Extended Victory预览

A Crash: Starting Point for New Heights

First read Genesis 37:23-27 and Genesis 50:20-23.

Do you know what it's like when you have big plans and suddenly you're faced with a complete mess, stunned and wondering how this could have happened? As with the story of Joseph, there are always moments in our lives when, through no fault of our own, we find ourselves in unpleasant, supposedly hopeless situations. 

In such moments, the darkness in our lives is so present that it is difficult for us to see God's light. We may then see the job we lost or the relationship that broke down rather than remembering how God has blessed us again and again in the past. At such times, we find it hard to believe that God has a good plan for our lives. 

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, they say. But anyone who has ever failed knows how terrible it feels to have to say goodbye to a lifelong dream. We don't know what kind of dreams Joseph had, but he probably had other desires than to be sold into slavery by his brothers and innocently thrown into prison. He would have had every reason to be desperate, but he trusted God in what should have been a hopeless situation, and through his story God showed that He can turn any situation, no matter how tricky, to good. For God it was no problem to turn a slave into the second most powerful man in Egypt. Even if He pushes us into situations where we are struggling, it doesn't mean that He has abandoned us, on the contrary. Most likely, it is in these situations that we will learn things about ourselves and others that we will benefit from later and that will make our lives flourish.

Prayer, Get Free and Next Step: Go into prayer and consider the areas in which you are guided by your view of things and ask God to show you His perspective.