Better at Being Almost There
“We both had dreams,” they answered, “but there is no one to interpret them.” Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.”
Genesis 40:4-8 (NIV)
Do you ever feel like you’re “almost there”? You’re standing on the precipice. You can feel it, you can taste it, you can emote it, you can hear it, you can see it, you can discern it, but you can’t touch it yet. You can’t enjoy it yet.
Every single one of us can relate to the space in life where we’re “almost there.” God’s plan is not moving at the pace you’d like but you have to find some peace and freedom in this space as you look forward. Being “almost there” is being free to embrace the future but also feeling like your life right now has you in a prison.
How do you honor God when you’re in a space called “almost there”? When you finally can say, “I discern that I’m doing what I am supposed to do, and I will not feel restricted in how I use my gifts right now,” you can be better at being “almost there.”
This is what Joseph does. He doesn’t let his gift be as restricted in its flow as he is restricted in his autonomy. His gift is being pulled on in his exchange with the cupbearer and the baker. Joseph easily, swiftly, and spiritually discerns their dreams. Joseph doesn’t let all that’s happening to him make him sit idle. When his gift is being pulled on by others, he becomes fully engaged and decides “I may not be where I want to be, and where I am is certainly not an optimal space. It doesn’t seem to match the vision that God has given to me, but since I am where I am and I can’t do anything about that until God decides to make a transition in my life, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to use my gift.”
Do you let your gift starve because your circumstances are not optimal? The worst thing you can do when you carry big dreams is to be stingy with your gift. God is giving you an opportunity to exercise it and mature it so that you don’t mess it up when He takes you where you’re meant to go.
What Faith Remembers
In the morning his mind was troubled, so he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him. Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “Today I am reminded of my shortcomings.”
Genesis 41:8-9 (NIV)
There is a parallel between faith and patience. Two years earlier, Joseph asked the cupbearer to remember him in his freedom. The cupbearer, two years later, repents of having not remembered Joseph. And in between Joseph asking to be remembered and the cupbearer repenting of not having remembered Joseph, Pharaoh has a dream. That dream is going to teach Joseph that while he may have been delayed, he is never forgotten by God.
What could not be rushed is the natural progression that is going to lead to the seven years of unusual plenty followed by the seven years of excruciatingly damaging famine. But it takes two years to unfold, and while waiting, Joseph has to steward his belief in the person, the power, and the promises of his God. The only offering Joseph can give to God, beautifully wrapped in faith, is patience.
Waiting is a part of patience and, whether we like it or not, our faith requires patience. But patience is not just about waiting. If you were to study the word patience in the original Hebrew, it is transliterated not as waiting but as bearing and tolerating.
Patience is an offering you give to God that disciplines your spirituality to tolerate the waiting. Here’s the key: it’s not just the capacity to handle the load. It’s not just the capacity to tolerate the season. It’s the willingness to do it.
You have to love God enough, trust Him enough, believe in Him enough, want to honor Him enough that you’re willing to bear the load and wait on Him because you trust that however He is working, He is working for His will and your good.
You have to decide:
- I’m not going to stop trusting that God will remember me.
- I will not settle for comfortable at the risk of providential.
- I won’t cut short my process.
- I’m not going to accept temporary relief that will then ensure long-term pain.
Instead, I’m willing to bear this load and tolerate this season because I trust God to be unfolding His will for my life according to His sovereign plan for me. And I’m not just bearing this because I have to. I’m bearing this because I want to.
Why? Because you mean that much to God. You mean so much to Him that He gave His Son for your redemption. That’s how much you mean to Him! You have to bear this load, tolerate this season, and handle this weight while you wait—not just because of how much you mean to Him, but because of how much He means to you.
Better at Pushing the Boundaries
The Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.
Genesis 39:23 (NIV)
Have you created boundaries in your life where you have concluded there is really no productive space beyond them? No experience worth connecting to? No discoveries beyond those that you have already been connected to? No need for challenge, stretching, growing, learning, or evolving?
Have you perhaps protected boundaries that God is pushing on to extend you beyond them?
Maybe your resistance is because if you occupy space beyond your current boundaries, you are not sure that you can carry that weight. In other words, you’re not sure that you can honor that task, that you can bring healthy emotion to that exchange, or that you can lift that burden or endure that trial or manage and steward that sickness.
