faithfully trusting when the assignment is hard

Should anyone’s life illustrate the maxim, “If God brought you to it, he’ll bring you through it” it’s Joseph. Very much against his will Joseph was “brought down to Egypt.” But it would not be the end of the story. Faithful Joseph, as you know, went from the pits to a palace and became the vice-ruler in Egypt!

I’ve been thinking about Joseph a lot these days. His brothers contemplated murdering him, and then they settled for the lesser crime of trafficking him into slavery. By the providence of God he finds himself in a rather favorable arrangement. That all blows up when his sex-starved employer’s wife falsely accuses him of attempted rape.

All this and Joseph is still only 17 years old.

His employer explodes and throws him in prison. Even still, Joseph conducts himself in such a way that impresses the warden and is given special privileges. If he thought his good conduct might gain him an early release, however, Joseph, now in his 20s, had another thing coming. Literally.

This is the life of young Joseph. Misunderstanding. Betrayal. Mistreatment. Injustice. One thing after another, and still more after that. Thirteen l o n g years.

All of it, every last bit of it, was intended to get Joseph next to the ruler of Egypt where he could be positioned to do greater good in the world. Talk about earning a promotion!

Could you handle that assignment?

After all he had to endure, Joseph grabbed hold of his God and clung to him for dear life. There are quite a few sterling moments to draw out of his testimony, but I want to highlight just this one:

Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. But I have heard about you, that you can interpret dreams.” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “It is not within my power, but God will speak concerning the welfare of Pharaoh.”

What startles me about this is that Joseph, in spite of everything, still believed God was all-powerful and he was motivated to do good. There doesn’t seem to be a shred of bitterness in him. Joseph still believed there was a divine plan at work and God was using his story of faith to bless others.

Fellow struggler, trust God down there in your Egypt. There is a way forward even though you wake up to the same thing day after day. You think this is it, this is all, just grit your teeth and bear it. I assure you there’s a plan in the mind of God and it is good.

One thing you don’t see Joseph doing — quite remarkably — is playing the victim. He shows us if we can thrive in and rise to the level of excellence in our adversity, by the grace of God, we will be overcomers. It may take 13 years (Joseph) or 20 years (Jacob) or 25 years (Abraham & Sarah) or 40 years (Moses), or however long, but you won’t find a better alternative than to

TRUST

GOD’S

PLAN.

I must hasten. In studying the travails of Joseph I want to leave you with two immutable truths:

1. it’s always right to do good even if you don’t see a reward for it

I get it; everything about this makes you want to scream. Where’s the justice? The equity? You wonder why you have to smile and take it. Do right though the stars fall, I once heard. Keep your hand to the plow, Jesus said. Don’t do right for right’s sake, Paul said, do right for Jesus’s sake.

To that end I read this aloud from my prayer book this morning:

I would serve in imitation of you, who poured out your life for me. I would serve knowing that your Spirit is ever at work in the lives of those I serve, ever calling, ever drawing, ever seeking to soften hearts encased in fear and disappointment and anger and idolatry. So let my kindnesses and sacrifice fall like warm shafts of sunlight on icy ground.

I cannot know the end of another person’s story… So let me be content to minister regardless of visible outcomes, trusting that the small mercies I extend will be woven into the larger theme of redemption at work in the lives of others, as you woo them to yourself…

Every Moment Holy, Vol. 1, p. 158

2. God’s favor will find you even in your darkest trial

Okay. If we’re being honest, none of us is going to be a ruler over a nation. We probably won’t get our story published; this post won’t go viral. But is that what it’s about anyway? Could we (hear me out) say amen to God even if we knew nothing would change?

I leave you with this. At the end of his grave injustices, Joseph got married and raised a family. I beg you to read about that here. The names of those two boys, Manasseh and Ephraim, tell quite a story. Your homework is to study their meanings. What I’ll say about it is this: Joseph married an Egyptian bride, but their sons bore Hebrew names.

That tells me Joseph wanted to remember his journey. None of it was a mistake. Not a single year was wasted. Even in Egypt, Joseph’s God was faithful, his trials were necessary, and the outcome was favorable. I have a feeling if Joseph never got out of that prison, never sat on a throne, never had a family, he’d still say

“It’s not me, it’s God.”

Joseph lived to be 110. He learned to love Egypt but his hope was in the home country. He wanted to go home. That’s all that matters in the end. When you’re finished with me in Egypt, Lord, take me home.

Hey, beloved of God, if he brought you to it he’ll bring you through it. He gave you the assignment; he must be pretty certain you will come through to the other side to tell your story. And what a story you’ll have.

Selah.

music to our ears

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about God?

Jesus told a story that is clearly about God the Father. In the story there are two villains, a younger brother and an elder. While the older brother stews in his self righteousness the younger son repents of his many reproaches and heads back with tail tucked. In the story we are surprised to find the Father running to meet him.

Imagine: God, with robe gathered, feet flying, running!

There’s another place in the sacred text where I’m caught off guard by God. We know about his communication skills but how many knew God could sing?

In Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, we find Aslan singing the world of Narnia into being:

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing…Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once…One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world…All the time the Voice went on singing…The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose.

—C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew (New York: Collier), pp. 98-99.

I am in a season right now where my most challenging obstacle is not disability. I confess it’s gotten the better of me on those especially trying days, but God faithfully meets me in his Word and whispers, “I’m for you, child; stay the course. Trust that I’m up to something good here.” Those words quiet me.

