Ever felt trapped in a dead end job? Stuck. Unable to go any higher. Or perhaps it’s a situation or a set of circumstances that
seemed to have you locked in. Wherever
you may be, you have a choice. You
can drag through the day, hoping it will get over with quickly so you can go
home and lay down, or you can meet it head on and make the best of it.
Joseph was sold to Potiphar and was in his house 10 years,
faithfully serving God and Potiphar.
The Bible says that God blessed everything that Joseph did, and Potiphar
made Joseph chief of his household, in charge of not only the other servants,
but all of the business affairs and in touch with many of the political leaders
of Egypt. The only thing that
Potiphar withheld from Joseph was his own wife—for obvious reasons.
Gen 39:6 says that Joseph was “well-built and handsome” and
that Mrs. Potiphar noticed him and began to desire him. She tried everything to tempt him,
coerce him, command him to do what she wanted, but he firmly resisted. He did the right thing. One day, she came and grabbed him and
Joseph slipped out of his cloak and ran out of the house. She began to scream for the other
servants to come help her and then told them that the young Hebrew had tried to
attack her and when she screamed he ran leaving his cloak behind.
When Potiphar came home, she told him the same story. He grew angry and had Joseph thrown
into the dungeon. And that is
where we pick up the story today.
Potiphar, most likely, didn’t truly believe his wife. I say, most likely, because the
Egyptian punishment for any slave who attacked anyone in their master’s
household was instant death, no questions asked, no guilt received by the
master for doing so. If Potiphar
had truly believed her, Joseph would have died instantly. But there is the thing about
saving face. You can’t have those
type of accusations hitting the neighborhood without major ramifications. If Potiphar did nothing, people would quickly
figure out that he believed his wife to be a liar, and that would bring shame
on the household. If he killed
Joseph, he knew he would be killing an innocent man that had done nothing but
brought the blessing of God on the household. So rather than lose face, Potiphar had Joseph thrown into
the dungeon where all sorts of vermin and disease were known to fester. And the 10-year rise to head of the
household was suddenly brought to a screeching halt. He had consistently done the right thing and instead of
being honored, he was thrown into jail.
Joseph had to have questioned God.
He had to have been discouraged and downcast.
Which brings me to you and me. Why is it that whenever things take a down-turn we grow
discouraged and begin to doubt God’s love for us? Why do we retreat back into the destructive habits as a way
to cope with our disappointment?
Do you ever find yourself questioning God when you tried to do the right
thing and it ended up getting you fired or thrown out, or ridiculed? Did you ever wonder why you were given
a certain lot in life or how you seem to work and work and get nowhere
financially? And as you get lost
in those thoughts, the doubt
creeps over you like a thick fog, and it is easy to see only your current
circumstances and feel that God has abandoned you or that He truly doesn’t
care. It is during those
times that Satan gets us to give up even hoping for God’s deliverance. We just give up and let everything
go. But that’s human nature.
The devil would have you look at the
future with no hope of anything ever changing. Your marriage—it will never change. Your rebellious child—he will never
change. Your dire financial
picture—it will never change. All
of that stuff wrong in your life—well, you’re stuck with it. It will never change. The devil knows
that if he can get us to lapse into hopelessness, we will settle for just
trying to get by the best that we can…and if we can’t, we will do ourselves in
to seek to escape the hopelessness.
And then he’s got us. Satan
wants everything to look as if there is no hope of anything ever changing.
Joseph could have easily grown hopeless. He could easily looked at his abysmal
surroundings and said, “That’s it God.
I tried serving You and this is where it got me. Well forget it…I’m through!” But he didn’t. But he purposed to
remain faithful to God even if he didn’t understand the why’s of his
circumstances.
Gen 39:20-23 Joseph’s master
took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were
confined. But while Joseph was
there in the prison, 21 the
LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of
the prison warden. 22 So
the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was
made responsible for all that was done there. 23 The warden paid no attention to anything under
Joseph’s care, because the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in
whatever he did.
Choosing to trust God when
all seems bright is not so hard.
But choosing to trust God in the midst of the storm when all seems lost
allows God to build your faith as well as His glory in you.
Which
brings me back to us. There are
some who believe your circumstances will never change and you just can’t
bear to go on with life the way it is right now. So you look for your own
alternatives. You plot and you
scheme and you figure out your own way to try to escape your dungeon, but the
problem is, it only leads to a bigger dungeon. You’re still stuck.
You haven’t found the happiness or escape you were looking for. Only more issues. More problems. More heartache.
If we
are to learn anything from the dungeon experience of Joseph, it would be to
look to God for our answers. Trust
Him when all seems dark. Hope in
Him when all seems hopeless. It
may take time. Maybe years, but
God is faithful and will bring you through to something greater as a result of
your suffering right now.
It
means looking at the situation full on and choosing instead to be the best you
can be right in the middle of the mess.
It’s refusing to give in to despair, but instead to look to God and what
He wants for you, even though you might not be able to understand it right now.
G.K. Chesterton, once wrote: Hope means hoping when
things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all...As long as matters are really
hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is
hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.
American Chesterton Society
Don't give up hope. God still sees you and knows where you are and what you need.
I really like this one a lot. Thank you.
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