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.
