Being Seen

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about Hagar. (You can read that post here.) Her story had completely gripped my heart. In teaching on Hagar in Women's Bible Study this past week, I have come to realize that this story still grips me. It grips me because it was in this story of Hagar that God began to show me that He is the God who pursues.

Hagar was a pagan girl, an idolater, and she was not seeking after God in this story. Not only that she was a "mean girl." The Scriptures tells us that she despised her mistress...what that means is that she had contempt in her heart toward Sarai. She had, after all, done what Sarai could not do...she had conceived a child and I'm sure she lorded that over Sarai, rubbing it in her face, never letting her forget what a failure she was and flaunting her own success! So with all that in mind, the fact that God went after Hagar and found her in the desert by a well, is really mind-blowing to someone like me. You see, the God I grew up with, would have NEVER "found" Hagar by the well. He would have never gone looking for her. Hagar would have needed to repent first. She would have needed to clean up her act before God would have ever seen her. But she didn't. She was running away. She wasn't praying there by the well. She wasn't even looking for God!

I spent 40+ years not understanding and knowing God. I spent 40+ years desperately trying to clean myself up, trying to be worthy to be in the presence of God. And I couldn't do it no matter how hard I tried. No matter what I looked like on the outside, I knew, deep down inside to the core of my soul, that I was never cleaned up enough for God. But I kept trying. Kept praying. Kept confessing. Saying the sinners prayer every single day. Working hard. Trying to be righteous. Trying to be good. Always longing, trying harder, doing more. But always, always knowing that I was failing. Can I just tell you, this is a horrible way to live. And living this way breeds things like fear. And anxiety. Exhaustion. Depression. Insecurity.

Not that many years have gone by since God (in his magnificent grace) broke through that endless cycle of hopelessness...and one of the ways He did that is through the story of Hagar. God knew what Hagar was like. He knew who she was. He knew how she had behaved. He knew all that was in her heart...all of it. And yet He went after her. He went to her there at the well, He asked her questions that He already knew the answers to. He sent her back to her Abram and her mistress, He blessed her and her child. But most of all He SAW her. And she saw Him. Do you know, that being seen by this God, for all that she was, changed her? She responded to this God. She worshiped Him. She obeyed Him. She did all that He told her to do...she went back into that family situation that was not an easy situation, because He SAW her. Because what she saw in His eyes when she looked at Him, changed everything about her.

God began to show me that I was Hagar. That He had come and found me by a well. And that He saw everything ugly in my heart and STILL had came looking for me.  The eyes of my heart began to be opened, and I began to realize and understand in a whole new way that I could never clean myself up enough to be in the presence of God. Ever. And that was the whole reason for the cross. That that was the whole point of what Jesus came to do. The eyes of my heart finally looked into His eyes and I saw that He saw me. Really, really saw me. I saw that He saw everything about me...all that I had done. Everything that I had thought. I saw that He saw every single ugly thing about me. And yet here He was looking deep into my soul drawing me to Himself. And when I looked into those eyes that saw all of me, I saw love. Unconditional, one-way, love. I saw that He had surrendered His life on the cross for all that ugliness in me. And I saw and understood that He had come after me...that He had come looking for me...NOT after I had cleaned myself up but while I was still a dirty rotten mess. And finally seeing the One who has seen me and has loved me has completely changed me from the inside out.

I have seen the One who has seen me...and that has made all the difference in the world!

"She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: 'You are the God who sees me' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.'" Genesis 16:13