The Promise of the Father
The Seven Spirits of God (Part 7)
We have been exploring and enjoying the reality of the Sevenfold Spirit of God: the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel and Might, and the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear—or worship—of the Lord.
These seven dimensions of who God is in the Holy Spirit reveal the essence of what life is about. God’s Spirit is life itself, and each aspect of the Spirit carries us through a kind of progression—a spiraling stairway of life. We begin in the wisdom of God’s love, grow in understanding, learn to walk in his counsel and power, and are ultimately brought into intimate knowledge, awe, and worship.
For this seventh and final chapter, I want to share a very personal revelation the Lord gave me before I began this series. He led me to a story in the Old Testament, and it blew my mind when I began to see how deeply it connected with the Seven Spirits of God.
You may not immediately see the connection, but I believe it will become clear as we move through the story . . .
The Son Who Was Sent Away
The story begins in Genesis 21:
“Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. Therefore she said to Abraham, ‘Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.’
“The matter distressed Abraham greatly because of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not be distressed because of the lad and your maid; whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her, for through Isaac your descendants shall be named. And of the son of the maid I will make a nation also, because he is your descendant.’
“So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba.
“When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, ‘Do not let me see the boy die.’ And she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept.
“God heard the lad crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.’
“Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink. God was with the lad, and he grew; and he lived in the wilderness and became an archer.”
—Genesis 21:9–20
Abraham and Sarah had been promised a son by God. But as the years passed and the promise did not seem to be coming, Sarah suggested that Abraham have a child through her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. In the ancient world, securing an heir was extraordinarily important. A child would carry on the family name, property, and inheritance. Without one, everything Abraham possessed could eventually pass into the hands of someone outside his family.
So Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands.
Hagar became pregnant and gave birth to Abraham’s son, Ishmael. Then, about thirteen years later, the promise finally came. Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac.
Conflict developed between the two households. Ishmael was found mocking his younger brother, and Sarah demanded that Abraham send Hagar and her son away. She did not want Ishmael sharing in Isaac’s inheritance.
This deeply distressed Abraham. Ishmael was not merely the consequence of a bad decision. He was Abraham’s son—his firstborn son—and Abraham loved him. He did not want to cast him out. Yet Sarah, the matriarch of the household, was insistent. God reassured Abraham that although Isaac was the child through whom the covenant promise would continue, he had not forgotten Ishmael. He would be with him and would also make a nation from him.
So Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away with bread and a skin of water.
At this point in their lives, Abraham had been their protector and provider. Yet the provision he sent with them did not last. The bread was consumed. The water skin ran dry. What Abraham gave them was not enough to sustain them through the wilderness.
And here the story begins to touch something deep within all of us.
When the Water Skin Runs Dry
How many of us have had people in our lives who were supposed to provide something necessary and life-giving, but what they gave us was not enough? The well ran dry. The water in the skin was used up.
Human beings need certain provisions in order to survive and thrive, and we do not live by physical bread alone. We need love. We need affection. We need honor, attention, affirmation, direction, protection, and guidance. Yet all of us, in one way or another, were not given enough. Some were barely given any of these things at all.
Abraham was supposed to be a father to Ishmael and, in some sense, a husband and protector to Hagar. But in this moment he abdicated that place. He attempted to provide something for their journey, but it ran out quickly. Their literal hunger and thirst led them into despair and brought them to the edge of death.
We live in a world filled with people whose protectors and providers have, for one reason or another, abdicated their roles. The result is another kind of thirst—a thirst for love, acceptance, affirmation, and guidance. When these needs go unmet, people often seek to satisfy them in unhealthy and destructive ways.
I know something about that thirst personally.
In 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic, I got on a plane and traveled to Texas to see my mother. The Lord had been doing a deeper work in my heart, and I felt it was important to have a very honest conversation with her.
During the period from 2019 into 2020, my marriage was struggling. In a supernatural way, God revealed to my wife, Kelly, a struggle that had been growing in my heart and had developed into an emotional affair. Nothing physical had taken place, but it was still unhealthy, inappropriate, and wrong. The discovery caused tremendous pain for Kelly.
During that season, the Lord began exposing deeper struggles within me connected to rejection and abandonment. There were lies buried within my heart that had created a kind of thirst, causing me to seek certain things in the wrong places.
