HARDSHIP
01st Feb 2017
Hardship causes growth. When life is tough and we see our own impotence and weakness we can cry out for divine resources, because we know we need help beyond ourselves.
Genesis chapters 37 - 50 tell the story of Joseph; it’s a good read and shows how God was in charge of the events in his life as well as in the nations. It’s a story of injustice, wrong accusations, treachery, false imprisonment, broken promises and disappointment. All that went on was part of the maturing process of “hardship”, through it all this man held on to faith in God’s ability to rescue him. Life was tough but it did not make him bitter but better.
He was a cocky little so and so, and you can sympathise with his brothers for wanting to take him down a peg or two. He certainly wasn’t wise in the way he shared his dreams and promoted himself. In the end all these hardships matured him to the place where he is described in Genesis 45:8 as “father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.”
Pharaoh recognised the supernatural wisdom resident in Joseph. He saw that God’s Spirit was with him (Genesis 41:38). His given Egyptian name was Zaphenath-Paneah meaning “God speaks and He lives”. We don’t know Pharaoh’s age, but Joseph was just 30 years old when he took on this great responsibility.
Later he gives significant names to his sons - Manasseh (Forget) saying “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household”, and Ephraim (Double prosperity) “It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.”
Your hardships right now can toughen you, and prepare you for a place of influence and authority in the future because they have made you mature and reliant on Father God, who has good plans for you and will never abandon you or reject you.
His plans cannot be thwarted.
by Joyce Sibthorpe
