Hello Ladies – My name is Roxi and I am the CFO & Treasurer for Women at the Well San Diego would like to talk with you about something that I believe many of us women struggle with and that is; “self-image”. So I’m here in front of my antique vanity holding this mirror. How many times do we look in the mirror in the morning; and, if we are older see more wrinkles, more gray hair, sagging cheeks and pursed lips? If we are younger, we see bags under our eyes from being up with babies or small children or in our mind we go through the “I wishes”…I wish I were thinner, I wish I were blond, I wish I had blue eyes!! . Today I Perhaps in addition to all of these physical attributes we see in the mirror, we also see the emotional effects of regret from past decisions, addiction from current or past choices, and abuse from current or past relationships? These are the lies that Satan likes to put in our minds when we see ourselves, but God sees us differently. I would like to share with you a “women at the well” in the Bible who also experienced these types of struggles. This is not the NT Samaritan woman who Jesus encountered at the well, but rather the OT Egyptian woman who God encountered at the well.
We find this story in Genesis 16:6-14 where Hagar, Sarah’s servant, after becoming pregnant with Abraham’s l is abused and despised by Sarah. So Hagar flees to a spring in the desert where she encounters the angel of the Lord who is God Himself. God tells here to go back to Sarah and tells her she will have a son and name him Ishmael because the Lord has ‘heard of her misery’. In verses 13-16 we read; “she [Hagar] 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.’ That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi, it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.” Beer Lahai Roi literally mans “the well of him that lives and sees me” or “the well of the vision of life.” Hagar so named this location because the Living God saw her situation and intervened to give her hope and comfort. As a result, Hagar obeys God, returns to Sarah as her servant, bears her son Ishmael and is blessed with descendants too numerous to count.
God saw Hagar’s misery as the result of Sarah’s jealousy. God could sympathize with her rejection, that he also would bear when he came to earth in the form of man, and was crucified for our sins. He also understood her poor self-image as the result of this mistreatment. But God had compassion and unconditional love for Hagar and the passage tell us “He was the God who saw her”. He saw her and acknowledged her inward beauty and blessed the trust she had in God from that moment onward. And Hagar realized that God loved her exactly as she was and wanted to a relationship with her.
In Genesis 1:27 tells us; “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” So if we were made in the perfect, glorious image of our creator-God who sees us in His own image, how can we believe the anything less of the person we see in the mirror? So ladies, “don’t’ trust your lying eyes” but do “trust in God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ”. He wove you in the womb, a beautiful, gifted child of our Abba Father – daddy!!
