Category: Daily Devotionals

Some time after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker committed an offense against their lord the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. Genesis 40:1-3

God does not redeem sin for an unbeliever. He is not their Father, and covenant promises don’t apply. But when someone sins against His children, God is active and the redemptive process is working for His glory.

Joseph is in prison, a place where it is easy for him to fear that God is inactive. His privacy is interrupted when he is given two cellmates, both strangers to him. They have sinned against Pharaoh, and while Joseph isn’t in a relationship with Pharoah, nor does he have a relationship with the cupbearer and baker, their sins will have a direct impact on his life. The sins of the baker and cupbearer will eventually result in Joseph gaining an audience with the Pharaoh. If Joseph could know that their sins would somehow be useful to him, he could never guess how.

Nor can I predict how the sins of those around me will impact my future. At the very least, they will afford me wisdom as I learn the patterns and progressions of sinful choices.  God is aware and working in every situation that has anything to do with me. I have met no one by mistake. I have worked for no one by mistake. I have not suffered at the hands of anyone by mistake. I have not been betrayed by mistake. The sins committed by all those in proximity to me are woven into my redemptive storyline.

It’s all emotionally complicated because I am grieved when I watch other people sin, whether in my family, my church or within my circle of friends. Because I have no control over them and their sin is hurting others, it can feel hopeless. In this web, however, are God’s hidden gifts. Someone who is sinning nearby me may be used by God to advance me, or to teach me, or to wound me so that I can experience the double fold blessing of God’s healing and redemption.  

Let faith well up in me at the announcement of such good news. My life is in Your good hands, Father. Amen

But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Genesis 39:21

Favor in captivity? I thought the two were mutually exclusive. Another reminder that God turns a concept on its end and constantly surprises.

Joseph sat in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He probably had moments when he felt utterly forsaken by God. And yet, he couldn’t know that his prison was the doorway to leadership. The story will take an amazing turn when Joseph shares a cell with two men that came from the royal court. Their crimes, and their time in Joseph’s company, will bring Joseph’s name before the Pharoah.

Has God blessed others in captivity? I was surprised to find direct proof. “And the Lord gave his people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.” Ex.11:3 Many generations after Joseph, the Hebrews will believe that their God has forgotten them too. For 400 years, they will doubt His goodness. Yet history will prove that God gave them favor during slavery.

Here are a few things I’ve learned firsthand about captivity. The one confined never feels favored. Pain obscures any vision of blessing. Time-bound perspectives limit a view of life. Expectations of what favor looks like is blinding to what’s happening behind the scenes.

If I’m in a prison from which I can’t escape, how do I surmount these challenges? Faith and trust in the character and promises of God. His reputation does not begin and end with what He is doing in my life. If I did nothing but read the story of Joseph to get to know the heart of God, I would cease to be tormented. Captivity is the narrow pathway to the gateway of advancement.

Every time I accused You, You were fashioning something beautiful. I’m sorry, and I will remember! Amen

And Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined, and he was there in prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Genesis 39:20-21

Finding evidence of God’s presence is difficult when life appears to have fallen apart. Joseph’s world was rocked to its core, but the writer of Genesis still said that the Lord was with Joseph and expressed steadfast love. Questions are on the tip of our tongues. ‘If the Lord was really with Joseph, why didn’t He spare him from prison? Why didn’t He expose the scheme of Potiphar’s wife?’ Then comes the question we go to next. ‘Why does God allow bad things to happen to me?’

The problem is that I expect to live a different life from Jesus. His birth was shadowed by a cross and so is mine. He said so. ‘You must pick up your cross and follow me.’  He faced Calvary because that was His calling.  I face the crosses of my own story because that is my calling.

Here are some ways God showed His hand of favor in Joseph’s story. Potiphar must have doubted his wife’s story because the punishment for rape was death, yet Joseph was sentenced to prison instead.  He was also assigned to the king’s prison, a less severe prison environment.  

I don’t care for the phrase ‘count your blessings’ because those who minimize or ignore suffering often recite it.  So let me re-phrase it. When it appears God has abandoned me, there are always pieces of evidence that the Lord is with me.  God to help me see them. If I remember that I take up a cross to follow Jesus, I don’t expect to avoid hardship. I know it is a means to glory being revealed. My life and Jesus’ life mirror each other. Because the cross was a means to His glorification, darkness never has the last word in my life, either.

In every valley, You give gifts of grace. Thank you. Amen

She {Potiphar’s wife} called to the men of her household and said to them, “See, he has brought among us a Hebrew to laugh at us. He came in to me to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice. And as soon as he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried out, he left his garment beside me and fled and got out of the house.” Genesis 39:14-15

Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce Joseph, not once, but day after day. Her frustration grew. A woman spurned can be dangerous. And so she proved to be. When Joseph fled from her presence, she grabbed his tunic and the charade began. She concocted a convincing story where she was the victim and Joseph was a sexual predator. Her tears, coupled with artful storytelling, put Joseph in prison.

