Fulfilling God’s Purpose in Life
As I was reading through the book of Genesis at the start of this year, the fact that the God-given purposes of His people took a life-time for each of them to be fulfilled. We so often buy into the ‘fast pace’ of society around us that we expect, unrealistically, to be walking in all the fullness of what God has spoken over and/or into our lives in a short amount of time. Look, for example, at the life story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50, who at the age of seventeen received two dreams from the Lord defining the Lord God’s purposes for Joseph’s life. It wasn’t wise for Joseph to have shared his dreams with his family in the way that he did. Their reaction was one of insult, feeling that Joseph felt these dreams would make them subordinates to him. That was ultimately true in decades beyond.
We can glean from this, that it is wise to ask the Lord for counsel on our dreams from Him as to what they mean, what our responsibility is to cultivate their fulfillment, and to perhaps seek counsel from those wise and more mature than us as to how to rightly handle those communications from the Lord. However, the Lord is faithful to what He speaks into our lives. As you read through these chapters you see that Joseph experiences the trauma of being not just rejected and hated by his siblings, but sold into slavery. His life is now in the hands of a foreigner. How could Joseph possibly be any further away from those dreams becoming a reality in life than his current situation. He was no longer free to come and go, but subject to the man who owned his life. Then he experiences false accusation from that very man’s wife, and is thrown into prison as a result. Yet the Lord’s eyes are upon Joseph. Take note of the fact that in both these undesirable sitautions, Joseph chose to respond in a positive way. In fact, his positive attitude so blessed the man who bought him as a slave that he gave Josephy authority over all his house (Gen. 39:3-6). Joseph intentionally did all that was demanded of him with excellence thereby bringing the blessing of the Lord God Almighty upon his master, Potifer’s, home.
That same spirit or attitude of excellence continued when Joseph found himself wrongfully jailed. He set about bringing order and peace into the midst of the prisoners. This work was noticed by the keeper of the prison (Gen. 39:20-23) who trusted Joseph with the position of overseer of the prisoners. The Lord blessed Joseph in both these unwanted positions. When we respond with an attitude and spirit of excellence, no matter what our circumstances, it grabs the attention of the Lord God to bless us and give us favor as He did to Joseph, but also the attention and favor of people around us and in authority over us. These very circumstances that were harsh, unwarrented, and undesired nor sought after by Joseph, became the very instruments of training that he needed to fulfill the purpose of God for his life. It was through the integrity of his excellent spirit that his name was eventually made known to the Pharoah over all of Egypt.
You can read that story in Genesis 40-41. Pharoah is now given a dream by the Lord God that he didn’t understand. Joseph was recommended to him as an interpreter of dreams by his cup-bearer because of a dream he’d had while in prison with Joseph that Joseph had rightly interpreted. Joseph is called for, cleaned up, and presented to Pharoah. Pharoah is so amazed at the interpretation and the strategy spoken by Joseph to save not only Egypt but the surrounding nations, that Pharoah decides to promote Joseph from prisoner to ruler over all the agricultural supplies of the land. Indeed, his brothers, and his father, eventually came before Joseph to bow down in submission to his authority thus fulfilling the dream he’d had at age seventeen. Take note of the fact that Joseph is now a married man of forty-something, with children of his own. His life that had seemed to wander far away from the purpose of God as a teenager was in God’s hands all the timed, training him, testing his faithfulness to the Lord, and helping him turn harsh, undeserved and unwanted circumstances into situations to help others benefit by the order and peace he worked to promote.
We can take comfort from this story from scripture that the Lord knows how to direct our path, even when it seems that life gets out of our control and veers off in ways we don’t understand. The Lord uses every circumstance, to test our faithfulness to him, to train us to use who we are to benefit others, and to bring us to that time-appointed place of stepping into fulfillment of all He has spoken into and over our lives. I encourage you to life up your eyes to the Lord and give Him praise as you trust Him with where you are at now. He knows how to direct your steps. He will put His grace upon you so you can bless others with His lovingkindness. He will get you to that appointed time to step fully into all that He has spoken to and over your life.