HaileyWrites

El Roi: The God who sees me. Hagar was an Egyptian slave. When Abraham and Sarah couldn't yet conceive, they grew impatient and were unable to wait on the promise of the Lord. As a result, Hagar was given to Abraham so that Sarah could have children through her. Bearing in mind that Hagar was a slave, it means that she probably didn't have a choice and she was bound to heed the word of her mistress Sarah. After Hagar conceived, she stopped respecting Sarah and as a result, Sarah mistreated Hagar. Genesis 16:4 (NKJV) So he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became despised in her eyes. Genesis 16:4 (EASY) Abram had sex with Hagar and she became pregnant. When Hagar knew that she was pregnant, she no longer respected Sarai. As a result, Sarah dealt harshly with Hagar, and she fled into the wilderness where she met with the Angel of the Lord. The Angel of the Lord told Hagar to go back to Sarah and submit to her authority, an...

There is a song I absolutely love and listen to a lot. It is a cover by Lawrence and Godswill Oyor titled Oshimiri Atata (which translates to, "River that never runs dry"). The song talks about how Jesus is the river that never runs dry. He is the One that provides never ending nourishment. He is the One that fills us up.  There is a particular line in the song that stood out to me the very first time I heard it: "The son of a lion is a lion." At the time, I didn't understand why the line stood out to me but after a while, it made sense. One of the biggest topics in our generation is about identity. We all desire to know who we are. The problem starts when we want to discover our identities outside of the One who created us. Before fully giving my life to Christ, I was in the pursuit of my identity but I was using the world's standards. I wanted to find my place in society, I wanted to fit in. My search was outside of Christ and that led to a lot of confusio...

It has been a while since my last post. I've had so much to blog about but it has been hard translating my thoughts into coherent words. I have some posts in my drafts but I can't seem to complete them yet.  One of the reasons why it takes time to complete a post is because... I just realized that I want to be a perfectionist when it comes to my blog. The desire for perfection actually ends up getting in the way because I often feel like my posts aren't good enough to be posted. The desire for perfection in terms of my blog keeps me stuck and unproductive. I also think I have placed a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to my blog. When I gave my life to Christ, I made the decision to use my blog as a platform to share the gospel and simply talk about my walk with Him. That decision hasn't been the easiest because I feel like it contributed to the pressure I put on myself (stay with me now). It was easier for me to blog about whatever topic I decided on but once I m...

I seem to gravitate towards writing about obedience and its because when I read the Bible, obedience stands out the most to me. Also, disobedience seems to be the downfall of most biblical figures and of course, disobedience leads to sin. Obedience is about submitting to God's commandments, His laws and His will.  It makes sense why obedience is difficult because it requires us to lay down our own wills for God's will. Walking with Christ requires the willingness and ability to lay down your own will for His because His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). Disobedience was the reason for the fall of mankind. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it would lead to death (Genesis 2:16-17). Scripture provides a lot of instances that show disobedience and its consequences. This post is dedicated to studying King Saul and how his disobedience led him to being rejected as King by the Lord. I ...

Jonah 4 vs 1 - 2 (NKJV): 1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. 2 So he prayed to the Lord, and said, "Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm" I am sure we all know the story of Jonah. If you don't, here is the background. The Lord sent Jonah(a prophet) to deliver a message to Nineveh to say that the Lord had a cry against the city because of their wickedness. Jonah fled from the Lord because he didn't want to deliver the message so he got on a ship. When Jonah was on the ship, the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea. The people on the ship were afraid. Long story short, they threw Jonah out of the ship because he was the reason God caused the storm. When Jonah was thrown into the sea, he was swallowed by a great fish for 3 days until the Lord spoke...

When I was younger, I had a book with all the Bible stories. It was a children's storybook so of course, it didn't go into depth but it still gave the overall message. I remember thinking, "okay, God talked to Noah and he listened". It looked like an easy enough task to me at that age but now my view has changed. Genesis 6:8 (NKJV): But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis chapter 6 tells us about the state of mankind's heart in those days. The fear of the Lord was not present and people were just living life in a way that grieved God to the point where God regretted making mankind. The earth was corrupt, filled with violence and the intents of the thoughts of mankind's heart was evil continually. It is good to remember that God sees our hearts and He knows our hearts. Besides the physical wickedness perpetuated by man on a daily basis, the states of their heart were just continuous evil. God was grieved in his heart and he was regretful. These ar...

When we study the great figures of the Bible, one thing stands out. They all had an intimate relationship with God. In the previous post, I mentioned that Abraham was probably able to discern the presence of God in the three men because he knew God and he knew how it felt to be in His presence. The problem with our generation is that we believe going to church on Sundays is enough. We forget that Jesus is the Bread of life, in the same way we eat food every day to satisfy our flesh, we need the bread of life (Jesus and the Word of God) to nourish our spirit. Prayer and reading the Word are some of the ways to cultivate a deep relationship with God. Another problem is that we distance ourselves from God by only knowing him as God and not regarding him as our Father. That change in mindset really makes the difference. Knowing God as our Father means that we desire to talk to him through prayer because we know the importance of daily communication. We desire to bring honor to his name by ...