Category: Daily Devotionals

Then they said to one another, “In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us.” And Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you did not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood.” They did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter between them. Genesis 42:21-13

At this point, Joseph’s brothers accepted the responsibility for the hard times they were experiencing. They reviewed their past sins against Joseph and connected the dots between wrongdoing and consequences. Wouldn’t everybody, given the same circumstances? Don’t most people, with age, own their mistakes?  Unfortunately, no.

I’ve known many people who, after many decades, decided to confront a childhood abuser. There was magical thinking in their expectations.  They believed that someone in their senior years would own the truth. They assumed that godly guilt would have set in at some point but hopes for closure and healing were smashed when the confrontation went poorly. Then came a lament and a new kind of grief. “How can a 67-year-old man still deny that he did anything wrong?” He did, and we do as well, if we haven’t spent our lives listening to the Holy Spirit and submitting to His instruction. Truth can be shunned no matter the age. Only a humble truth seeker owns his past sins.

Is there a way to tell ahead of time whether someone will be receptive to the truth when confronted? While not entirely ironclad, I believe there is. Does that person have a track record of humility? Have there been smaller things that the person has been willing to own and apologize for?  Those are encouraging signs.

The sad truth about people in general, even the elderly, is that ‘men love darkness rather than light.’ I should always pray that the Spirit of God will open the blind eyes of the one who has hurt me. God is powerful, and prayer will often till up the hardened soil of unbelief.  Reconciliation is always the goal but not always achievable.  If a confrontation occurs, it needs to be on the other side of forgiveness When the heart is hot ~ I know to keep silent.  

Older doesn’t always mean wiser. Keep me from cynicism.  Comfort me in my waiting and in my disappointment.  Amen

By this you shall be tested: by the life of Pharaoh, you shall not go from this place unless your youngest brother comes here. Send one of you, and let him bring your brother, while you remain confined, that your words may be tested, whether there is truth in you. Or else, by the life of Pharaoh, surely you are spies.” And he put them all together in custody for three days. Genesis 42:15-17

When I hear the word shrewd, I don’t naturally think of it as a Christ-like attribute. It has negative connotations in our language, but there is such a thing as Spirit-led shrewdness. Joseph made use of it here, not for self-protection or revenge, but for tough love. He withheld information from his brothers about his identity and then went on to arrange events for the brothers’ ultimate good. One theologian suggests that ‘Joseph played the role of a detective conducting a tough interrogation. He could not proceed with full transparency and expect to get accurate information from them.’

The Hebrew word for shrewdness is ‘ormah’, translated as ‘good judgment, prudent, or clever.  Consider Proverbs 12:23 One who is clever conceals knowledge, but the mind of a fool broadcasts folly.  Shrewdness is called for when I must do God’s work in hostile circumstances. Jesus instructed His disciples to be ‘shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves’.  This is a life-saving spiritual skill and, lacking critical discernment, we trust the wrong people and become casualties.

We are often taught that a Christian should always be transparent and always nice. If asked a question, we should answer it. But there are exceptions. Openness and transparency should be reserved for those who earn it. I am to be shrewd when I am in proximity to someone who does not have God’s interest at heart. If they have a track record for dealing treacherously with others, and I feel it would have negative consequences to be fully upfront, I might give them partial truths, a kind of Joseph-answer, to protect kingdom enterprises that are fragile. If I am prayerful, void of personal agendas, I can rest assured that shrewdness is wisdom.

The danger here would be to conclude that God condones all deceit.  Shrewdness that withholds information should be the exception rather than the rule.  I remember that Joseph worked through betrayal, for decades. The deception he employed was for his brothers’ good, not for his personal need to make them pay. Ultimately, he knew that God was making all of them into a nation that, presently, hung in the balance. What he did, he did for God, not Himself.

I want to be skilled in shrewdness for the sake of the Your name.  Deliver me from the sin of personal vendettas so that I may rule wisely.  Amen

Now Joseph was governor over the land. He was the one who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground. Genesis 42:6

How fun it is to be a child and have a dream where everyone bows down to you. Joseph knew his dream was from God, but how he perceived it might play out didn’t materialize.  It would take decades before he saw it happen. In God’s timetable, Joseph needed the maturity to handle spiritual power, and his brothers needed humility, brought about by years of failure and hardship.

