There are parts of our stories we would rather leave alone. Experiences we don’t talk about. Pain we’ve learned to live around. Things that happened years ago that we assume are better left in the past.

But the stories we don’t tell don’t simply disappear.

Our reactions, relationships, fears, shame, anger, and patterns can begin telling those stories for us. The past may be behind us chronologically, but that doesn’t mean it has stopped affecting us.

Genesis 16 gives us a picture of what it can look like to face our stories honestly and discover that God is already present in the places we would rather avoid.

Face your story

Genesis 16 is messy.

Abram and Sarai are living with the pain of infertility. Sarai brings Hagar, her Egyptian servant, into their marriage in an attempt to have a child through her. Hagar becomes pregnant, conflict grows, and eventually Sarai treats Hagar so harshly that she runs away.

There are no perfectly polished people in this story.

Abram is the patriarch of our faith, a man who left everything to follow where God called him. Scripture honors that faith. But Scripture is also honest about his failures.

That matters.

We sometimes believe that honoring our family or the people who came before us means ignoring the painful parts of their stories. Or we go the other direction and think being honest about what happened means we can no longer honor them.

Scripture holds honor and honesty together.

We can acknowledge what was good while also telling the truth about what hurt. In fact, God invites us into that honesty because He wants our grief. He wants the stories where we lacked the father, mother, friend, church, or community we needed.

The more energy we spend protecting the image of a perfect past, the harder it becomes to receive God's comfort in the places where our past actually wounded us.

Face your pain

Hagar runs into the wilderness, and there the angel of the Lord finds her.

God asks her a remarkable question:

“Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
Genesis 16:8

Those questions reach far beyond geography.

Where have you come from?

What shaped you? What happened around your dinner table growing up? What words were spoken over you? Where did you feel safe? Where did you learn to hide? What experiences still seem to show up in your reactions today?

And then:

Where are you going?

We spend a lot of our lives running from painful stories. But God can invite us to return to those stories, not for the purpose of harming us, but for healing.

Our struggles can become road maps.

Instead of only asking, “How do I stop doing this?” we can become curious about why the pattern exists in the first place. Instead of simply trying to manage anger, anxiety, shame, loneliness, or destructive behaviors, we can ask what story might be underneath them.

Pain that remains unaddressed has a way of continuing to speak. Sometimes we end up passing along what we never stopped to understand ourselves.

Facing our pain doesn’t mean living forever in the past. It means becoming honest about where we have come from so, with God, we can begin moving somewhere new.

Face the kindness of God

Perhaps the most beautiful part of Hagar’s story is what she discovers in the wilderness.

God sees her.

Hagar says:

“You are the God who sees me.”
Genesis 16:13

A foreigner, a servant, a woman who has been mistreated and pushed into the wilderness discovers that she has not disappeared from God's sight.

And notice how God approaches her.

He asks questions.

“Where have you come from?”

“Where are you going?”

Throughout Scripture, God often approaches broken people with questions. After Adam sins, God asks, “Where are you?” When Jacob has spent his life struggling with his identity, God asks, “What is your name?”

There is kindness in the voice of God.

Shame tells us that our broken stories prove we are unwanted, dirty, undesirable, or beyond repair. But when God comes to find us, He invites us to bring those stories into His presence.

God does not wait for us to get everything sorted out before He meets us. He meets Hagar in the wilderness. He meets people in places of failure, grief, confusion, and shame.

And ultimately, we see this in Jesus.

Even after the resurrection, Jesus still carries scars. The scars tell a story. They show where He has been, what He endured, and what He has overcome.

Our scars tell stories too.

The broken places of our lives do not have to be hidden from God. They can become places where we discover the God who sees us, finds us, and meets us with kindness.

So perhaps two of the most important questions we can bring before God are the same questions He asked Hagar:

Where do you come from?

And where are you going?

Message recap adapted from the October 4, 2026, message by Dr. Jay Stringer