Some of this connected with my relationship with my mother and the rejection I had felt from a very young age. Kelly and I both believed I needed to speak openly with her about it. Because of the pandemic, a round-trip ticket to Austin cost about fifty dollars, so I got on the plane.
I love my mother, and we have a good relationship today. I am deeply grateful for that. But there were wounds connected to my parents’ divorce when I was two years old, particularly because I did not get to live with her. Even though I saw her every other weekend, a part of me felt as though I had been “sent away.”
The water skin of a mother’s affection, connection, and affirmation seemed to run dry. A thirst developed within me for female attention, connection, and beauty. That thirst consumed parts of my life as I was growing up. God delivered me powerfully from an addiction to pornography when I was eighteen, but some of the deeper lies remained hidden and eventually began creeping into my marriage.
One of the most powerful things about my conversation with my mother was that I began to understand her more. Among other things, the Lord showed me how much poverty and financial hardship had affected the choices surrounding custody. There were serious financial reasons she was unable to take on more responsibility for raising me.
As we talked, the Lord allowed me to see her heart. I began to understand that there had been circumstances beyond her control that affected her ability to mother me. God used that conversation to establish truth within me: I had not truly been rejected or abandoned in the way the enemy had suggested.
I know this is heavy, but there is a reason I am sharing it. Something powerful happened on the plane ride home, and it connects directly with Hagar, Ishmael, and the Sevenfold Spirit of God. I’ll come back to that shortly . . .
The Bread of Hope
Hagar ran out of the provision that had been given by the person who should have supplied more. She reached the point of giving up.
She placed her son under a bush and walked a distance away because she could not bear to watch him die. There was no store down the road. No QuickChek or gas station. In the desert, without food and water, death was truly inevitable. It was a hopeless situation through and through.
So Hagar broke down—and so did her son. Their physical thirst and hunger were mixed with the deeper pain of rejection. They had been cast out by Abraham, the man who should have protected them.
This is the heart of so much human struggle. Beneath many of our desires and destructive behaviors is a thirst for love and acceptance. When that love appears absent—or is perceived to be absent—the resulting pain can pollute our thinking and drive us toward despair.
But it was in that very moment that God appeared.
And the first thing God did was release a promise.
Before he showed Hagar the provision, he ministered to her hopelessness. Before her eyes could be opened to what was around her, she had to rise from the place of despair in which she had collapsed.
God said, “Arise.”
He told her that there was hope for her future. He would make a great nation from her son. In other words: You have no idea what lies ahead of you. Everything feels wrong right now, but I am with you. This is not the end of your story.
That is the true bread every human being needs to hear and receive (“eat”).
Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. There is bread that our fathers, mothers, teachers, pastors, spouses, and influencers cannot provide. It is the bread of promise. The bread of identity. The bread of hope spoken directly from the heart of God.
God first gave Hagar the bread of hope so she could begin to rise out of her hopelessness.
Then he opened her eyes.
The Well of the Sevenfold Promise
The wilderness in which Hagar wandered has a significant name. It is called the wilderness of Beersheba.
Beersheba is formed from two Hebrew words: be’er, meaning a well, and sheva, meaning seven. The word connected with seven also carries the idea of an oath or promise. In the ancient world, covenants and solemn guarantees were sometimes confirmed through groups of seven. People might repeat a declaration seven times or offer seven animals as witnesses to an oath.
Beersheba can therefore be understood as the well of seven, the well of the oath, or the well of the sevenfold promise.
Interestingly, the place did not yet bear that name when Hagar first arrived. The name was given later in the same chapter, after Abraham entered into an agreement with a Philistine king.
Water was more valuable than gold in that desert region. Abraham’s servants had dug wells and discovered a source of water, but conflict developed over who owned them. Abraham agreed to make peace with the Philistine king, but he required the king to acknowledge that the well belonged to him.
As part of the covenant, Abraham set aside seven lambs. These lambs served as a witness that he had dug the well and that the water belonged to him.
Genesis tells us:
“Therefore he called that place Beersheba, because there the two of them took an oath.”
—Genesis 21:31
The well was confirmed by a sevenfold witness and a covenant promise.
And this was the very land where Hagar was wandering around, dying of thirst.