There will be a day when all people will be revealed for who they are. The exposure will shock some whom they once fooled, but it will comfort the victims. If you are being harassed by someone others admire, if you have been falsely accused and suffer a ruined reputation, you are not the first to suffer such things. God is with you just as He was with Joseph. No plot against you can thwart God’s plans.

Sometimes the exposure of someone who does evil can come early through the prayers of God’s people. If there is a wolf among the sheep, we can pray for the truth to be revealed.  We can ask God to prevent the deceiver from spinning his tales. We can also ask God to remove the demonic glitter that makes him convincing to the crowd so that he will be seen as he is.  I have seen this happen numerous times.

I can also pray that this person will tell on himself. He often needs to boast about his power to control and manipulate. He just can’t help himself.

God promises grace. It is this grace that enables me to soar on eagle’s wings while vendettas are being waged against me. I don’t need to wallow in the mire of bitterness. I am seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus and am already vindicated in heaven’s court. Jesus is pleading my case and He never loses a case.

Come Holy Spirit, and reveal all things. While I travail in hopeful waiting, don’t let my spirit become jaded. Amen

            And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” But he refused. Genesis 39:7-8

God has Satan on a leash. He can’t do more than God allows. Temptations surely test my faith. I’m required to dig deeply to use faith muscles that need strength training. Satan never tempts me just once, either. When I take hold of God’s grace and flee one kind of temptation, the enemy will come back with yet another variety. He is relentless and doesn’t play fair. He intends to concoct the perfect storm so that I will have no willpower. He’s driven to identify my kryptonite.

Satan tried to use pain to drive a wedge between Joseph and his God. It didn’t work, but it does with most Christians as a low pain threshold tempts us to fall into disbelief.  However, Joseph stood strong.  Day after day, Potiphar’s wife wooed Joseph. She was probably beautiful, and Joseph was, most likely, lonely. That he didn’t give in to her was nothing short of miraculous.

Satan is intuitive. He is also strategic, cunning, and patient. He spies, watching my life to assess where I am vulnerable. He knows my story and knows my wounding patterns. I can’t afford for him to know more about my weaknesses than I do. Perhaps this is why David was so intent on asking God to search his heart. Knowing himself as God knew him was critical to his spiritual victory.

Under what circumstances would you fall? Do you know? What are your unique longings, and if someone or something could fulfill them right now, would you succumb? It’s not a mistake that Paul defines sin as trading the glory of Christ for something else. For Joseph, it could have been a forbidden affair with Potiphar’s wife. What trinket holds allure for you over the value of treasuring Christ?

Deliver me from any evil that is being customized for my defeat. Amen

About three months later Judah was told, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.”  Genesis 38:24

Why, in the middle of the story of Joseph, does God bring in the story of Judah and Tamar? Isn’t it out of place? This tiny story is really the stunning focal point of the whole book. Here’s why.

Through Tamar’s offspring would come King David’s ancestral line. Without her pregnancy, Judah’s line would be extinct. In essence, Joseph’s rise to power made a way for Tamar’s child to get to Egypt! Perez, her son, was able to live outside of famine and grow to prosper. Ten generations after him would birth a shepherd boy who would become King.

How well do I handle God’s interruptions? When He leads me on a detour, or so I believe it to be, how willing am I to trust Him? For all I know, the detour provides the next doorway to my future. God hasn’t laid down His sovereign rule over my life; He has exercised it. Just because I can’t see the value of His interruption doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Getting older yields many gifts. One of them is the privilege of looking back at a large chunk of my life to see the fingerprints of God. The places of pain that I thought were wasted were invaluable. Some of the places that God took me (and I mourned all the way there), were places of blessed connections. How well I remember God’s words in Hosea. ‘I’m calling you to the desert to speak tenderly to you there.’ Desert equals disruption if I look at it from my limited viewpoint. But desert really equals a life-defining moment when God is there to speak into my life.

Against what are you straining today? Perhaps your trust in the Shepherd has eroded because of the place he’s taken you. What appears to be a meaningless detour never is when God has you by the hand. Do the very thing I failed to do so many years ago. Embrace the place you are in, by faith, and ask God to give you eyes to see the treasures under the rocks.

You don’t make detours. Amen

         And when Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,” she took off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. Genesis 38:13-14

People make promises to someone crying. “If you will just stop, then …..” Distress makes them uncomfortable, and they’ll promise about anything to see it end. Here’s the dilemma for the one who is hurting, though. Never are people more vulnerable to a promise-maker than when they are in great need.

