Purpose and providence, conclusion

This week, we've been dealing with some truths about how God can use the deeds of sinful people to accomplish His purposes. What some people call providence is actually all part of the plans that God has for us....

But how does knowing this help? We have this head knowledge; now what can we accomplish with this?
I believe that it can help us prepare for when trouble comes our way -- we will be ready and we won't buckle and fold under pressure. Our faith will be strong.
I believe that it's helpful to realize that our troubles don't happen by accident. It's really easy to allow our focus to be on the present, the now. If we do that, we are focused on people who have hurt us deeply, or people who we counted on and they let us down. Or the boss that fired us. Or perhaps people we trusted have actually stabbed us in the back, or someone we thought was godly has betrayed their faith and shattered our respect for them.
We could go on and on, right?
But as long as we focus on the people who have hurt us, or the circumstances that we face, we're actually doomed to remain in a dismal, miserable swamp of hurt feelings and depression.
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that our enemies, as well as our all-too-human friends, are instruments in the hands of God. They are His way of correcting us and shaping us into the image of Jesus Christ. As far as our enemies are concerned, if they do not repent and seek His grace, they will face His judgment. As far as other believers are concerned, God knows how to discipline His children, and that includes those believers who take advantage of us or who mistreat us. The day will come when they will face the Lord. All those who misuse others will someday be called to account for it -- it may not be in this life, but in the life to come.
In the end, we will be made better; our faith will be made stronger; our reliance on the things of this world will be lessened. The Lord will be our strength and our portion. Think about it with me: can we say in the midst of our troubles, "Lord, I'm satisfied with You."?  When those hard times come, we can say confidently, " It is the Lord, let Him do what seems best to Him." After Job had lost virtually everything, he declared, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Let's pray that the Spirit will strengthen us, so that those words can be our testimony, too.

As we make application of what we've learned, let's remember this: we can see good where others can see only evil.  This may have been the biggest secret of Joseph's success -- he saw God everywhere. Joseph had such a profound sense of God's presence in his life that he understood that everything that happened was due to the hand of God working behind the scenes.  This is how he could tell his brothers, "It was not you but God that sent me to Egypt." Even the sin of Potiphar's wife and the false accusation, and the years in prison all related to God's purposes for Joseph's life.  I think that many times we may say "God was with me," but that doesn't tell the whole story.  I think what we have learned this week is that we can say, "God was in charge of the whole process." He is omniscient, and He even uses the deeds of evil people for His own purposes.
Let's make another distinction here.....it's not that the brothers sold him into slavery and THEN God intervened to bring about a good result. Everything that happened to Joseph was part of God's ultimate plan -- he was sent to Egypt to save the lives of his very own family, and the brothers who had betrayed him. This was God's plan from the beginning; this was a plan of a sovereign God! We can rest in the fact that while God will allow people to reveal the evil in their hearts, and use their sinful deeds, it is He Who knows the outcome. His purposes will be accomplished.

Another thing we can learn from this week's study is that we have a reason to forgive those who hurt us. You know, we all love happy endings. We like for villains to get their just reward, and for the good guys to get the girl, and all that good stuff. (Grin)
But not every story has a happy ending (at least not here on earth). If we believe our God is sovereign, we can forgive those who hurt us. Not saying we should forget. Nope.
Those memories are with us forever. But we can forgive even when we can't fully forget. We can choose not to dwell on the hurt and mistreatment. We can decide not to cling to the hurts of the past.

Lastly, we can have a new appreciation for God's wisdom in all things.
Do you like to work jigsaw puzzles? Our family has enjoyed many puzzles over the years. Sometimes to make the puzzle more challenging, we will put the box away, so we can't consult it to figure out where pieces go. It does make it more difficult!
In the same way, our lives may seem like giant jigsaw puzzles, and we can't find the box anywhere! We keep trying to figure out where our pieces go, and trying to figure out the big picture at the same time. No wonder it's a struggle! As the years pass, we pick up more pieces to the puzzle, and sometimes things that used to trouble us seem to fit into place. We gain a new appreciation for the wisdom of God; nothing is ever out of place or wasted.

We live this way by faith. We choose to believe that God is at work in everything that happens to us. Even when we look around and can't make sense of it right now, we know Who is in control. Faith like that is strong and honors God. And that is why Joseph's story is so important for us to study.

We'll finish up with a final thought tomorrow....