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.”