The answer to her problem was already in front of her! The provision was present, but she could not perceive it.
Her problem was not simply provision. It was perception.
She was unable to see the goodness that was already there.
This is something the Lord showed me in my own marriage, but it applies to many areas of life. We can become convinced that something essential is missing. We begin lusting, craving, and reaching for things that can never satisfy us. Meanwhile, pain and disappointment blind us to the blessings that are already present.
We should also acknowledge that Hagar was probably not merely sad. She was likely angry.
Sarah had been the one who suggested that Abraham have a child with her. Now that Sarah finally had her own son, she was driving Hagar and Ishmael away. From Hagar’s perspective, this was a profound injustice.
Her tears were probably desperate tears, but they may have been bitter and angry tears as well. Those tears filled her eyes and clouded her vision. She could no longer see what was directly in front of her.
Then we read these beautiful words:
“Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.”
—Genesis 21:19
God wants to perform that same healing work in our vision. He wants to deal with the pain, disappointment, anger, and bitterness that cloud our eyes and drive us into despair.
But we cannot miss the deeper message of the well of the sevenfold promise. This well points toward the ultimate provision that has been given to all of us.
It points toward the finished work of Jesus Christ . . .
It Is Finished
Seven is the number of completion. On the seventh day, God finished his work of creation. He looked at everything he had made and declared that it was very good.
When Jesus hung upon the cross and took the sin of humanity into himself, he eventually cried out, “It is finished.”
The work was complete.
And because that work was finished, God now looks upon those who are in Christ and declares, “Very good.”
You are very good.
That declaration speaks to needs and longings deeper than physical hunger. When Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, he was responding to the devil’s attempt to make him doubt his identity.
Jesus had entered the wilderness (just like Hagar) and the tempter came and challenged him: “If you are the Son of God…”
But immediately before Jesus entered that wilderness, the Father had spoken:
“You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”
The Father gave Jesus a water skin that could never run dry. He gave him the bread that truly satisfies the human heart: the word of beloved identity.
The deepest issue beneath rejection and abandonment is often the lie that something is fundamentally wrong with us.
I am not good. I am broken. I am not wanted. I am not needed. Something about me makes me unworthy of love.
That is the lie.
It is the lie that drives so much pain and so many false attempts to satisfy our thirst, whether through substances, affairs, compulsive behaviors, or the mild but constant distractions that keep us from our destiny in God.
The finished work of the cross declares that you are not a rejected fragment of creation.
You were worth dying for.
Remember the seven lambs Abraham gave as a witness that the water belonged to him. In a much greater way, Jesus is the Lamb whose blood serves as the witness, oath, promise, and guarantee that you may come and drink freely from the Father’s love and presence!
The well belongs to you.
The Spirit of Promise
This brings us directly back to the Sevenfold Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the presence of the Father, and Scripture uses the title “the Spirit of Promise.” The Spirit brings everything we truly need for life: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, intimacy, worship, awe, and wonder.
Jesus said that whoever believes in him—whoever comes and drinks—will have rivers of living water rise from within. John tells us that Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit.
The Father does not merely hand us another temporary water skin. He places the well within us.
The promise of the Father is the Holy Spirit.
This is the Spirit who reveals that we are the beloved. This is the Spirit who heals our vision. The Spirit who causes us to see that what we have been desperately seeking has already been given in Christ.
The Sons of Ishmael
After my time with my mother in Texas, I boarded a plane to return home. As I took my seat, I realized that I was surrounded by men who appeared to be Muslim.
Traditionally, Ishmael is regarded as a father of much of the Arab world, while the Jewish people trace their covenant lineage through Isaac, Sarah’s son. This ancient family conflict has therefore continued to echo through history.
The tension is about more than land, although land certainly matters. There are deeper wounds in the human heart beneath all the conflict.
Hagar and Ishmael experienced rejection, and for understandable reasons. Yet this story also reveals something I had been learning about my own parents. Abraham did not truly want to send Ishmael away. Life had become horribly messy through human fear, unbelief, barrenness, conflicting inheritance claims, and the tension between two sons.
A terrible situation developed through the brokenness of many people.
Hagar and Ishmael were rejected by human beings, but they were not rejected by God.
God was with them.
