In the previous blogs, we've seen how God has spoken and the words He said remained true. The bible says that His words to do not return to Him void. Or, whatever He says, He finds a way to do. His words bring results which looks a lot like adding life into situations that seem bleak. There are countless stories in the bible where God does this. We've looked a little bit at Abraham's life even though I just hit a couple highlights.
We'll soon get into how we humans often look for laws while He's always looking for relationships. He often works through His promises to promote relationships. In doing so, He promotes righteousness by faith…Yet even today we often think of righteousness through how well we obey a set of rules.
Let's briefly look at another example for you: Joseph
Joseph was a descendant of Abraham and Isaac who was loved by his father Jacob more than his other brothers. This got the brothers pretty jealous. Meanwhile, God spoke to Joseph in a dream and showed him some of His promises to him. His first dream offended his brothers. The second one offended his brothers and parents.
So, one day,, the brothers had decided that they had had enough of it. They were away from home and plotted to kill Joseph. That's pretty serious! Instead of killing him right away they settled to throw him in a pit…Eventually they saw a caravan of traders coming through and decided to sell their brother for 20 pieces of silver.
These guys then traveled down to Egypt (there's an interesting redemption story that continues to weave Egypt in until He returns but this isn't the time for that rant.) When they got to Egypt, they sold Joseph as a slave to a powerful man named Potiphar. Potiphar's wife took a fancy to him and kept trying to trap him into a sexual relationship. However, even after the bitterness of being sold by his brothers to live as a slave in a foreign land, he held to God's promises and fled from her presence.
Infuriated, she lied and got him thrown in prison. While there, he interpreted dreams and was forgotten about once again. He stayed there for a couple years before finally being remembered when Pharaoh had some bad dreams.
Joseph interpreted them and gave Pharaoh a strategy to rule well throughout the next 14 yrs. Meanwhile, after 7 years of great harvests, there were 7 years of famine. People got hungry. They got really hungry. However, because of the wisdom God had put in Joseph (who was now 2nd in command of all of Egypt), many of the lives of the people in Egypt and surrounding countries were saved.
In an ironic twist, Joseph's own family needed help or they too would starve. Through a series of events, Joseph reveals himself to his family and brings them down to live in Egypt where they started to flourish.
Sometimes in our lives, God seemingly speaks to us and tells us something fantastic. However, for the next period of time (sometimes years or even decades), everything seems to go against what He said. In the case of Joseph and in many other people in the bible, they were stripped of everything except for a promise. As they held onto that promise their faith grew and they were rewarded through it because His promises never fail. I wonder how many times we've walked away or compromised because we just couldn't see it happening…and we've already been waiting awhile to begin with!!!