Spiritual gifts are wonderful things, but in my flesh, I can’t predict how God wants to use them. I am like a young version of Joseph, wide-eyed and immature, unable and often unwilling to embrace the heavy price tags associated with them. Here are some examples.

• Teaching ~ It’s tempting to teach what I want to teach and enjoy the accolades of others recognizing my giftedness. But God is supposed to choose the topics and the audience and craft the message the way He wants it presented.  To want to be known as a great teacher is a fleshly goal.  Teaching with God’s authority, I will be loved, and I will also be hated.  God promises grace for the burdens that come with both.
• Shepherding ~ I want to shepherd those I’m attracted to, those who will appreciate my investment into their lives.  But God wants me to bring healing to the broken where shepherding is messy.  Healing and wholeness are costly and often resisted.  I must relinquish my need for acceptance. 
• Leading ~ Without the filling of the Holy Spirit, I will wear my power recklessly and attempt to lead others where I think they should go. I will bask in the attention of being upfront, giving orders, and having people answer to me.  God calls me to lay down my life in servant leadership.
• Mercy ~ I will want to extend mercy to those I feel need it. But God will also ask me to show mercy to those I consider undeserving. He will also call me to withhold mercy for someone’s good until He says it’s time to extend it. Drying another’s tears too quickly will interfere with what He is trying to tell them.  This will cause friction in relationships.

God gives spiritual gifts to His children. They are both wonderful and powerful, but only when exercised under the Holy Spirit’s control. Like Jesus, I will know the joy, and the burden, of using my spiritual gifts with divine wisdom.  One of the heavy price tags is a willingness to experience every mountaintop and valley on the narrow road to glory.

Your gifts, Your way, through me. Amen

Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them. “Where do you come from?” he said. They said, “From the land of Canaan, to buy food.” Genesis 42:7

How painful would that moment be? Joseph has been far from home since he was a young boy. He’s missed his family but was also betrayed by most of them. Now, out of nowhere, the brothers who sold him into slavery are standing in front of him. I would imagine that part of him wanted to run and embrace them. They were a connection to home. Ah, but there was another part of him ~ the spiritual part that God had tutored. He was more God’s son than Jacob’s son. Time had broadened his perspective and he was able to find restraint; to inflict a wound that would lead to reconciliation.

Have you ever had to wound someone for their own good? If you’ve been a parent, the answer is automatically yes. But how about a sibling, a friend, or someone you’re mentoring? Inflicting a saving wound out of love is difficult, especially when the other person has hurt you. How do you wound them without having a personal agenda to take vengeance? Only time with God, a long time, will prepare any of us to deal with them for their spiritual good, not our need for justice.

I can imagine that Joseph was conflicted. He wanted to hurt them. He wanted to hug them. He wanted to make them pay. He wanted a family again. But he knew there could be no reconciliation without true remorse. A quick tearful reunion would not require them to search their own hearts. Only severe testing would unearth true feelings. Joseph was willing to inflict it and delay his own gratification. He set aside embraces for more estrangement.

Righteousness is often the dividing line in relationships. It fractures as one chooses Jesus and the other chooses his own passions. There can be no reconciliation without both parties being on the same page. If I love peace more than I love truth, I will rush in to make things okay when it’s entirely premature. Inflicting a wound by speaking the truth will delay any chance for intimacy but it will also give a wayward soul time to reflect and deal with his own heart.

To be a Joseph kind of leader takes courage – the kind of courage born of adversity that cast us on the breast of God for survival. The wisdom learned there is far more precious than the cheap embraces of those who aren’t ready to pledge true fidelity.

This is graduate school in biblical application. How am I doing, Lord? Only You can show me. Amen

So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, with his brothers, for he feared that harm might happen to him. Genesis 42:3-4

I wonder what God felt as He watched Jacob’s sons, all except one, leave for Egypt. He saw them pack for the long journey. He saw Jacob clutch Benjamin protectively and heard him declare that this child would not go with them. He read the thoughts in this old father’s heart. “I entrusted one of my favorite sons of Rachel to you on another long journey and I never saw him again. You’re not taking Benjamin, too!” God saw this father’s inability to entrust the one who was precious into His care. Though the loss of Joseph had happened two decades earlier, the wound still felt like yesterday.