And he remains concerned with their descendants today.
As I sat on that plane, the Lord was dealing with perceived abandonment and rejection in my own life. Suddenly I felt a profound connection, deeper than ethnicity or culture, with people from a completely different part of the world. We shared the same human heart, thirsting for the same love, belonging, and acceptance.
Compassion began rising within me.
I saw more clearly how an orphan spirit has affected the entire world, leaving a particular mark upon the sons of Ishmael and upon many nations in Africa. There are other historical and biblical connections that could be explored, including the story of Noah and his sons, but in that moment I simply felt the Father’s heart for these peoples in a way I had never experienced before.
It was as though the Lord was telling me, “Your healing is bigger than you.”
Wake up, Nick. Be healed and move forward, because I am sending you to nations. I am sending you to those who feel abandoned, even though they are not abandoned. I am the true Father, and I am with them even now.
And God wants to bring healing truth into your own heart because you have a calling.
He desires to heal you simply because he loves you. That is true whether you ever travel to another nation or not. Healing is not something you have to earn through ministry.
But there is also a calling upon the church to bring lost sons and daughters home. There is a calling to participate in reconciliation between entire people groups. This is much larger than our individual lives.
We are talking about the healing of the nations.
The Spirit of Adoption
The Sevenfold Spirit is more than wise counsel and miraculous power. He certainly brings those things, but the Sevenfold Spirit is also the Spirit of Adoption—the Spirit of Sonship.
The Holy Spirit confirms that you are a beloved child of the King.
You are not abandoned.
You are not alone.
In fact, you were never alone, even when it felt as though you were. You may still feel alone now, but the feeling is not the deepest truth.
This is central to what the Holy Spirit reveals. Like a true mother, the Spirit brings comfort to the deepest places of the human heart—the places of need that, when left unhealed, can drive people toward addiction because their water skins ran dry so early in life.
The book of Ephesians begins by describing the spiritual blessings already surrounding us in Christ. Paul later speaks of the walls of division being broken down between peoples—Jew and Gentile, and ultimately every tribe, language, and nation.
But in the first chapter, Paul prays for something very similar to what Hagar experienced. He prays that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened.
He prays for our vision to be opened.
The tears of loneliness, bitterness, rejection, and disappointment can cloud our eyes. Yet when we release those things to God, he begins clearing our vision. We begin to see how blessed we are, how deeply we are loved, and how much hope remains for our future.
Forgiveness and Open Eyes
Part of opening our eyes involves forgiveness.
We begin coming out of blindness as we release the people who caused our pain—or who seemed to drive us into the wilderness in the first place.
Most people did not deliberately set out to destroy us. Even when their actions felt intentional, many were being driven by wounds, fears, lies, and their own unhealed places.
I traveled more than a thousand miles to have a conversation with my mother. Not everyone can or should do that. Some may be able to have a courageous conversation with the person who hurt them. Others must forgive someone who is no longer alive. In some circumstances, direct contact would be unwise or unsafe.
But whether or not a conversation can take place, the pain can always be brought to the Lord.
We can allow him to touch our hearts and help us release those who wounded us.
And as our vision clears, we can rise as true messengers of the gospel.
You may never travel to Africa or the Middle East, but people carrying an orphan spirit are all around you. They live in your neighborhood, work beside you, sit near you in church, and may even live within your own home.
And regarding the nations of Africa and the Middle East, I believe the church is called to remain engaged, even when our participation is expressed through prayer, generosity, and support for missions of reconciliation and healing.
There are sons and daughters in the wilderness who believe they have been abandoned.
There are wells they cannot yet see.
And the Spirit of the Father is still speaking:
“Do not fear. I have heard you. Arise. Lift up the child. There is a promise over your future!”
This is the promise of the Father.
The water skin may have run dry, but the well has not.
The people who were supposed to provide for you may have failed. Their love may have seemed insufficient. Their absence may have created a thirst that shaped much of your life.
But the Sevenfold Well of Promise is already near.
The blood of the Lamb is the witness that the water belongs to you.
The work is finished.
You are beloved.
You are not abandoned.
And the Spirit of Adoption has come to open your eyes, fill your heart, and cause rivers of living water to rise from within you—not only for your own healing, but for the healing of the nations.
Amen.
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