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.