This week's message is taken from Genesis 21:8-21. The Sermon Title isYOUR IDENTITY & DESTINY: DETERMINED BY GOD OR PEOPLE? In the "Sound of the Genuine," Howard Thurman asks the question: What is your name--who are you.--can you find the sound of the genuine in yourself? He goes on to write, if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. In our text for this week, Sarah and Abraham cast Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness, because Sarah did not want Ishmael to inherit with "her son." Ishmael was both the child of a slave and Abraham's son. He was the child Sarah planned to raise as her own if God failed to deliver on God's promise. Yes, Ishmael was the child of a slave but God extended the same ancestral promise to him as he extended to Abraham: I will make of you a great nation. How would Ishmael choose to identify...as a child of a slave or as a child of promise? The answer to this question would determine the trajectory of his life and his destiny. The same is true for us...what or who we allow to determine our identity significantly influences who we become and our ultimate destiny in life. So, will we allow God or people to determine the answer to the question: what is your name and who are you...really?-Pastor Felicia

Introduction - "The Curtain Rises" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/