This constant theme is so revelatory in Joseph’s life. It’s clear that God had to get Joseph from wearing a coat of many colors to being sold into slavery to dispensing wisdom that guides a nation in famine-stricken times. And to get him there, God keeps pushing out the boundaries of his life, pushing him through these awful experiences, pushing him through these tough emotional embraces, pushing him through these perilous predicaments.
The writer of Genesis can only say this with all he’s been through: The Lord was with him.
Joseph would never have signed up for the project in Egypt if God told him, “Now, in order for us to get you there, Joe, we are going to have to let you be dropped in a pit, sold into slavery, carted off 280 miles away to Egypt, sold to Potiphar, accused of sexual harassment because of Potiphar’s wife, and sent to prison—all because we are trying to get you in position.”
Whenever God is pushing us where we obviously would not volunteer to go, we have to go remembering that “outside our boundaries” is never outside the space of God’s providence, presence, and love. God is with us, which is why He’s forcing the expansion of these boundaries.
Faith grows, vision expands, lessons are learned, beliefs are matured, and theology is deepened where boundaries are pushed.
Not Letting Bitter Get the Best of Me
Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.
Genesis 39:1-4 (NIV)
You can be so disappointed that things didn’t turn out as you expected, regretting that you offered faith in God in the first place. You can become convinced that people are incapable of being loyal to anything or anybody other than themselves. You can become bitter.
Somewhere between the pit and the hard pilgrimage to Egypt, Joseph must have decided “I will not see myself like they see me. I have a dream, and you can strip my coat, but you can’t strip my purpose.” As Joseph’s brothers go on with life, it seems they think they have gotten away with murder, as between the end of chapters 37 and 39, we do not hear about Joseph.
But as things turned out, God was with Joseph, and things went very well with him.
Bitterness, from a theological perspective, is rebellion against optimism and a combatant to spiritual hope. But when you have a relationship with God, He gives you grace to live better than everything that would leave you bitter.
This text teaches us that you don’t have to let bitter get the best of you. You can live better than bitter. It has been said that bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting somebody else to die. Bitterness can’t change anything about your past, but if you don’t fight it, it can ruin everything about your future.
And it doesn’t start with God’s promise of a reversal of fortune. It doesn’t start with a guarantee of retribution. It doesn’t start with God telling you, “Don’t worry, I’m going to turn your enemies upside down.” It doesn’t start with a chance to witness the suffering of those who made you suffer.
In fact, it starts with a commitment to a hard spiritual discipline called self-compassion. Self-compassion is not letting what has happened to you make you treat yourself based on what has happened to you. Self-compassion to nurture spiritual hope in Jesus Christ is our antidote to bitterness.
Doing Better at Trusting God
But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
Genesis 37:18-22 (NIV)
Reuben heard the brothers’ schemes and he delivered Joseph out of their hands. He says to them, “Don’t kill Joseph. You can drop him in the pit if you desire, but don’t lay a hand on him. Don’t shed any of his blood.”
Reuben is not unfamiliar with Joseph’s ornate robe or with his parental distinction or with the dreams that he and his brothers would be bowing down to Joseph. He’s not separated from the queries and the questions that this dream raises. He is the only one who raises the objection to the collective plot to kill this dreaming brother of theirs. The brothers have no idea how committed God is to the fulfillment of the revelation He has disclosed. So where did this sudden change come from?
God does not do all of his work on the visible stage. He doesn’t do everything in a way that makes it clear to us. He does not always provide clear disclosure of how things are going to unfold. But He is moving behind the scenes.
You can’t hear God’s voice in the text. He doesn’t crack the sky open and let His voice descend. There is no parting-of-the-water kind of display. He’s not showing up in a whirlwind and Joseph doesn’t hear Him speaking in a still small voice. But behind the scenes, God is moving and tugging and pulling on a young man’s heart and making other brothers reasonable enough to listen to an alternative plan.
You, also, need to nurture a trust in God and fan into flame a confidence in God that when you are simply walking in the direction of obedience, you can feel safe enough to trust your steps because you know that, even when you don’t know where you’re going, God is working behind the scenes to make all right.