Tamar married the first son of Judah. God took him out because he was evil. She married the next son of Judah. He was also wicked, and God killed him too. Though God was protecting Tamar, it probably didn’t feel like it to her. Maybe she wondered if she was a curse. After all, men connected to her were dying. Can you imagine her confusion?   Judah stepped up to offer his youngest son, but Tamar would have to wait years for him because he was still young.

While others her age were having children, she was waiting. While others were enjoying their young families, she was waiting. What a painful day when she realized that Judah either forgot or disregarded the promise. Realizing that she might remain a widow forever, she took matters into her own hands. She dressed up like a prostitute and waited at the gate where those attending a Canaanite sheep-shearing festival would pass. There, she hoped to snare Judah so that he would sleep with her.  She just might get her heir. The one who had broken the promise would be tricked.

Those who intentionally break promises are betrayers. And here’s what I need to remember.  Never are they in more danger than when I put them in God’s hands instead of my own. Forgiveness is taking someone off my hook and putting them on God’s hook. At that point, it’s time to review the Promise Keeper.  If I start remembering every promise He has made and the ones He’s already honored, I will lay down my need for revenge. 

Father, Jesus believed You rule righteously and entrusted His betrayers to You.  He had the power to punish, to make things fair, but He left it to You. I walk in His sandaled footsteps. Amen

And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Genesis 38:6-7

This is an example of how God deals with evil. It is but one example. He put a wicked man to death to spare Tamar and their descendants from whatever evil Er would have committed.  But here’s the question that often comes next ~ Why does God annihilate the wicked in this particular story but not others? This is the reason some say it’s hard for them to trust God. The inconsistency in His responses is a stumbling block.

There is mystery in all of this, mystery we must embrace alongside trust.  As much as we might try to explain everything in a way that fashions a box of our own making, a box that makes us feel safer, the ways of God can’t be explained nor predicted.  What we can know for sure is who He is.  Because He is holy, we can relinquish the angst of our questions.    

Some of us have seen those who do evil up close.  Initially, they came disguised to gain an entrance.  Up close, they delighted in doing their harm and, in the aftermath, we called the pain senseless. Some of us sunk into a deep depression.  Lost in the fog of disorientation, God kept speaking, wooing, and inviting each of us to bring Him the pain we suffered.  We discovered we could step outside of the middle of the story onto the solid ground of the kingdom, by faith.

For every evil committed, there is a reckoning. For every devastation, there is a promise.  God reveals Himself to the brokenhearted and promises to redeem their story in a way that eclipses their tragedy.  

Walk into the darkness with those today who think You are absent. Amen

Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard.  Genesis 37:36

Do I ever consider what will happen to my family a hundred years from now?  If I’m wise, I will remember the story of Isaac and Ishmael.  Why bring up them in the story of Joseph?  Because the Midianites is an overlapping term for Ishmaelites, the descendants of Ishmael.

What’s really happening here is this ~ Joseph was sold to blood relatives.  If ancestry.com had existed, and if everyone involved had done a genealogy study, they would have discovered that they were related.  Did the slave traders know that they purchased their own flesh and blood?  Probably not.

Ishmael was once the favored son of Abraham; a firstborn and an heir.  But through no fault of his own, he found himself in disfavor once Isaac was born.  He and his mother, Hagar, were turned away to an unforgiving desert existence.  God did not forget them and they not only were spared, but went on to prosper.  Ishmael had 12 sons and they populated much of the Middle East.

God used Ishmael’s descendants to get him to Egypt.  In God’s grand redemptive narrative, there are unexpected twists and turns that are quite stunning.  Even though family plots are complicated, God’s purposes are never thwarted.  As badly as we can mess things up, God is never stumped in how to save, how to redeem, and how to accomplish what was written before time.

Joseph couldn’t appreciate what his slavery meant.  Neither can we.  But consider how rich his worship was at the end of his life.  As he looked back, he could see evidences of God’s glory throughout his own storyline.  Amazed, his view of God had to be enlarged beyond comprehension.

Can I trust God enough today with the seeming dead ends, tragedies, and unresolved conflicts in my own life?  I cannot even begin to imagine how He will work with the dark threads of my own story to bring about another Joseph-kind of narrative worth reading.

On the way to Egypt, Joseph lay in the back of a caravan.  He was bound, dirty, nameless, and despairing.  Later, he was crowned, given a new name to match his level of leadership, and went on to save his entire nation from extinction.  Oh, the difference a few decades makes for those who wait on God.

What often casts me into unbelief is downright ludicrous.  Bind me to the miracles of my spiritual ancestors.  In Jesus’ name, Amen