Better at Wandering
Now his brothers had gone to graze their father’s flocks near Shechem, and Israel said to Joseph, “As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them.” “Very well,” he replied. So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron. When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?” He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?”
Genesis 37:12-16 (NIV)
This young man, Joseph, is gifted. God’s got a purpose for his life that’s unique. And yet in the text, Jacob tries to normalize Joseph in spite of the coat, in spite of the dreams, and in spite of the purpose attached to his life. Jacob tells him, “Go out to the fields, find your brothers, see if all is well with them and the flocks.” Maybe he’s trying to force a better relationship and connection between Joseph and his brothers. We don’t know, but we definitely know that God is shaping his life through some very tough arrangements and God is forging him through some tough experiences yet to unfold. The beginning of it is perhaps going to be the toughest.
His future is so clearly revealed. His purpose is so clearly defined. His life is so distinctly set apart. And yet we find him, in these verses, wandering.
Did you know that ordered steps don’t always walk in straight lines? One of the lessons Joseph’s life is tailored to teach us is about purpose and vision. It doesn’t mean you don’t love Jesus because you can’t figure out your next move. Purpose and anointing and calling and giftedness sometimes wander. Being called doesn’t always mean clarity. Destiny and purpose don’t stop you from having meandering moments.
If Joseph has clarity of direction and finds them in Shechem, he misses the pit in Dothan, the ride from the caravan of Ishmaelites to Egypt. He never passes through Potiphar’s house. He doesn’t go to jail. He’s not there two decades later to save his family in the midst of a famine.
Do you know why God allows some of us to wander? Because He knows where our wandering is eventually going to take us. Wandering in life doesn’t necessarily mean you are not where God wants you to be. Perhaps you aren’t lost; you are being led.
Grow Your Gifts
Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more… His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
Genesis 37:5, 11 (NIV)
The Bible says that, while the brothers get jealous, Jacob keeps in mind what his son’s gifts mean, and what the shifting implications could be. He ponders what his son’s purpose might be, what God may have set him apart for, and what this elevation above them all means for their collective future.
Regardless of what his brothers felt, or even how Joseph might have felt about his gift, his gift needed to be grown. His gift had to breathe, had to eat, had to be exercised.
There are many reasons why we might resist growing our gifts. You can confuse or suppress your gifts because of the pain of rejection or in a futile attempt to simply fit in or get along. You can delay your gifts’ maturation because of fear of what exposing your gift may mean for other people. You can stagnate your gifts’ growth because you don’t want what being purposed or called really means. You can resent your gifts because every progression comes with a grieving of what you had to leave.
Your gift may start out seeming boring or embarrassing, but if you nurture it in its infancy, its maturity can bless generations. For Joseph, it might’ve been the worst place and to the worst people to share his dreams, but what God had planned for him was far beyond anything he could have envisioned.
The lesson here is to give your gifts intentional latitude—meaning, give your gifts space, scope, and freedom to move, to operate, to think, to grow, and to fail. Don’t narrow your vision. Don’t let anybody constrict your dreams. Don’t let anyone dampen your willingness to grow and learn and see and hear and experience.
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Genesis 37:3-4 (NIV)
The providence of God is like a vast and intricate tapestry woven with threads of every color and texture, stretching out to the infinite beyond. Each thread represents a person, an event, a circumstance, and every single stitch is carefully and intentionally placed by the hand of God to create a magnificent work of art.
At times the threads may seem tangled and chaotic with no easily discernible pattern or purpose. But if we would just step back and view the tapestry from a distance, we begin to see the beauty and the order that emerges from the chaos. We see how every thread is connected to the others and how every stitch is necessary for the creation of the whole. Every detail is part of a larger divine plan. In this tapestry of providence, we see the hand of God at work.
