El Roi The God That Sees Me by Apostle Johnson Suleman: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Genesis 16:7-13 tells the story of Hagar, found by the angel of the Lord at a fountain of water in the wilderness. The angel told her to return to her mistress and submit herself under her hand, and told her she would bear a son to be called Ishmael, because the Lord had heard her affliction. In response, she named the Lord who had spoken to her El Roi, the God who sees, marveling that she had truly seen the One who sees her.

Nobody Is Truly Clean

Abraham was a patriarch of faith, a man the Bible says walked with God, called the friend of God, through whom all nations of the earth would be blessed. If Abraham had been given the chance to edit his own story before it became scripture, he probably would have. No one is totally clean; it depends on what you're looking at, the way a half-empty glass can also be called half full depending on your angle. Abraham loved God deeply, yet in Genesis 16:2, when Sarah could not conceive, she proposed that Abraham try to have a child through her maid, and he agreed. You never know how far you might compromise until you are actually faced with the trial yourself. It is easy to judge someone who has fallen into something you have never been tested by; the same pressure that another person could not withstand might undo you differently than you imagine, so it is wise to stop judging people you have not walked in the shoes of.

Hagar's Story

Hagar was a young slave girl, Sarah's maid, who had no say in her own future, no consideration for her ambitions, her education, or her prospects for marriage. Her master and mistress decided her future for her, and against her will she became part of a fertility arrangement she could not refuse; there is a level at which life presses a person so hard that they accept things they would never otherwise accept. When she conceived, the Bible says she "despised" her mistress in her eyes, which does not mean she looked down on Sarah. As the pregnancy advanced, she simply could no longer keep up with the same workload expected of her as a slave, and Sarah, the very one who had engineered the pregnancy, resented her for the change it caused. The more some people's lives expand, the more battles they face; this was not a battle Hagar brought on herself, but one she inherited from the household she found herself in.

God hates conspiracy. The same principle appears in John 8:7, when Jesus told the accusers of a woman caught in adultery that whoever had not committed that same kind of sin should be the one to cast the first stone, and one by one, starting with the eldest, since the eldest had lived long enough to have sinned the most, they all walked away. We live in a generation where everyone is a judge to others but a defense lawyer to themselves.

When the angel of the Lord appeared to Hagar, mistreated and humiliated as she was, he still told her to go back and submit herself to Sarah. No matter how unfairly you have been treated, God will not support rebellion.

What El Roi Saw

El Roi is the God who knows me more than I know myself, who identifies with me in my pain and my crisis, who is intentional and particular about my future, who carries the map of my life in his hands.

He saw her heart. It is good to work hard, but it is better to work with a good heart; hard workers can end up stranded, but people of good heart end up standing. Even after Sarah's mistreatment, when Hagar became pregnant again years later under similar pressure and eventually had every reason to fight back, she chose instead to run rather than turn on the woman who had, in her own desperate way, brought her into the family. Some battles are not worth winning, because the trophy becomes a mockery: no one wants to be remembered as the person who tore down the very people who once gave them a platform, the way David refused to kill Saul even when he had the opportunity, or the way a heavier vehicle that could crush a smaller one on the road gains nothing by doing so, only the reputation of cruelty. When God went looking for a king in the house of Jesse, he passed over the impressive-looking sons because he was searching for the content of a person's heart, not their appearance, according to 1 Samuel 16:7: man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. This is also why, in many families, God bypasses an older child who won't carry the rest of the family along and blesses instead the one, often not the firstborn, who will remember everyone once they are lifted.

Part of a good heart is being willing to receive counsel. If you cannot be counseled, you will soon be cancelled. When Solomon was given the chance to ask God for anything, he asked for understanding to lead God's people, and immediately afterward gathered counselors around himself. The proof that you have truly heard from God is that you remain able to hear people. Hagar's descendants through Ishmael became the ancestors of nations that today hold some of the strongest currencies in the world, a reminder that a person cast out and mistreated is not disqualified from being the root of something enormous, as long as they carry a heart that listens.

He saw that she was used and dumped. Genesis 21:14 records that Abraham rose early, gave Hagar only bread and a bottle of water, put them on her shoulder along with the child, and sent her away into the wilderness. A woman who sacrificed her whole future and gave you a child was settled with nothing more than bread and water and left to wander among wild animals without a fixed destination. There are people who have given everything to a place, a marriage, a family, and walked away with nothing tangible to show for it beyond tears; you are not "dumped" if you walked away from something with real, tangible fruit, but you are dumped when years went in and nothing came out. When the water in the bottle ran out, she could not even produce milk to feed her own child, and in desperation she placed the boy under a bush and turned away, unable to watch him die. But El Roi saw her.

He saw that she lacked justice. God is not unfair; he always takes the side of the afflicted. It should not surprise you that God sometimes keeps certain people alive rather than removing them entirely, specifically so they can witness the very blessing they doubted or mocked. The same Sarah who suggested the arrangement became angry once the child she had asked for actually arrived, revealing that her earlier encouragement had never been genuine support in the first place.

They Gave Her a Bottle; God Showed Her a Well

Genesis 21:19 says God opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well of water that had been there all along. Focus on what God will do for you, not on what man has done to you. Stop mourning the treatment you received and start looking for the well that was there the entire time; crying too much over where you came from can blind you to where you are actually going. Stop focusing on the person who used you, and follow the God who wants to use you instead.

Forgiveness and Letting Go

Throughout scripture, whenever God addresses answered prayer, he consistently ties it to forgiveness. Mark 11:25 instructs that when you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive them. James 5:16 says to confess your faults to one another so that you may be healed, meaning healing often has to happen before a prayer becomes fully effective. Many people pray while still carrying bitterness toward the very people they live beside. If you are waiting for God to perform some instant surgery on your heart, you may be waiting a long time; you have to actively practice the discipline of letting go. One woman woke her husband at four in the morning simply to mark, to the day, the anniversary of an affair from years earlier that she had never released; keeping score like that does nothing but keep the wound open. There is also real danger in obsessively recording and replaying every hurtful word said against you, the way some people record arguments and play them back on repeat; it only reinforces the pain rather than resolving it.

A Closing Word on Warfare

The more diligently you intercede for something, whether your own life or your children's future, the more the enemy tends to test that same area, because Satan is not a coward; he fights back when pressed. Do not misread increased opposition as a sign you're doing something wrong. When starting any major undertaking, whether a building project or any significant assignment, you need not only financial capital but prayer capital, since an attack on health or finances can just as easily divert resources meant for the goal.