Something quite God-inspired happened today. I think there have now been 3 days where I haven't blogged, and that is in the month and a bit I have been going. As I said in my blurb bit, the main point of this thing is to keep notes for myself, but of course I got a little down-hearted at the complete lack of readers at one point. Well, the day after I missed blogging for the first time, I found I had a follower (God bless you Jayne!) This boosted me to go on. Again, I missed my blog yesterday, and today my good man Jay approached me in Church and said he had been reading! I really felt that both occasions were God inspired encouragement, and so I am back at it now and on track!
Genesis 42 sees Joseph reunited with his brothers, but they don't yet know who he is. In verse 9 we read 'Then he remembered his dreams about them...' Of course, his dreams were of ruling over his family, but what hit me was HOW did he feel about those dreams when he was locked up in prison for something he didn't do? How do we feel when God's promises and our dreams seem a million miles away? Like Joseph we should never falter; we may be in some sort of prison today, but God can still make a way for us to 'lead a nation'.
Beginning in verse 16, Joseph makes a plan where he will imprison all but one of his brothers, but later changes that plan to just keeping one of them, citing 'for I fear God' (Gen 42:18). It seems Joseph changed his plan and went back on his decision, because he knew it wasn't right in God. There's a lot to be said about fearing God, but the main point is that we choose to do the right thing because we know God will bless that.
And finally, in verse 36, Jacob hears that Joseph (still hidden to them as their brother) wants to see Benjamin, and he says "Everything is against me!" (v 36). What hit me here is that he was seeing the natural and fearing, rather than seeing the spiritual (i.e. it was all going to work out well). Now Jacob was a Godly man in his time, and I just wondered what would have happened if he had really sought God on this matter; would God have told him it was going to be OK? Either way, he was stressed out for nothing, because he was acting in the natural, not seeing the spiritual reality that God would work it out for his good. That reminded me of Geoff Lee's brilliant message a few weeks back, which you can ready my blog on here: http://onemanandhisbible.blogspot.com/2010/03/taking-back-what-has-been-taken-from.html
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