Jacob had not gotten over his sons’ carelessness with their younger brother. He had nursed the hurt and distrust had grown with the years. Ultimately though, his issue was not with his sons but with God. He could not see, though he would see shortly, that God is trustworthy and does all things well. For now, Jacob overprotected Benjamin and trusted no one, not even the God he’d given his life to.

What wound from the past are you hanging on to?  What wound still defines you to the point where you over-correct today’s decisions based on yesterday’s heartbreak? Your ‘Benjamin’ is still in your clutches.

We know how the story of Joseph ends. We know that God oversees, with great care and vengeance, the lives of Joseph and Benjamin. Can we not ask for the courage to stop clutching what we feel we need to protect? Perhaps today we can stop playing God. It’s time to set free what we have entrapped.  God has always been worthy of our trust.

Help us pry our fingers loose. Amen

When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why do you look at one another?” And he said, “Behold, I have heard that there is grain for sale in Egypt. Go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.” Genesis 42:1-2

While I’m praying for many years about something that breaks my heart in two, it can appear as if I have a Father who withholds intervention for no good reason. He could act today, couldn’t He? Doesn’t love come running? If a parent can do something to alleviate a child’s suffering, won’t he? This is the human side of praying. God’s side is much more expansive, however.

So much happened behind the scenes while Joseph waited in slavery. God wasn’t deaf to his cries for deliverance. Though Joseph didn’t see evidence of that outside of the daily grace God provided, he couldn’t know that there was so much happening behind the scenes. The right Pharaoh had to be in power to dream the dream that Joseph interpreted.

• The brothers had to live with their sin and come to a place of humility so that the forgiveness Joseph would eventually extend could be effective.
• The land outside Egypt’s borders had to move toward famine so that desperation would make Jacob turn his eyes toward Egypt.
• Joseph needed the humility and wisdom only borne of suffering to one-day lead a nation well. Good leaders are cultivated in a crucible.

Could Joseph have guessed that God was working?  No. No more than I can while I sit in my waiting room. But God was moving history around with His index finger and all to bring about the salvation of His people. Can I not trust Him with my life?

As I review the activity of an active, powerful, all-wise and loving God on behalf of Joseph, I just may begin to see my own story with the eyes of faith.

Write the stories of spiritual brothers like Joseph on my heart. I need to review and review how Your unfailing love works. Amen

When all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread. Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do.” Genesis 41:55

Who better to turn to than a Pharaoh for help? But this Pharaoh was in over his head. He was not God’s child, and his stone gods weren’t talking.

Seemingly overnight, Joseph was brought out of obscurity to a place of prominence. He couldn’t have guessed that he would sleep in a palace instead of a prison or that his administrative and prophetic gifts would be implemented for the salvation of his people. Yet, when God decided it was time for his advancement, nothing and no one could stop it. Who did the famished people turn to? To one whose name they didn’t even know the day before.

Many righteous are sitting in low places. They are gifted, overlooked, and even ridiculed. They have turned down opportunities for advancement because the pathway to the top meant compromise. The sacrifices offered out of love for God cost them dearly. There may come a time, in this lifetime, when others turn to them for life-saving advice. Their quiet lives of steadfast faithfulness to God will speak volumes when those they formerly trusted shrivel in the flames of adversity. It is only suffering that exposes the difference between the two.

When famine affects the landscape of those around me, it might just be the hour for which God has prepared me. I may not sleep in a palace, but I just might be sought for the treasures of wisdom God has cultivated in me, in secret.  I can never just assume that obscurity is forever my normal.

I never fit in the mainstream. You made me unique, and I know that my time with You cultivates the harvest of heaven’s seeds.  I may not see the extent until the time is ripe.  I trust You.  Amen

Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Genesis 41:51-52

If you have known a life of hardship, you know how slowly time passed.  Pain was normal and the thought of living life any other way was inconceivable. The possibility that you could ever forget your affliction seemed unlikely.

I suspect that the word for ‘forget’ in today’s scripture is the same word that was used when God ‘forgets my sins and puts them behind his back.’ He places them out of sight, and they are no longer held up in front of my face as a reminder of what I’ve done. Memories of my sin eventually take a back seat to the joy of God’s forgiveness.

