A Christian friend of mine was desperate for marriage and tired of waiting for God to deliver. Finally, she entered into an intimate relationship with a man whose character and faith lacked nearly every requisite trait she’d once held dear. When the unhealthy romance finally ended, my friend felt dejected and humiliated. She looked back on the relationship with dismay, questioning her judgment and why she’d allowed her heart to wander so far away from God.

“I made a Hagar mistake,” my friend later admitted. A “Hagar mistake” refers to the grievous error Old Testament dame Sarai made when she was unable to conceive. Sarai, in an attempt to rectify a situation which she felt God had ignored far too long, pushed her husband Abram into the arms of another woman—their Egyptian maidservant Hagar (Genesis 16:1-3).

Hagar bore Abram’s child, a son named Ishmael. Also born were lethal doses of jealousy and contempt between Sarai and Hagar for years to come. When Sarai took her unfulfilled longings into her own hands, she couldn’t see the agony that would follow.

Tony Fetchel, a former Los Angeles pastor whose own Hagar mistake nearly cost him his marriage wrote, “Though what we see in our marriages or families may not look how we want it to, when we want it to, we fail miserably when we try and supplement our wisdom for God’s. Whether we’re trying to satisfy unmet needs, or doing what we think to be the right thing to serve the plan of God, the reality is, our decisions have consequences.”

Today and always, remember that you can avoid much turmoil by trusting God instead of yourself!