1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children[a] by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. (Genesis 16:1-2 ESV)
In our scripture, God had promised Abram and Sarai a son. When that did not come to pass in what Sarai thought was a good timeline, she took it upon herself to fill in the gap. The problem is that God did not want her to fill in any gap as that was not His plan. When Hagar conceived and gave birth Sarai was angry and blamed Abram and ran Hagar away.
Even when our intentions may seem right, pure and in line with God’s plan, if they are not in God’s time they may sour quickly. There is this faith based tension between waiting upon God and acting upon His plan. It may be difficult to well determine what we should do. Just know, that God will never put us in a place to sin in the fulfillment of His plan for us. Anything that goes against scripture will most definitely not be part of His plan.
This is where we must rely upon prayer and turning to learned, faith based friends. We counsel, we pray and many times we wait. All of this waiting can be tiring and discerning His plan for us can be hard, but we need to be careful about filling in the gaps.