Every one of us is purposefully unique, intentionally created as part of something bigger and more beautiful than we could have imagined. This is powerfully displayed in and through the life of Joseph. We see how God’s providence unfolds amidst the dangling threads of a life that has so many dramatic twists and turns. In creating that magnificent piece of art, there are chaotic and entangled seasons, fiercely dramatic exchanges, and a lot of unfair treatment. Yet the providence of God delivers Joseph to his lived purpose that eventually saves people from peril and positions him to spiritually change the world.
Joseph teaches us to celebrate providence and accept the fact that providence brings pressure. Joseph is not to blame for the sudden turn of brotherly affection nor his distinction in the family line, but the providence of God at work in his life was creating pressure that had him singled out and hated, mistreated and dismissed.
We celebrate providence. We love the fact that God is in control and that God is active daily in the matriculation of our lives. Your steps have been ordered. He’s begun a work, and He intends to complete it. Perhaps some of the pressure in your life has nothing to do with sin but with providence.
Doing It Better
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17-20 (NIV)
Everybody wants to be so different that the pursuit of “difference” is creating distance from God. “Different” could be thinking the next job is going to make you happy, or the next relationship is going to make you happy, or the next house, the next car, the next job, the next pay raise, the next purchase—whatever it is.
You can mess around and make decisions that are so radically different that they fail to be healthy and sensible. What would benefit you more is to be better at what drives you to consider “difference” in the first place. Otherwise, all you do is mask your dysfunction until you decide you don’t need to do everything differently; you just need to submit yourself to do everything better: Be a better Christian, a better saint to Christ.
Maybe in the New Year you don’t need to start acting differently. Maybe in the New Year you need to start acting better. That’s the invitation extended to us as we hear Jesus’s words. Hear Him again: “I didn’t come to destroy the law. I came to fulfill it.” It’s His way of saying, “I’m not trying to do spirituality differently. I’m on the scene to teach you how to do spirituality better.”
Stop walking around thinking that the only answer for you is something different. The answer is to be better. You don’t need a different face, different hair, a different position, a different job. You need to look in the mirror and face the perception of who you already are in Jesus Christ.
God was willing to pay such a high price for us because, to Him, we are of extreme value. How valuable are we to God? We are so valuable that He gave His Son for our salvation! You don’t need to be different as much as you need to accept how valuable you already are to Him and live better in appreciation.
If you want to do life well, then make “doing better” a lived demonstration of gratitude for the life that God has given you.
It Starts in a Manger
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
Luke 2:15-16 (NIV)
This passage teaches us that we must pay attention to what God lets emerge from the ordinary in our lives.
The prophets of ancient times said that the child who would be born as Messiah would be:
- Our king forever, reigning on David’s throne
- Wonderful Counselor
- Mighty God
- Eternal Father
- And the government shall rest upon His shoulders!
If you are looking for a man under that description, you don’t go looking in mangers, right?
Jesus shows up in the most ordinary way we might imagine. He shows up in a manger. The shepherds arrive at the manger, and there is Jesus wrapped in cloth—so ordinary that it ought to teach you that you cannot ignore what God is letting emerge from the ordinary in your life.
God lets power emerge from ordinary people, ordinary places, ordinary things, movements, and encounters. Do you know how much God wants to use your ordinary life to reveal Him, to announce Him, to extend Him, to prove Him, to praise Him, to celebrate Him, to adore Him, to testify about Him? Stop counting yourself out!
Stop chasing the extraordinary, the cataclysmic, and the monumental, and learn how to nurture the intimacy of your relationship with God based on the ordinary things. Give attention to what God is letting emerge from the ordinary in life, but additionally accept that maybe life is not about climbing, but descending. Jesus starts His earthly life in a manger and then descends to a grave.
Jesus spends His earthly ministry emptying Himself, becoming as all humans are. He who knew no sin yet was tempted in every way just like we are, He submits to and obeys God. Hebrews 4:15 says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have a high priest who was like us in every way; He experienced every temptation and never sinned. This is why Jesus teaches that if we want to follow Him, we have to give up our lives.
God can use the ordinary to do extraordinary things.
