How's Your Week Been?

Genesis 41:52 "And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction."

How's Your Week Been?

"How has your week been?" Has anyone asked you that before? The most common answer is "good," but most people don't really mean it! The truth is, you don't know completely how your day or your week has been. Remember Joseph? One day he is highly favored of his father, and the next his is in a pit. One day he is rescued and sold as a slave to a very rich man, and the next day he is in prison because of that man's wife. However, God gives him favor, and he becomes second-in-command under Pharaoh.

Joseph summarizes his life-the good and the bad-in Genesis 41. "God made me to be fruitful in the land of affliction." Why was this true? Because Joseph was doing what was right. If your standard is how good the weather is, if people like you, or if nothing bad has happened, your answer is most likely different from Joseph. A "nice" day is not the same as a day with significance.

The reason Joseph's life was significant and "good" was based on his determining to do right which resulted in, first of all, God's timing. Genesis 41 accounts of the butler forgetting his promise to Joseph and then remembering him. But that was God's timing. In other words, Joseph could have confidence in God's timing because he had determined to do right.
Joseph's determining to do right also resulted in God's enabling. Joseph told Pharaoh as much in Genesis 41:16 when he says, "It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." So Joseph's estimation of his life was "good" because of God's enabling and God's timing.

So how has my week been? Ask me five years from now. Your estimation of a day or week might just be amended by history. History has a way of showing us God's footprint. "God has made me to be fruitful"-that was Joseph's standard of success. He considered God's will, not his own; God's timing, not his own; and he did it all with God's enabling, not his own.

For more information about the Bill Rice Ranch visit our website: billriceranch.org

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Brother Wil has hit the nail on the head again. We are prone to think that if we have trouble we are out of the will of God when sometimes God has led us right into trouble to prepare us for His Will. Christians die in the will of God, they are persecuted in the will of God, they lose their jobs in the will of God, they are ill and infirm in the will of God--- they key we often miss is that it is in "the will of God".

Not that it is easy. Joseph was frustrated at times as are we all. But his ultimate trust brought him through and God will bring us through if we continue to trust in Him and live for Him as Joseph did.

Thanks Brother Wil, thanks Joseph, and thank you God for the mercies that are new every morning! -Rick