“A Healthy Perspective!” –FBC Morning Light (1/23/2025)

A Perspective on Difficulty and Divine Purpose

Well, good morning to you. I'd like to encourage you for the journey ahead today with a few thoughts from Genesis chapter 45. Let me ask you this, have you ever found yourself in a time of great difficulty, great adversity, and in that time for quite a while, and then God graciously brings you out and solves the problem or delivers you from that adversity, that difficulty, and you're actually able to look back on it all and see the benefit from it?

Now, that doesn't happen all the time, does it? Maybe you're going through a time of great adversity right now, and you've been going through it for quite a while, and you don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I understand that. Those times can come in life, and maybe you have been through such times, and you came through it, and you came out on the other side, and you've looked and pondered and thought and meditated on the experience, and you didn't really come to any firm conclusion of great benefit from that time.

Maybe it hasn't been revealed to you yet, and maybe you won't know about it until glory. I don't know. But there are times that God will open our eyes and help us to see, to give us a perspective on a time of difficulty, and see the benefit that accrues from it.

Joseph’s Perspective on Suffering in Genesis 45

Now, this happened with Joseph, and it took a long time. We're reading in Genesis chapter 45 today, and in verses 4 through 8, when Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, remember this has been going on now for quite some time, where Joseph's brothers came in this time of famine.

Joseph recognized them. He didn't reveal himself to them. They came back a second time, and this is the second time that they've come back, and he finally, through a series of tests, understands that they are truly repentant.

They've changed their heart toward Benjamin, toward their father, toward what they did to him. He sees all that now, and so he finally reveals himself to his brothers. But then, in so doing, he also reveals a perspective that may seem a bit surprising, because he says to them, in verse 5, he says, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

There's the perspective. Joseph's able to say, now I understand why I ended up here, why I ended up in Potiphar's household, why I ended up in prison, why I was able to interpret a dream, so that I might be used by God to preserve life, and as Joseph's speaking to his brothers, your lives.

He goes on to say, for these two years, the famine has been in the land, okay? So now, two years the famine's been in the land. It's been nine years since Joseph got out of prison. He was 30 years old when he stood before Pharaoh and got out of prison, so he's now 39 years old.

He was 17 when his brothers sold him into slavery. But then he says this, there are still five years in which they'll be neither plowing nor harvesting. In verse 7, he says, God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So now, he says, it was not you who sent me here, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. God sent me here. Wow. Wow. What a powerful and helpful perspective to have gone through all of that heartache, and all of the challenges of those years of slavery, and just the emotional heartache of knowing that his brothers sold him to foreigners.

And yet, he can come out of it all with this perspective. This is the grace of God. This is the ability, by God's grace, to have eyes to see what God is doing and has done in his life. This is the kind of perspective that we want to pray for, that God would give us eyes to see what he's doing, what he has done in our lives, and how he has brought us to this point in our lives, and why.

A Prayer for Eyes to See God’s Work

Let's ask God to open our eyes to see these things, even if we don't already. Our Father and our God, I pray that even in times of adversity, we would be sensitive to the fact that you have purposes that we may not know at the time.

Lord, I pray that on the other side, you would open our eyes to see, help us to have this perspective that Joseph had, that even in these difficulties and adversity, that you have a purpose, and you're going to accomplish some wonderful things through it all, things that we may not even know.

Help us to see these things, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well listen, I hope you have a good rest of your day, and may the Lord bless you in a good day.