We Miss God’s Plan for Our Life When… We Blame Someone Else for Our Failure.

Then Sarai said to Abram, You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering.(Genesis 16:5)

I am sure Abraham said to himself; “What have I done? It was all my wife’s idea.  If she hadn’t insisted on me sleeping with Hagar, then I wouldn’t be in this mess.”  Even though assessing and shifting blame makes us feel better, it accomplishes nothing. The moment we begin to blame others, we lock ourselves into permanently missing God’s will.  Why?  Because we never come to the knowledge of the truth about our own condition.  There is no room for confession and repentance.  If this happens, we hinder ourselves from coming back into God’s will.

How many times has it been beneficial for you to say, “It’s his fault or it’s her fault?”   Has this type of rationalization helped your spiritual walk or simply comforted your flesh?  Everyone loses when we try to play the “blame game.”

People who are out to find fault seldom find anything else.

In our passage it was Sarah who blamed Abraham for the problems with Hagar’s conception. Maybe Abraham remained quiet because he knew he had stepped out of God’s will.  Even if we blame no one else but ourselves… it is wasted time and energy. The reason is because we don’t move on to learn from our mistakes and correct them.  The time and energy you could have spent on making a U-turn is spent on blaming yourself.

It appears all parties here in this story hope their “problem” would simply disappear.  Sarah mistreated Hagar and Hagar left. Notice Abraham didn’t send a search party to find Hagar, and Sarah wasn’t pleading for Abraham to go out and find her. God has a way of making us deal with our mistakes rather than hoping they take care of themselves.

The story is told of two hunters who came across a bear so big that they dropped their rifles and ran for cover. One man climbed a tree while the other hid in a nearby cave. The bear sat down between the tree and the cave. Suddenly, the hunter in the cave came rushing out, almost ran into the waiting bear, hesitated, and dashed back in the cave. The same thing happened a second time. When he emerged the third time, his friend frantically called out, “Woody, are you crazy? Stay in the cave till he leaves!” “Can’t,” panted Woody. “There’s another bear in there.”

Running only causes our problems to reappear. Whenever we run away from problems we need remember we will often face very same or similar problems down the road. What we don’t deal with today, we will deal with someday.  Running doesn’t solve anything. Even if everyone seems to agree with you, if you are running away from problems and conflicts in your life, you are running the wrong way. Even if everyone is running alongside of you, you are wrong.

The best course of action is to always take it to the Lord, confess, repent, and get directions on how to solve the problem.

Blessings,

Pastor