Considering that definition ~ To forget former hardship is to have painful memories eclipsed by something infinitely more powerful ~ the kindness and redemption of God.  It is impossible to feel two things at once ~ the wonder of exhilaration and the depth of despair. God’s redemption is that powerful. But while I wait, all I know is the consuming agony of distress.

I’ve seen the fruits of powerful prayer. Some were answered overnight, and some within a few months’ time. But others put me in God’s waiting room for a decade or two. The pain of waiting made God appear uncaring and I was certain that life would never be any different. I had to fight for my faith and cling to sound theology despite the strength of my emotions. When the tide turned, when God came sweeping in with the redemption I sought, the joy exceeded anything I had suffered. My prayers had been one-dimensional; his answers were as vast and deep as the ocean. Even now, I still cannot plumb the depths of all that He has done – and will do – because of persevering prayer.

If you fear that the joy of answered prayer will pale in comparison to the ways affliction has ravaged your soul, expand your hope. If God could cause Joseph to ‘forget’ the betrayal of his brothers, being sold into slavery, being unjustly accused, and imprisoned for a decade, could He not surprise me with unspeakable joy?

For all the pain that still consumes me, the coming deliverance is so much more powerful. Amen

Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plentiful years.  And let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities and let them keep it. Genesis 41:34-35

Joseph didn’t just interpret Pharaoh’s two dreams. He used his administrative gift to suggest a plan that would counteract the dismal prediction of famine. Joseph was more than a seer. 

God never gives divine insight for mere intrigue. He discloses His thoughts to someone so they can figure out why they were given such information. Are they to pray? Are they to speak an encouraging word? Are they to expose? Seeing is proactive.

The gift of divine sight, and the spiritual understanding that accompanies it, is built on the culmination of life experiences. God shapes a servant through years of practice runs. The gift is sharpened most through suffering. If you are a prophet who can prayerfully discern the mind and heart of God about a person or situation, you will agree that your gift has been personally expensive. But consider this too ~ the gift of divine eyesight is usually paired with another strong gift. 

• God often reveals a dream for His child to conceive a wise solution.
• God reveals danger so that His child can pray.
• God reveals the root of a problem so that truth can be discovered, embraced, and sin uprooted.
• God reveals the broken heart of another so that compassion and encouragement can arise.
• God reveals where people perish for lack of knowledge so that a teacher may arise.

What has God been showing you about a person or a situation? Perhaps that revelation has been painful, has arrested you in place, and you are confused. Assess your giftings and ask God to show you how you are to use the revelation as a catalyst for His glory and the advancement of the kingdom. God, in your story, has prepared you for such a time as this.

I have been tormented by what I see. Give me Your action plan. Amen

And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. Genesis 41:38-39

It’s shocking to me that Pharoah would ask this question, ‘Can we find a man in whom is the Spirit of God?’ How wonderful that the answer was yes.  It should still be yes when people look for God and turn in our direction.

I’m convinced that life is one long series of choices where I choose whether to quench the Spirit. He speaks; I turn my ear toward more enticing voices. He suggests; I ignore His suggestion and pick something that promises instant gratification. He begs obedience; I procrastinate and then live in perpetual guilt. He woos me to behold Him in all His glory; I am distracted by something or someone I want more.

The only time I am more than willing to drown out everything that competes with the Spirit is when I suffer. My need of Him is stronger than my need for things that are of little consolation. Stripped of everything that used to matter, Jesus is in full view. His voice is clear and merciful. “I’m here!” His invitation is gracious.  As I sink into waves of mercy, He proceeds to say what He has said across the ages to repentant sinners. “Go and sin no more.” Of course. How could I think of it after such a lifesaving encounter?

The Spirit of God is prominent in me only when my need of Him has exposed how precious He is. He is on full display when He is my treasure. Others see that I am obsessed and possessed.

Joseph’s betrayal, imprisonment, and isolation proved to be three great friends – for these lifesaving wounds led him to cling to his God. No wonder Pharaoh saw the Spirit in so short an encounter.

Lord, the greatest lesson of my life is to learn to embrace suffering and not fight it. Each trial has led me to You. Amen