Message: In Genesis 16 Sarai got impatient with the promise that God made about she and Abram having a child so she convinced Abram to take her slave and sleep with her. But after she did and the slave got pregnant the slave turned on her, and Sarai turned on her husband. She blamed him for her unhappiness.
Command: Own my own decisions and emotions.
Promise: If I own my decisions and emotions I will learn from them and grow. I will be free of the victim mentality and I will be much less likely to get stuck or become bitter.
Warning: If I blame others for my decisions and emotions, it will not only cause strife and division, but my victim mentality will keep me hostage and I won’t grow.
Application: I saw a few things in this. Initially I had to laugh at how blatantly Sarai came up with this ‘brilliant’ plan and then flipped it all on Abram when the plan came back to bite her. As much as Abram shouldn’t have listened to her in the first place, I had a hard time seeing her as the victim she portrayed herself to be in this. Since she didn’t own responsibility for her contribution in this mess, she caused it to escalate even worse. So not only has she derailed the plan that God gave them, but her foolish plan has caused bot only her own pain, but now also the pain of her slave who never asked for any of this. To top it all off she now has a rift between herself and her husband and the promise God gave them is now being drawn out. This reminds first to never manipulate the promises of God with my own solution, but also the importance of owning my own emotions and failures. I can’t eliminate the pain by blaming others!
