"After Two Whole Years... It's Not Me. It's God."

Have you ever felt forgotten? Rejected? Unappreciated? 

Have you ever waited for something to get better, and you feel like it’s taking forever?

I have. I get stuck in the seeming unfairness of a situation and then that filters over into my attitude towards many other things. Then, I’m so focused on what’s WRONG in my life that I am blinded to what is trying to be RIGHT.

 

I wonder if Joseph felt that way in the Old Testament when his brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery. When his master’s wife lied on him and accused him unjustly and had him arrested. When he helped his fellow prisoners and they promised to remember him and help him, but then they didn’t. I wonder through all those years, all those trials, how soon or how often Joseph had to do a heart-check and seriously examine his own pride and recommit to trust God’s plan. 

It had to happen often, I would imagine.

 

Today, the first verse I read struck me with these thoughts. 

Genesis 41:1 says, “After two whole years…”

 

Those four words hit my heart like a ton of bricks. They felt heavy and long and I could just hear myself crying out in exasperated agony - “God, it’s been TWO WHOLE yearsssss of this!” 

 

Of what, though? What does this mean for Joseph? If you flip back to the end of the chapter before, you’ll see that the last verse says that the chief cupbearer that Joseph helped, who promised to help Joseph when he was out of prison, forgot about him and didn’t help him. And already by that point in Joseph’s life, it had been a lot of years of abuse and injustice and unkindness. 

A lot of years. 

Would it ever end? Would it get better? What about the life that he thought God had promised him in a dream when he was younger? This was not the way he thought his life would go. Why would God tell him something and then allow all this bad stuff to happen?

I don’t know if Joseph asked himself those questions. But I imagine he did. Because the answer to those questions only comes when we truly ask God to show us what He is working out in our lives. 

God spent those years preparing Joseph’s heart. Preparing him to be a kind and compassionate leader. Humbling him, no doubt. Building up honorable things within him and stripping away some of the dishonorable thoughts and actions. Overall…inviting Joseph to trust Him for the long haul. Even when it feels like the “whole” hard years are just not ending. What we see in Joseph is that he still always tried to do the right thing, the God-honoring thing. 

 

The crazy thing about this verse is that this still is not the truly good part of Joseph’s story. After all those years, these two more years still didn’t mark the end of struggles, and everything was not suddenly better. 

But after two whole years, God moved Joseph forward.

Because it was God’s time.  

After two whole years, God turned the page, and God initiated an action that spurred the cupbearer's memory, and the cupbearer finally remembered his promise to Joseph. 

It was time. It was all working all along in God’s perfect time. He was working with Joseph, and he was working in Joseph’s family miles away. He was working on Pharaoh, and on the cupbearer. God wasn’t silent or doing nothing in those two whole years! Oh, no! He was working in all of their lives, putting puzzle pieces together in the way only He can.

God still works that way today.

Others may forget us. Abandon us. Wound us. Imprison us.

God never does. Even we are sitting in a pit that we did not choose. God is working.

When Pharaoh heard what Joseph could do, how he could help Pharaoh, verse fourteen says that they went and “quickly” brought him out of the pit and changed his clothes! After waiting so long, suddenly it all began to change! His life suddenly became fresh and new.

Joseph was immediately given yet another opportunity to represent God...to speak truth. To act righteously when I’m sure it was hard. Maybe he felt used? Maybe he wanted to tell them all no? But still, the very first thing that Joseph did was point them all to God! He didn’t even take credit himself for what they thought he could do. He told them immediately, “It’s not me. It’s God.”

Oh! I wonder...

I wonder if all those years this was the attitude that God was working in Joseph? Years before, Joseph had almost bragged to his brothers about God’s plan for him. He had made that part about him. He made himself great. 

 

Now, all these years later, the first words he says is - “It’s not me. It’s God.” 

 

I think Joseph realized in all those years that it was God’s love for him that was shaping him and teaching him and preparing him. I think he grew in his relationship with God during his trials in ways he wouldn’t have if he had stayed in his nice comfortable home as the favored child of his father. The Bible tells us in Romans, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

 

I think Joseph learned all this. Maybe he especially learned it and accepted and believed it in those final “two whole years.” 

 

Friend. Those "two whole years" in your life are never wasted.

Like I said, this is not the end of Joseph’s struggles. But it does get better after this! Joseph rises to power, is given lots of responsibility and his voice matters to the whole land of Egypt. Eventually he even has an opportunity to confront his betraying brothers. 

He could have destroyed them. He could have said, “I told you so! I told you that you would bow down to me one day! I was right!” He could have made them suffer. And God so kindly shows us the struggle and temptation as Joseph battles with that pain and hurt and wanting vengeance. But God had spent years working on Joseph, preparing his heart. 

He had the ability and the right to destroy them. But he ultimately offered them grace and mercy and forgiveness and shelter. 