God doesn’t just speak, however. Sometimes he sings. Elihu told Job of a God who “gives songs in the night.” I know of such a God. I’ve heard his night songs echoing softly in my mind when I thought I was out of my mind, lost and forgotten.

The Almighty has been singing a long time. Twenty-five centuries ago Zephaniah, great-great grandson of Hezekiah, said, while God “quiets” us by his love (‘ahava’, e.g., Song of Songs 2:4), he also anthems over us and silences the roar inside our hearts.

The LORD your God is among you;
He is mighty to save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness;
He will quiet you with His love;
He will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

The Hebrew text reads, “he exults over you with loud singing.” Great peals of thunder ring out from the bellows of God’s voice when soothing words won’t do. The NLT fashions it, “He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

How very cool is that? When we are cowed by the dissonance of our skewed culture, our Heavenly Father starts singing, and when he sings all the noise fades into the background.

The people God sings over are so beleaguered they want to quit. They’re flat-out exhausted from battling the insufferable. All they can hear are the “slurs and taunts of Moab”; the “pure speech” of Zion’s completely drowned out. God’s whispers do them little good; they need him to SHOUT his love in their ears.

That’s the beauty of Zephaniah 3:17. The word we get isn’t “lullaby”; of course there’s a time when a lullaby is appropriate. I love when the Holy Spirit quietly sings over me, calming me with his sweet reveries.

But sometimes we need reveille! Life can get so messed up we need a victory song. We need God to ROAR with assurance that all this is under Aslan’s massive paw. That’s the idea in this text. Sometimes he quiets us with love, sometimes he rejuvenates us with a victory chorus.

God is so happy in the love he bears to his people that he breaks the eternal silence, and sun and moon and stars with astonishment hear God chanting a hymn of joy.

—Charles Spurgeon

The older I get, the quieter I get. And the quieter I am, the better I’m positioned to hear the still, small Voice, so familiar, so intimate. But there are times I need an anthem, not a sonnet. God’s playlist always seems to give me just what I need in any given moment.

How about you? Are you greatly bothered by the noise in your life? Can you hear your Father in heaven sing over you? Or is the tumult drowning out the truth you need to hear? I pray the Lord of the Dance surprises you with his playlist in coming days. May God grace you with his joyous reveille and surround you with songs of deliverance.

Selah, indeed.

the grand canyon and heaven too

Most of you know I was blessed to draw a line through a big item on my bucket list last year. There we were, Sandy and I, road trippin’ with two best friends, Alan and Kelli, across the southern U.S. Target: Grand Canyon.

I could do a huge photo dump of some of our grandest shared memories, but I’ll spare you that. Instead, I’ll leave you with two or three snapshots that practically tell the whole epic story.

I’ve been told by veteran visitors of the GC that the funnest part is to go with someone who has never been before. Then just stand back as they approach the rim and watch their expression. I was the one being watched that day and I’m pretty sure I followed the first-timer script.

But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about this guy:

I probably took over a hundred photos during those eight or so hours at the southern rim. There are better shots than this, but this one is a sermon in itself.

This dude walked out on nature’s platform and, quite eloquently, turned it into a pulpit. He was an orator facing an Audience of One; I just so happened to be in the wings, eavesdropping.

As I watched, he stood there a few moments, hands in pockets, taking it all in. He may have sighed, I don’t know (I didn’t have my long lens with me). Keeping my finger on the trigger, I spied through the camera’s viewfinder thinking it made a pretty good photo on its own.

I snapped off a couple shots.

Then, slowly, he pulled one hand out of his pocket and raised a lone finger toward the sky. His face turned upward and looked where he was pointing. Like so:

I didn’t see him again the rest of the day. But I have to tell you, his actions out there in the cold sunshine, atop the canyon, moved me to the core. I got chills. The photo still does it to me.

It was a miracle we got to see the Grand Canyon at all. It had snowed to beat the band the day before — all day long. Visibility, zero. Wind gusts, treacherous. The roads to the canyon were impassable; it wasn’t until the very early morning hours they were reopened. This was the only day we could visit; the next day we would set out on our long return drive to Georgia.

Think of what we would’ve missed. Yes, the Grand Canyon. Of course, that. But we would’ve also missed a guy out on a ledge at the Grand Canyon experiencing God in the moment.

There was another guy at the Grand Canyon that day. He, too, was lifting a hand skyward but in his upraised hand was … a cell phone.

Dude was crazy. Far out on an outcropping of rock firing off selfies from all angles, he kept backing up, not paying attention to his six. There was a harrowing moment when I thought the Canyon might claim another life.

Guy #1 was pointing at the heavens that day, yielding worship to the Almighty Creator. Around the same time, Guy #2 was focusing on himself, playing fast and loose with gravity. There’s a sermon in there if you care to try.

Scroll back up to Guy #1 and see how small he is in the frame. He’s miniaturized by his surroundings. What is man that thou art mindful of him? indeed. Amid a selfie-obsessed generation, be Guy #1; he knows who he is and whose he is.

To that end, he permutates into an arrow, pointing away from himself, and directs his whole being heavenward. If we could see into the other realm we might witness the heavens opened and a whole host of beings ascending and descending, glorifying God and praising.

We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self.

— John Piper

Here’s an idea: why not pause right now and lift a finger into the air and aim your praise at the Savior. Offer up humble thanks that he’s put you where he wants you, in frame, where you can testify to an eavesdropping world that Jesus isn’t just part of the Story, he’s the whole Point of the Story.

Selah, beloved. Oh, and here’s one final photo from that day at the canyon: