Lessons from Hagar Strength in Struggle

Identifying the Challenge

Desert places come in many forms: an empty bank account, a diagnosis, a tense home, a workplace where your presence feels unnoticed—until the moment someone needs someone to blame. Hagar’s story speaks to these places. She was a foreign servant in Abram’s household, drawn into decisions she did not design. When Sarai’s plan to obtain a child through Hagar led to pregnancy, jealousy erupted. The home turned sharp. Words cut. Status shifted. Hagar ran—pregnant and alone—into the wilderness. Her experience mirrors the ache many carry today: powerlessness, shame, and the suspicion that no one truly sees.

Some of us know the strain of carrying a child without the support of a steady home. Others know the fright of being a stranger navigating immigration offices and cultural barriers, expected to serve but not to belong. Many have felt the pressure to accept unjust treatment because “that’s just the way it is.” In Hagar’s pain, we find a mirror for our own. The question hiding behind the grit of daily survival is simple and piercing: Does God notice this? Does He care about what is happening to me?

There is a second, quieter challenge too. When we suffer, we often misname ourselves. We start to believe we are unwanted, inconvenient, or cursed. We carry the names someone else has hurled at us. We live under the shadow of other people’s choices, and the struggle can tempt us to believe that our lives hang on those choices. Hagar’s story confronts that lie. She is neither a footnote nor a mistake. God steps into her desert, and the living Lord gives her a new frame for reality. The God of Abraham is also the God who sees a servant girl by a spring on the way to Shur; He is the God who meets a mother and her son near death in the wilderness of Beersheba. He is not indifferent, not distant, and not silent.

The challenge, then, is twofold: we face real injustice and real fear, and we must learn what to do with both. We need strength that does not grow from denial, and hope that does not depend on human approval. Hagar’s journey gives the shape of that strength—strength in struggle because the Lord Himself sees, speaks, and sustains.

Biblical Perspective

Scripture gives us a faithful record of Hagar’s life. These are not myths. Genesis sets Hagar inside God’s unfolding promise to bless all nations through Abram. Sarai, barren and weary, proposed a human workaround: Abram would father a child through Hagar. Hagar conceived. Tension rose. Sarai treated Hagar harshly, and Hagar fled into the desert. At a spring of water, the Angel of the LORD found her. He called her by name. He asked questions that pierced to the heart—Where have you come from and where are you going?—and He revealed God’s care in the middle of her distress.

That encounter is pivotal. The Lord instructed Hagar to return and submit to her mistress, a hard word cushioned by a promise. He pledged to multiply her offspring and named her son Ishmael, which means God hears. God would, in fact, hear the boy’s cry and Hagar’s pain. In this desert place, Hagar confessed a truth that has sustained countless believers: the Lord sees me. She gave God a name drawn from her lived experience, El Roi, the God who sees.

Genesis 16:13 — “So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing,’ for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.’”

Years later, after Isaac was born, tension resurfaced, and Hagar left with Ishmael. In the wilderness of Beersheba, water ran out. She set the boy under a shrub and wept at a distance, unable to watch him die. God again intervened—He heard, He spoke, He opened her eyes to a well. He sustained them and fulfilled His promise that Ishmael would become a great nation. The Lord’s dealings with Hagar are not footnotes; they are central to the shape of His mercy. He does not take sides as humans do; He remains faithful to His promises while extending compassion to the distressed. He called Abraham; and He also called Hagar by name. He made a covenant with Isaac; and He also provided for Ishmael. The living God defends the vulnerable and takes seriously the cries that others ignore. Hagar’s desert becomes holy ground, where God’s character is revealed: He sees, He hears, and He acts.

God’s Solution

God’s answer to the harsh edges of life begins not with a technique but with Himself. In both of Hagar’s wilderness seasons, the Lord draws near, speaks clear truth, gives direction, and supplies what she lacks. This is not sentimental comfort; it is strong salvation in the middle of complicated realities.

First, God’s solution is His presence that names and notices. In Genesis 16, the Angel of the LORD finds Hagar and addresses her personally: “Hagar, servant of Sarai.” The Lord sees her story,