 

Just like God offers to us. 

God is always shaping us to be more like Him.

So, try not to despair when it feels like it’s just been “two whole years” after “two whole years” of hardship in your life. God is doing something in those two years. They may be painful, but they are not pointless. 

 

I feel this way now, at the beginning of 2023. I feel like the last few years of my life have been a series of painful years. Betrayal and abuse and abandonment and discouragement. Injustice and tears. “Disappointment” is the word that floats around my heart the most. I was even angry at God for allowing certain things to happen. I was just so disappointed. And for a while, I was so hyper-focused on that, that I forgot to look and see that God never left me. That He didn’t just allow bad things - He rescued me from things that were bad for me; He even rescued me from my own destructive thoughts and habits. I used to idolize my marriage. I took credit for the "Godliness" and goodness of it. I thought for sure God would use my husband and I to teach other people how to have a great marriage. Ten years in, that facade crumbled before my eyes. And I thought I could fix it.

 

My attitude has changed a lot in these years. Three whole years ago, I was elated at this time in January. I just knew my life was headed out of the pit I’d been struggling in for years, and things were going to get better! I just knew it. God was going to fix the situation, surely! Don't we often think God is only working if things work out like we plan for them to?

I bet Joseph felt elated as well when the cupbearer was released from prison, and he probably jumped up with excitement every time he heard someone coming, and thought, Oh, yeah! The cupbearer told them! This is it! I’m getting free! Imagine the disappointment as day after day, week after week, crept by, and nothing. No one came to free him. I think maybe that's because Joseph's hope was in the cupbearer. We should never put more hope in people than we do in God. 

 

I thought my freedom was going to come one way three years ago - by God healing my marriage. But, instead, God brought me out of the marriage, and He healed me. He used the ensuing years to help me let go of pride, and hurt, and bitterness, and resentment. He reoriented my heart. He helped me see that I had all my hope in the correct actions of someone else. I was depending on them to do the "right thing" so I could feel better. I think if God would have healed my marriage, I would have taken so much pride in that. I would have thought, This happened because I never gave up! This happened because of my faith in God. This happened because of MY right actions. This happened because I was such a good wife. See how good I am? Be good and you get good things from God! 

 

That is one of the first incorrect theological ideals that God broke down in me that I didn’t even realize I had operated under for almost two decades of my Christian walk. God showed me that I had put someone else in His place. And that I thought if I obeyed God, and others obeyed God, life would be problem-free. 

I knew that wasn’t really true. But I lived like it was: Follow the rules, be a good girl, and bad things don’t happen. Be a good wife, support your husband, and he’ll love you forever. 

No. God showed me that was a prison of codependency and idolization. I had to take a long, hard look at myself. At my responses. At my motivation. At what I truly believed about God and His righteousness and His justice and His mercy. And His right to do whatever He wanted to with my life.

 

It took me two whole years to surrender to just part of that thinking! It's an ongoing process, not sure we ever truly get there!

But crazily enough, I have reached a point where I am thankful for these long years. I am not the same girl I was 3 years ago. I’m definitely not the same girl I was who married and moved here 20 years ago! I feel today like Joseph must have felt when he was finally brought out of the jail - excited and scared and hesitant and full of joy, but still cautious! I imagine Joseph just saying, “Okay, God … what now? Where are you taking me next?”

 

God uses ALL the years. He has a plan for each second. We can trust Him with it. Whatever that thing is that you’re facing, whatever long and painful season you are in, God is doing a good thing there. For you, and for others around you. It’s never just about us. Like Joseph said, “It’s not me. It’s God.”

 

Because of Joseph, even Pharaoh acknowledged God. Ultimately, the whole land of Egypt got to see the God that Joseph served. He went from prisoner to ruler. But it didn’t happen overnight. It was a process. A process that led him through pits and prisons and palaces and power.

 

The following chapters in Genesis are such a beautiful glimpse into the struggle going in Joseph's heart regarding his bitterness and pain at his brothers, and the power of forgiveness and redemption. In chapter 45, he finally breaks and weeps loudly and tells his brothers, "Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life ... it was not you who sent me here, but God." Joseph's heart was set free. He extended mercy and grace because maybe he saw that his brothers were in prisons themselves of regret and jealousy and anger?

 

Sometimes, we get stuck in prisons of our own making. Prisons in our minds and hearts. We get held captive by negative thoughts and bitterness. We are chained to our fears and the expectations of others. We believe lies about our identity, and we think the key to freedom is to just accept that this is who we are. No. Truth is freedom. God is truth. His way is the only freedom. John 8:10 says, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Ask God to give you freedom. Ask God to show you what bondage you're holding onto in your heart. Ask God to help you be the best representative of His character that you can. This season, these "whole years," are not only for you - it's for the preserving of many lives. And every chance you get, tell others - “It’s not me. It’s God.”