By: Steve Wilmot
What if you believed God has every aspect, every event, every high and every low of your life planned out, and it will result in the enjoyment of the best life you could ever imagine?
How would your life be better if you really believed God knows what he’s doing in your life, even when it seems like it’s spinning out of control?
That he knows how to take what looks like random experiences and put the pieces together perfectly, so you attain your full potential?
I’m amazed at Joseph in the Old Testament. Here’s a guy who must have believed God knew what he was doing and had every step of his life planned out.
Through all sorts of seeming setbacks and detours, Joseph never complained about the hand he was dealt. He never gave up on the God-given destiny revealed to him in a dream even through decades it seemed remote at best and impossible at worst.
God designed a plan for your life he is working out. Often it takes periods of hardship and suffering to get you there, but he will get you there.
He knows what he’s doing. He has it all worked out. All you need is to trust God and cooperate with what he’s doing in you.
Os Hillman writes in Today God is First, “So often we believe our dreams are dead. There seems to be nothing left in our world to live for.
During those times, God is doing His deepest behind-the-scenes work. One of God’s methods for directing His children’s steps is through drying up their resources; a job loss, career change, a disaster.”
Joseph certainly lived out Mr. Hillman’s words. Shortly after the dream, his brothers, in a fit of jealousy, sold him as a slave to Egypt. But the Scripture is quick to point out, “The Lord was with Joseph” (Genesis 39.2).
When we read something like that, we assume Joseph is about to be rescued and set free. But nothing could be further from the truth.Potiphar’s wife tried unsuccessfully to seduce him.
Not once, not twice, but day after day for a long period of time. But Joseph refused every advance.
Potiphar’s wife wouldn’t take no for an answer. One day she grabbed him, but he ran out of the house. Feeling jilted one time too many, she accused Joseph of attempted rape. Potiphar believed her and tossed Joseph in prison.
How’s that as a reward for doing the right thing? In prison, we are reminded again: “The Lord was with him” (Genesis 39.21). God still knew what he was doing. Even in prison unfairly, God was working out his plan for Joseph’s life.
Two of Pharaoh’s servants were tossed into prison with Joseph. One night they each had a dream, which Joseph interpreted.
One servant would be beheaded, the other restored to his position in Pharaoh’s court. The guy who would live promised to put in a good word for Joseph so he too could be released.
But he forgot… and Joseph rotted in prison for several more years. It must have been hard for Joseph to fight off discouragement and hopelessness. Nothing was going right.
He kept doing the right thing, but things just got worse and worse for him. Yet there is no indication Joseph ever questioned God or wavered in his belief that God knew what he was doing, and that God would keep his promise spoken so many decades earlier.
Don’t you wish you responded to trials and setbacks with the same confidence in God that Joseph displayed? God watched how Joseph responded to one disappointment after another. God saw his faith. And God knew Joseph was now ready to step into his life’s purpose.
God gave Pharaoh a dream no one could interpret. Suddenly Joseph’s former prison-mate remembered Joseph and told Pharaoh he could interpret his dream.
Pharoah sent for him, and he told Pharaoh his dream predicted a coming world-wide famine, and he should prepare for it now.
Long story short, Pharaoh elevated Joseph to a position of incredible power — second only to Pharaoh himself.
With this rank Joseph was positioned to save his own family from death by starvation when they came to Egypt desperate to buy food.
Consider this: if Joseph had not been forgotten in prison… if he had not been put in prison unjustly because of Potiphar’s wife’s accusation… if he had not been sold to Potiphar in Egypt… if he had not been betrayed by brothers and taken to Egypt as a slave… he would not have been situated to save Israel from starvation.
Behind the scenes, God moved all the chess pieces into place to make it happen at precisely the perfect time.
Because of what Joseph went through — each hardship systematically arranged by God — when the time came to fulfill his life’s purpose, Joseph was in position and prepared.
God is doing the same thing in your life, my friend. Everything you’re going through — good and bad — is designed by God to position and prepare you for your God-given purpose too.
If left to us, we’d pick easy and pleasant short-cuts to reach the full potential God had in mind when he created us. And we’d never get there.
You may not like what God puts you through, but you can know two things: [a] God knows what he’s doing, and [b] what he’s doing is devised to make you into the man or woman he wants you to be.
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Steve Wilmot is a former Edgerton, Ohio area pastor who now seeks “to still bear fruit in old age” through writing. He is the author of seven books designed to assist believers to make steady progress on their spiritual journey.
