Do you ever feel like you&#8217;re not the main character in the story? Like God&#8217;s promises aren&#8217;t for you? Like the good plans don&#8217;t include you? Like you&#8217;re left on the outskirts watching everyone else get their turn and their blessings?
My sister, I want to tell you the truth about YOU, and if you will receive it, it can change that deep feeling of unworthiness you&#8217;ve always battled. This truth can heal that broken place within you that makes you feel like you&#8217;re never good enough. Here&#8217;s the truth about you &#8211; God&#8217;s eye is personally on you. You are chosen. You are special. You are seen. You are set apart. There are blessings specifically for you. Your name is known and his plan for you is sure.
I encourage you to look up Jeremiah 1:5 and read it in several different translations.
MSG &#8211; &#8220;Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you.&#8221;
TPT &#8211; &#8220;I had divine plans for you before I gave you life, and I set you apart and chose you to be mine.&#8221;
AMP &#8211; &#8220;Before I formed you I knew you and approved of you as my chosen instrument.&#8221;
GNT &#8211; &#8220;I chose you before I gave you life and before you were born I selected you.&#8221;
You know what this tells me &#8211; it tells me it was never up to you to get chosen. It was never about your performance or your success. If God chose you before you were even born and set you apart for his holy plans and approved you as his chosen instrument before you ever took your first breath, that means you were good enough in the mind of God from the very beginning. It means you have always been worthy because God designed you as worthy. Situations and circumstances do not determine your worth, DESIGN determines your worth.
God designed you as worthy.
You are the main character of God&#8217;s plans for your life. Every day of your existence is covered in the personal promises of God. If you&#8217;re on the outskirts, honey, it&#8217;s because you&#8217;re sitting where you don&#8217;t belong. You are seen, known, chosen, set apart, approved and loved. Nothing about that tells me you&#8217;ve been overlooked or dismissed. You may feel unimportant, but your feelings are not fact. They are fickle. Stop being led by feelings and be led by what God says about you.
Let me tell you something, the day you stand up with some fire in your eyes and courage in your gut and declare, &#8220;God has good plans for me!&#8221;, everything changes.
Within the well-known story of Abram and Sarai awaiting their promised baby from God, is an unlikely character. A servant girl named Hagar. She has no home of her own, no family of her own, no big plans for her future. She seemingly just belongs to Sarai as her servant. But Hagar belongs to God! While her positioning seems less important, she is of tremendous importance to the God who created her and chose her. He sees her. He hears her. And he has good plans her.
Hagar got caught in the middle of Sarai&#8217;s bad idea born from a sick and broken heart. Sarai so desperately wanted her promised baby that she steps in and tries to help God. Anyone else ever try to &#8220;help&#8221; God? I mean surely God has his hands really full trying to handle the problems of the whole world and he would appreciate my help with my problems. I&#8217;ll just help myself and save God the trouble.
You&#8217;ve heard it said, &#8220;God helps those who help themselves.&#8221; Hmmmmm, totally NOT in your Bible. For real, that&#8217;s not at all scriptural. God helps those who call on him, those who trust in him, those who are hurting and weak. NOT THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES. Those who help themselves instead of seeking God&#8217;s help create messes. The self-sufficient eventually become self-destructive. Why? Because self-sufficient is sin. It is not God&#8217;s will for you to make anything happen on your own.
Sarai decided to make that baby happen with her own plans, so she talks her husband, Abram, into sleeping with her servant, Hagar. Abram agreed, but Hagar had no say in this arrangement. It wasn&#8217;t her plan. It wasn&#8217;t her desire. It became her assignment by the people she worked for.
So, to the delight and scheming of Sarai, Hagar the servant girl becomes pregnant by Abram. But then guess what happens? Jealousy! Envy! Competition! We have a girl quarrel over God&#8217;s blessings.
Genesis 16, starting in verse 4, &#8220;When Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress, Sarai, with contempt.&#8221; (Hagar became proud and treated Sarai as insignificant because of her infertility. She basically flaunted the fact that she was the pregnant one. Finally, for the first time, Hagar was someone important, and she didn&#8217;t handle it well.)
&#8220;Then Sarai said to Abram, &#8216;This is all your fault! I put my servant into your arms, but now that she&#8217;s pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show who&#8217;s wrong &#8211; you or me!'&#8221;
&#8220;Abram replied, &#8216;Look, she is your servant, so deal with her as you see fit.&#8217; Then Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away.&#8221;
Hagar seems to be the secondary character in a story that was never about her. She was just used and mistreated. And now she is pregnant with a pride issue, running through a desolate, dry wilderness. She has no food, no shelter, no plan, no rescue. This wasn&#8217;t her idea, but she&#8217;s caught in the middle of the mess.
And this woman, this seemingly unimportant, lesser-than woman who no one was willing to rescue or help, was the very first woman in the Bible to be visited by an angel. The first time we ever read of God sending an angel to help someone is right here!!!! Verse 7, &#8220;The angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness, along the road to Shur. The angel said to her, &#8216;Hagar, Sarai&#8217;s servant, where have you come from, and where are you going?'&#8221;
&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;m running away from my mistress, Sarai,&#8217; she replied.&#8221;
&#8220;The angel of the Lord said to her, &#8216;Return to your mistress, and submit to her authority.&#8217; Then he added, &#8216;I will give you more descendants than you can count.'&#8221;
What an unlikely character to be the first to be visited by an angel. A seemingly unimportant, secondary character in a story which wasn&#8217;t her own, receiving God&#8217;s personal love. And what this angel reveals to her is her lack of plans does not mean God doesn&#8217;t have a plan for her. He says to her, &#8220;Where have you come from and where are you going?&#8221;
Imagine her answer. Her answer is, &#8220;I&#8217;m coming from an unfair place where I&#8217;m mistreated and unimportant. I&#8217;m going anywhere but there because I can&#8217;t stand that woman I work for. I&#8217;m wandering. I&#8217;m desperate. I&#8217;m likely going to die out here with my unborn baby.&#8221; And the angel reveals God still has a plan. A plan that includes specific blessings for her and her future. Go back, you are going to be blessed with more than you can count.
Hagar was always important to God. This servant girl was so important that God would see fit to send the first visit by an angel to just her. Her, in the wilderness. Her, while she&#8217;s running away. Her, after her pride swelled up and she said things she shouldn&#8217;t have. Her, pregnant and desperate. Hagar was always seen by God and now she knows it. Verse 13, &#8220;Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, &#8216;You are the God who sees me.'&#8221;
A woman who had never felt seen her whole life now knows she is seen by God. A woman who was always the secondary character in a story that wasn&#8217;t hers, now knows God has plans for her. And that changes everything.
God sees you. Yes, YOU. He knows exactly where you are. He knows the mess you&#8217;re in. He knows if you&#8217;ve been mistreated, used, discounted, or left out. He knows if maybe you&#8217;ve been wrong too, and that doesn&#8217;t make him turn away from you. He knows if the story you&#8217;re living isn&#8217;t the story you have even chosen for yourself. And because he sees you, you can know he has a plan for you.
GOD HAS A PLAN FOR YOU.
A plan that confirms you are set apart. These are holy plans. Divine plans. God has approved of you as his chosen instrument, selected before your very first day.
May today be the day you stand up with some fire in your eyes and courage in your gut and declare, &#8220;God has good plans for me!&#8221;
This is where things change!
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