Saved, But Still Slipping

August 6, 2025 - Genesis 20–21

I’m Pastor Rich Bitterman, a country preacher from the Ozarks. Guy Howard, the old Walking Preacher, once wore out his boots traveling from church to church, meeting strangers and sharing the gospel. I’m doing the same today on digital roads. Each post is a visit. Each verse is a step. Let’s walk the Word together.

🪔 Today’s Truth:

Even when fear and old mistakes crowd in, God’s promises remain sure.

Abraham stood on the edge of the promise.

The stars had been counted. The covenant sealed. The angels had come and gone, their words still echoing in the tent: “This time next year.”

And now, with Sarah’s body already changing and the miracle beginning to stir beneath her ribs, he fled south.

It made no sense.

He had just entertained heaven under his oaks. He had just spoken face to face with the Judge of all the earth. He had just interceded for Sodom with the boldness of a man who knew God listened.

But now? He runs.

To Gerar. To fear. To lies.

And like an old wound ripped open, he tells the same tired lie he told in Egypt years ago. “She is my sister.” He had said it before, and he says it again. Sarah nods. She knows the dance. She’s done it before. The roles have been rehearsed.

And once more, a pagan king takes the mother of promise into his house.

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The Tent Where Fear Still Sleeps

Why now? Why here…on the cusp of everything God had promised?

Because sin waits in the familiar.

Abraham wasn’t caught off guard. He wasn’t ambushed by a temptation he didn’t recognize. This wasn’t new. This was an old fear with a fresh face. A recycled failure. A sin wrapped in the same cowardice that once made him run to Egypt, lie to Pharaoh, and endanger the woman he loved.

It came back.

And it always does. Sometimes the fiercest temptations are the ones we think we’ve buried. The ones that don’t knock, they already have a key. And they walk into our lives like they never left.

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When God Protects Us From Ourselves

Abimelech never meant to sin. He took Sarah in good faith, trusting Abraham’s word. But in the middle of the night, a dream stopped him cold.

“You are a dead man.”

It was a verdict. God had stepped between a liar and a king to protect a womb that would soon carry the lineage of Christ.

Not because Abraham deserved it.

But because the promise did.

It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? That a righteous pagan has to rebuke a prophet. That a man who fears God less behaves with more integrity. That sometimes it’s the believer who’s the coward and the unbeliever who’s brave.

And yet, when the dust settles, God tells Abimelech to go to Abraham for prayer.

The fallen one. The deceiver. The man who jeopardized the gospel to save his own skin.

“He will pray for you.”

Because grace doesn’t follow logic. It flows along the fault lines of human failure and finds its mark.

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Laughter Comes After Tears

And then it happens.

Twenty-five years of waiting. Twenty-five years of barrenness and bitterness and God’s unsettling silence. Twenty-five years of desert walks and tense nights and dried-up hope.

And now Sarah is nursing a boy.

The child she once laughed at in disbelief now giggles in her lap. Her arms, once empty, now cradle promise swaddled in flesh.

They name him Isaac.

Laughter.

Not the sarcastic laugh she gave in secret when the angels spoke, but the wild, uncontainable laugh of a woman who no longer cares how old she is or how foolish she looks. She has a baby in her arms and joy burning in her chest.

But just when the house begins to fill with laughter, another sound rises.

Mocking.

From the shadows, Ishmael watches the feast and laughs a different kind of laugh. Not the laughter of joy, but of contempt.

He sees what Isaac represents. He hears the shift in Abraham’s tone. He knows. He’s not the center anymore. He never was.

And Sarah sees it too.

She sees the way Ishmael looks at her boy. She feels the tension under the tent poles. And she speaks the hardest words a mother can speak:

“Cast out the slave woman and her son.”

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A God Who Hears in the Wilderness

The next morning, a skin of water. A loaf of bread. A heavy silence.

Hagar walks with her boy into the wilderness. No destination. Just distance. The farther from Abraham’s camp, the better.

The sun rises high. The water runs out. Ishmael collapses under a bush, and Hagar turns away. She cannot watch him die.

And then comes the line that shakes the desert:

“And God heard the voice of the boy.”

He heard the dry lips, the shallow breath, the heart that still longed for his father. And He speaks.

He opens Hagar’s eyes. There’s a well. There’s water. There’s life.

And more than that there’s a future. Ishmael will live. He’ll grow. He’ll become a nation. God hears cries in the wilderness.

Because God is not just the God of tents and altars. He is the God of runaways, castaways, and throwaways.

He is the God of Abraham. But He is also the God of Hagar.

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A Prayer at the Edge of the Promise

And then, quietly, the chapters end with dignity.

Abraham plants a tree. He calls on the name of the Everlasting God. He makes peace with Abimelech, the king he once deceived. He speaks with clarity, no longer hiding. No longer afraid.

He is not perfect.

But he is still chosen.

He is not consistent.

But he is still kept.

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Devotional Reflection: When the Old Sins Return

These chapters are not clean. They are not comforting. They are uncomfortable, raw, and all too familiar.

They show us that even the father of faith was not above fear. That miracles can live beside mistakes. That God’s promises are not secured by our obedience, but by His character.

And they ask us, with trembling honesty, to look inward:

• Where are the old sins trying to find new life in you?

• What fear is pushing you to cover up instead of cry out?

• Are you trusting God’s promise enough to wait, or are you helping Him in ways that hurt?

• Have you mistaken past victory for present immunity?

• Where do you need to believe that God still hears your cry in the wilderness?

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The Hope That Remains

Abraham fell again.

But God remained.

Sarah laughed in disbelief.

But God brought joy.

Hagar wept in the wilderness.

But God opened her eyes.

The promise didn’t break. It never does. It may tremble. It may feel endangered. But it will not fall.

Because this story isn’t about Abraham. It never was.

It’s about the God who keeps His word.

And if He kept it then through failure, fear, and famine…He will keep it now.

Even for you.

Even here.

Even still.

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