Week 1-FAITHFULNESS

QUESTION - What does God’s faithfulness look like in hard times?

So, God sets up joseph for this great future:

Genesis 37:3–10 NIV

Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.” His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?”

Then one day, Joseph’s dad asks him to go find his brothers.

Genesis 37:16–20 NIV

He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?” “They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’ ” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”

His brothers are… less than enthusiastic about these dreams

Being honest here - can we blame them?

They threw him into a cistern and tore up his coat

They were planning on killing him. But they sold him into slavery instead.

He got sold to an egyptian official named Potipher.

Where is God’s faithfulness in all of this?

Remenber, joseph went from a dream about being on top, to being a slave.

I think we’d all question there.

A funny thing happened.

Genesis 39:2 NIV

The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.

In slavery, the Lord blessed joseph’s efforts

- and potiphar noticed. So potiphar put him in charge of the entire household.

Not only did Joseph prosper - the lord actually blessed the household of potiphar.

How would we have reacted in that situation? God has a plan, He’s told us, but now it feels like everything went sideways. It feels like the world won.

God’s faithfulness comes when we go

He could have sat back and said, this isn’t what I wanted. and just resigned himself to the barest minimum - or nothing at all.

But because Joseph was willing to work, willing to serve, even when it wasn’t going his way at all - God blessed him and his efforts.

Here’s the thing: We aren’t willing to act until we have the thing we trust.

If we want to buy a boat - we won’t do it until we have a plan for the finances - or at least we believe we do!

If you want to go rock climbing, you don’t do it until you have your gear, or training to not need it.

But in bigger situations, too. The prospect of marriage is extremely difficult if not impossible without trust. If your kid wants to go out with a friend, and you don’t trust that friend - that’s a hard pass.

Why is this important - because in order to show that we trust God’s faithfulness, we need to be willing to act - even when things aren’t going our way.

Because if we have God and we aren’t willing to act, willing to trust - then can we really say we trust God?

I’ve always said, life is like jenga. The piece that causes the tower to fall - that’s the foundation piece. And if that piece isn’t God - then we shouldn’t expect to really and truly experience God’s faithfulness.

Not because God holds back on us. But

when our trust is in something else, our focus is on something else

When we won’t move except for money, our focus is on money. If we won’t serve until we get our title or our preferences, our focus is on our title or our preferences.

or to put it another way,

Matthew 6:21 NIV

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So, back to Joseph. things are on the up and up.

Then Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce Joseph. So then she falsely accuses him of taking advantage of her. Potiphar is FURIOUS.

Genesis 39:20–21 NIV

Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.

There’s that phrase again - ‘the Lord was with him’

So joseph gets put in charge of all these prisoners, and he basically ran the prison. And God gave him success in that.

There’s something else about God’s faithfulness we can learn from Joseph’s story here.

What do you see in the story? Joseph is with his brothers, who hate him. Joseph’s probably pretty arrogant. And God is right there with him, directing him anyways. Then he goes into slavery - and God is right there with him. Now he’s in prison - and God is right there in that prison cell with him.

Wherever joseph goes, whatever Joseph does - God is right there. Giving him power, and favour. Working for his good.

In every moment, God is moving Joseph towards the fulfilment of His plan for Joseph’s life. God’s faithfulness is so complete that

He never leaves us, not even for a moment

Hebrews 13:5–6 NIV

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

When we learn to put our trust fully in God’s faithfulness, we can confidently say, ‘what could people possibly do to me? What could I ever be afraid of?

Even in slavery. Even in the darkest of situations, and the pits of despair. We can say - I will not be afraid.

But sometimes, practically, that’s not our experience. It seems like God isn’t always there, right close by. We don’t always have the joseph experience.

I have a suggestion, and it’s not an easy thing to say, but here it is.

Sometimes, we’re more interested in getting God to follow our plan than in following His

God calls us to do something. He calls us to serve. But then we say ‘ok, that’s great. But i’ll only do it if this happens, or that happens’.

STORY - worked with people in kids and youth who would only serve if everything was done their way.

We shift the narrative - God says, ‘this is my will for you’ and we say ‘ya, that’s great, and I’d love to, but this is MY will here’. We know GOD’S desire, but we won’t move until we get OUR desire.

And sometimes, we’re motivated out of greed or self-centeredness. let’s just be honest there.

But SOMETIMES, and this is the harder one - we confuse our preferences for God’s will.

We say, it’s only from God if it comes in the exact packaging that we expect and that benefits us the most.

God wants us to worship, but it’s only real worship if it’s the music we prefer.

God wants us to give financially in church, but only if that church is doing exactly what we want them to the way we want them to.

God wants us to stand in unity, but we’re only willing to be united to people who see things exactly the same way we do and who agree with us.

The truth is,

Our path brings fear. God’s path brings fearlessness

STORY - ever driven on the highway in a terrible snowstorm,with the plow right in front of you? Being stuck behind a slow guy in great weather is awful. Being stuck behind that plow in terrible weather is gold.

Our path, the world’s path - it’s darkness and thorns and storms and pain. God is beating an incredible path through that darkness by His great power - and it’s only when we’re following in his wake that we can say ‘I will not be afraid’.

Eventually, Joseph gets out of prison (explain dreams - cupbearer and baker, then pharoah) and gets put in charge of all egypt.

There’s a famine, and Joseph’s brothers come to egypt to buy food, and they don’t recognize joseph, so when they come into his presence, they bow down. And joseph knows. All the way back to his childhood, to his dreams, he knows.

God’s faithfulness is so great, that He fulfilled the plans for Joseph’s life. And

It wasn’t DESPITE his trials - it was THROUGH his trials

God is so ridiculously faithful, that opposition, trials, troubles, persecution - God doesn’t just get past them, he uses them as vehicles for his deliverance.

This should radically transform our understanding of God, if you think about it.

Joseph recognized that:

Genesis 50:20 NIV

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Joseph believes this so much, that he actually tells his siblings not to worry themselves too much thinking about what they’d done to him.

Imagine if we said that to people who had wronged us.

Paul reminded us of the same truth:

Romans 8:28 NIV

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

God is faithful, powerful, and working for our good - so we don’t have to worry

And nothing can stop Him. Not our circumstances, our trials. Not anyone else in the whole wide world.

When we face trouble - we don’t have to worry. God will never leave us. And he can take anything and everything and bend it towards his plans and purposes.

But - this doesn’t mean that life will always look the way we expect.

But I promise you this - if you’re willing to expect good even when things don’t look good, you’ll see God’s faithfulness in powerful ways.

And this applies even if this is your first time stepping up.