Introduction

We have finally arrived at our last week of this fantastic series,”Wilderness.” So far, we have looked at different things we experience in the wilderness. In week 1, we opened up speaking about certain testing that takes place in the wilderness. From there, we talked about the art of having patience in the wilderness, learning how often God provides wisdom when we wait. Last week, we honed in on listening when we are in a season of wilderness. We have to learn to discern how and where God speaks to us, to most clearly hear and sense His leading. And today, as we close out our series, I want us to talk about the pain we often experience in the wilderness.

Story: Talk about a time you were playing around as a kid, or with friends, and you got hurt somehow. You weren’t doing something bad or wrong, but you still experienced pain.

You see, pain is something the Bible speaks about as a present thing in our lives on this earth. Now, the Bible also says pain is not something that will last for eternity.

You see, pain is something the Bible speaks about as a present thing in our lives on this earth.

Main Teaching

In this story, Joseph has just told his family about a series of dreams he had, both of which seemed to showcase them bowing down to him on some occasion in the future. Obviously, this makes Joseph’s brothers jealous. So, when Joseph goes to hang out with his brothers soon after, here’s what the Bible tells us.

What a sequence of events, right? Joseph gets sold into slavery in Egypt and so his life takes a turn for the worst. There are a lot of different things we could pull out of the story of Joseph related to suffering and pain, but here’s the first one I think comes directly from the passage we just read…

Oftentimes, Our Pain is Caused by Someone Else

In this story, we clearly see Joseph’s brothers scheming with one another to try and find a way to get rid of Joseph. And after deciding not to kill him, they decide to sell him. The point is, Joseph experienced this initial pain without having control over it. His pain came at the expense of others’ anger and jealousy.

Maybe someone here today is experiencing pain, or maybe you have in your past, maybe it was brought upon you because of a decision someone else made. Maybe it’s a parent who stopped loving your other parent at a certain point, and now you have separated parents and don’t really have a clear picture of what healthy family life is supposed to look like. It’s caused you pain.

Or maybe you were fired from a job, certainly didn’t see it coming, and you’re still not sure why you were actually fired. You feel as if there were some inaccurate behind-the-scenes conversations, and it has led you to this point of pain you feel you have no control over.

Regardless of how you find yourself experiencing pain right now or in your past, oftentimes we don’t have much control over when it gets introduced into our lives. And at this point in the story of Joseph, we can see he had a very crucial decision to make: “Am I going to be defined by my pain, or will I choose to allow God to still work through it?”

This is the same question many of us have to spend time asking and thinking about today as it relates to our pain ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium