Gary North

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread, and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away: and she departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept. And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink (Gen. 21:14-19).

Christians who are up to their eyeballs in debt can learn a lot from this story. It is a story of deliverance. When you seem trapped in the wilderness, you can get out. But, first, you must acknowledge that you are in the wilderness.

Sarah had told Abraham to cast them out of the family. He had listened to his wife, as he usually did, but he was saddened by what he had done. He had thrown out his own son. Ishmael was about 14 years old at the time. What father wouldn't be depressed about having to send away his son, even though his son had not done anything terribly wrong? All he had done was laugh at Isaac, whose very name means laughter. But that was enough to enrage Sarah.

God told Abraham not to worry, that God would make of Ishmael a great nation. He told Abraham that Ishmael would not represent Abraham covenantally in history. That position of authority would be inherited by Isaac. But God was not going to destroy Ishmael or Hagar.

God did not bother to tell this to Hagar. So, as she and her son wandered in the wilderness, they found no water. They ran out of the water which Abraham had given to them. Eventually, Ishmael collapsed. The Bible says that Hagar put him under a bush. This was not an infant. He was about 14 years old, a year older than when he was circumcised at 13 (Gen. 17:25). It is obvious that they had been without food and water for a considerable period. God had stretched them to the limit.

Finally, Hagar cried out to God. She did not ask for deliverance. She simply told God she did not want to see her son die. She had given up all hope. She told God this as her final testimony. Only at this point did the angel of God reveal the truth to her. God had set apart Ishmael, meaning that He had sanctified him, so that he could be a founder of a nation.

DELIVERANCE IS CLOSE BY

At that point, Hagar saw that there was a well nearby. There was a source of water, which meant that there was a source of life.

The angel of God had told her that her son would grow to be a leader of men. Only then did God reveal the means by which Ishmael would be restored. Hagar took some water to him, and held him up with one hand (21:18). Presumably, she reached behind his back, lifted him up, and gave him something to drink. That restored him. He was then able to continue growing. He became a great archer (21:20).

We have a lesson here. Hagar did not have sufficient faith in God. She believed that her son would soon die, and she would die after him. She knew enough about the relationship between God and man so that she prayed to God. She explained her situation. She did not ask for deliverance, but she did point out to God the serious situation in which she and her son found themselves. She had no confidence that God would deliver either of them. But, to just make certain that she departed from life in communication with God, she prayed to him, telling him of her concern.

It was not that Hagar had no confidence at all in God. She knew that God exists. She knew that God listens to the prayers of men and women. She wanted to explain herself before she died. She did not want to die while out of touch with God. So, she had some knowledge of the way God deals with mankind. But, in the final analysis, she did not have very much trust in God. She did not see God as a deliverer. She saw him as a judge. She wanted to explain herself to the judge, but she was not begging for mercy.

Only after she admitted that she could no longer handle her own affairs did God reveal to her that her son had a great future. Only then did He revealed to her that she was within walking distance of a well. She had not seen that well. There was her physical deliverance, right in front of her, and she had not seen it.

God deals with people in distress in the same way that He dealt with Hagar. He lets them wander aimlessly in the wilderness. He waits for them to call upon Him. There is no evidence from the text that Hagar had prayed to God prior to this. Even in dire straits, she did not pray for deliverance. We are not told why.

Here was how Hagar was delivered.

First, she laid her son under a bush. This might give him some shade, but it would only delay death for a little time.

Second, she walked away from him. She did not want to see him die. She was so convinced that he would die if she separated yourself from them or he she completely given up hope.

Third, she explained her situation to God. She did not ask for deliverance.

Fourth, God revealed to her the fact that he had not withdrawn his blessing for her son. Her son would not die.

Fifth, she looked around and saw a well.

This progression is typical of how God deals with Christians who do not pay attention to what he requires. He lets them wander in the wilderness until they have run out of hope.

There are millions of Christians today who are deep in debt. They are deep in debt despite the fact that we live in a time of such enormous prosperity that nothing in the history of mankind compares with it. Despite the fact that Christians and non-Christians live better than anybody has in history, as far as what they can purchase with their activity, they regard themselves as wanderers in the wilderness. Spiritually speaking, this perception is correct. They are indeed wandering in the wilderness.

Hagar wanted to get out of the wilderness, but she did not see the way out. Christians want to get out of the wilderness, but they don't see the way out, either. Hagar's deliverance was right in front of her. The Christians' deliverance is right in front of them. She did not see this; they do not see this. I tell Christians to open their eyes, but their eyes are already open. They just do not see what is in front of them.

They do not see what is in front of them for a reason. They do not want to see it. They do not want to change their behavior. They want the blessings, but they do not want the responsibilities. They want the fruits, but they do not want the roots. They want to enjoy prosperity, but they do not want to pay the price of prosperity. They seem to regard life as if it were a giant lottery, and they keep buying tickets. They never seem to win.

There is no free lunch. This is the fundamental teaching of economics. Even in the case of salvation, the lunch was not free to Jesus, for what He did was very expensive. His gift is free, so the lunch for us is free, but the lunch was paid for by somebody else. There is no free lunch.

This being the case, when we seek to gain some advantage, we should look for the true cost. If we want leverage from debt, we must look for the cost of debt.

Why are men in debt? Because of their inability to restrain their purchases. They did not stop buying when their wallets were empty. They thought there would be a free lunch. They used a credit card or other debt instrument to buy what they wanted, even though they could not afford it. This belief in a free lunch, when widespread, leads to enslavement. The borrower is servant to the lender (Prov. 22:7).

Having deliberately set their sights on the mirage in the desert, they walked into the desert in quest of all that free water. The problem is, it is a mirage. Men never reach the goal. They then discover that they are so far into the wilderness that they cannot get back. There is not sufficient water to get them back. That is what they think. That is what Hagar thought. Hagar was wrong.

There is a well in the wilderness. There is an oasis. It is not free. The price of obtaining this water is self-discipline. It is the willingness to cut expenses, despite the fact that these expenditures have become habitual.

Men have defined their lifestyle in terms of these expenditures. They have judged their success in life in terms of these expenditures. They have not judged success in life in terms of the ability to earn more than the expenditures, and to save the difference. They have seen success in terms of spending rather than seeing success in terms of saving. They have seen success as the accumulation of goods, but They have not seen success is the accumulation of wealth.

As I have said before, this wealth is a way of purchasing opportunities. When we increase the number of opportunities available to us, we have increased our wealth. This is the purpose of wealth. It is not to buy all the toys of life; it is to enable us to choose how to serve God from a longer list of opportunities.

THE FIRST STEP TO DELIVERANCE

When Christians finally acknowledge that they are deep into the wilderness, and that they do not have a well to get them back, they have taken the first step to deliverance. When they cease chasing mirages, they will find that they have access to sufficient water to restore them and to enable them to get out of the wilderness.

Hagar was driven into the wilderness. Today's Christians voluntarily walk into the wilderness. They have less sense than she did. She did not have much sense. She waited until she had completely run out of alternatives, meaning opportunities, before she finally sat down and told God about her problem.

When was the last time you sat down to tell God about your problem? Did you listen carefully to His answer?

The solution to the wilderness of debt is simple: stop spending so much money. The solution is to cut back on expenditures to the point of pain. Then use excess income to pay off existing debts. This is the road back out of the wilderness. Hagar found water in the wilderness, but that did not get her out of the wilderness. It only enabled her to get out of the wilderness.

THE HAPPINESS RATCHET

We get used to a certain lifestyle. We define this lifestyle in terms of what we can buy. We buy with two things: time and money. There is not much you can do to extend your time. You have only 24 hours in the day. But you can cut back on the expenditure of money. It requires that you give up those aspects of your life by which you do find yourself as comfortable, if not successful. You must get into a discomfort zone.

One of the great things about human beings is the fact that after a time of what people would have regarded as disasters, they find that they adjust. They suffer some setback, but they find ways of coping with it. After some time, they find that they are just about as happy as they were before the disaster hit them.

This works the other way, also. People get access to a lot of money, and they think they are an easy street. But, over time, they find that they are no happier with this extra money than they were before they had the money. This is not true of somebody who was in extreme poverty, and somehow gets a decent job and can put food on his table. He does experience an increase of happiness. But above that minimal increase from extreme poverty to what might be called lower-middle-class comfort, people do not experience sustainable increases in happiness as a result of increased money. They think in advance that they are going to experience such happiness, but they do not. This is one of the most important findings of what is known as behavioral economics. The economist could have discovered this a lot earlier simply by sitting down and reading the book of Ecclesiastes.

If you increase your expenditures because you have increased your income, your not going to be any happier. When I say this, I mean increased expenditures on consumer goods. If you find ways of giving away money effectively, and you can see the tremendous benefits that this money has produced in the lives of certain people, you can increase the amount of your happiness. You will get a sense of satisfaction that you had not experienced before. But, if we are talking about spending more money on consumer goods and services, the money will not buy happiness.

Similarly, when you cut back on those expenditures that you regard today as the sources of your happiness, you will find that after a fairly short period of time, you are just as happy if you are now. This may not cheer you up, because you may be miserable now. But at least you can become miserable with positive cash flow. That certainly beats being miserable with negative cash flow.

You should want to increase the number of opportunities available to you for the service of God. The question is this: How can you do this? You cannot do this by increasing your indebtedness. There will always be a piper to pay. Remember what David said: "The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: (Psa. 37:21a). You do not wish to be wicked. So, do not borrow. Why not? Because there is a possibility he will not be able to pay it back.

My suggestion is this: choose set down and make a list of your expenditures. You can do this on paper. At some point, you should do it with a piece of software. You want to know where your money is going.

Once you can see where your money is going, you can begin to cut back on expenditures. You can cut back on the things it you really don't think are crucial to your lifestyle. Then, having done that, even begin to cut back on those things which are not crucial to your somewhat lower lifestyle. You keep doing this, until you have a new definition of what constitutes a comfortable lifestyle.

The adjustment is painful, but it is not permanent. As I said, people who suffer what they would have thought before was a disaster find that they adjust to the new conditions in a fairly short period of time. They find that their lives still have meaning. They find that their level of comfort is just about same as before. They also find a discomfort of debt has been reduced.

When you call out to God for deliverance, and you begin to take steps to get out of the wilderness, you will find that you come across an unexpected well. You will find opportunities to continue your journey out of the wilderness of debt. This will be reward for beginning that journey.