, ‘Have I really seen here the One who sees me?’ That is why she named the spring, ‘A Well of the Living One Who Sees Me.’”

Become redeemers in our world
o How did God use her in the “chosen family” that had hurt her so much?
o As we face our pain, God frees us & dares to use us to redeem hurting people all around us…

THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS FOR ALL HUMANITY!!!
Are you experiencing it in an ever deepening way?