God's Abounding Grace
In reading through Genesis 38-40 today, I was newly reminded of the Lord's ongoing blessings in Jospeh's life as I traced the thread of his abounding grace, woven through deep betrayals and seemingly hopeless situations. As he sat at the bottom of a pit, God graciously delivered him from death and to a possibly safer place than with his jealous brothers. When he was locked up in a prison cell, God provided a divine appointment with the cupbearer who later spoke of him to the Pharaoh. As he rose to leadership in a foreign country away from his family, God positioned him to rescue them from famine and death. In his absolute, unchanging goodness, God never desired for his brothers to sell him into slavery or for Pharaoh's wife to lie about him or for the cupbearer to break his promise. But at the same time, he sovereignly used these evils to fulfill his even better plans. What looked like a series of unfortunate events were instead God's tools for blessing, which Joseph eventually realized and testified to in the presence of his brothers.
God was able to use the horrible -- hatred, betrayal, slavery, slander, isolation, prison and living in exile -- to fulfill his covenantal promises to Joseph and his family as he transformed these evils by his abounding grace. Jospeh's life was blessed and full of grace, not just when he was elevated to leadership in Egypt, but even before he was "knit together in [his] mother's womb" (Ps 139:13-14). God's hesed love could and would not be hindered by intense suffering or persecution. In fact, these difficulties only worked to shine a greater light on God's grace and favor.
Like Joseph, all of us who are "in Christ" have his promise of covenantal faithfulness and the assurance that his loving plans for us cannot be thwarted. He guarantees us that no on can take us from his hand (Jn 10:28-30) and that he is able to use all that is bad in our lives -- the betrayals, injustices and suffering -- to bless us and bring glory to his name (Rom 8:28). Our challenge, like Joseph's, is to resist the urge to define God's character and purpose for our lives based on our circumstances rather than allowing his proven love and abounding grace to be the starting point for all our understanding (Prov 3:5-6).
Joseph had a choice to put his trust in his circumstances or to keep his eyes on God, and he chose the greater portion. When circumstances threaten to define us as victims and God as anything other that who he says he is, we can choose by faith to resist by standing on God's promises and trusting in his proven character, declaring with complete confidence that "The Lord is upright, he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him" (Ps 92:15).
"And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work" (2 Cor 9:8).
