“So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes.”
Genesis 16:4
When things got desperate, Sarai chose to follow the practices of the culture instead of putting her faith in God. Sarai had witnessed enough up to this point in marriage to know that God wouldn’t leave her hanging. She saw God’s hand over her while she was in Egypt; she watched as God empowered her husband to rescue Lot in Sodom, she knew the favor of the Lord as the flocks and herds increased.
So why was it so hard to trust God in this certain situation?
I believe it’s because Sarai and Abram started focusing on the status quo of the culture instead of God’s standard. This is often where we crash and burn spiritually as believers. When in dire straits we tune into Dr. Phil or Oprah to see what everyone else is doing in our situation while God has already given the promises that hold the answers. When Sarai started looking to the world for answers instead of God she actually began killing her faith instead of building it. When facing any trial we can’t base our faith upon our experience because when we come up against new odds we’ll find our hearts rationalizing that we’ve never beat these type of odds, or that God has never shown His might in that particular way leaving us victim to the worlds status quo. When we base our faith on God’s character, however, we find that “God isn’t a man that He can lie” and “He is faithful when we are faithless” so that no matter the trial or difficulty we are able to trust that God in His might can deliver, changing us from victims to victors in God’s standard.
When we make the mistake of trusting the wisdom of this world instead of the truth of God’s character we’ll feel belittled and despised just as Sarai was in this situation. Instead of entrusting ourselves to our experience or placing our hope in a surrogate substitute to God’s might we would be wise to abandon ourselves exclusively on the strong promise of the Lord.
We’ll find acceptance in place of belittlement, and become delighted instead of despised.
