FACING YOUR GIANTS
“Get out of that Pit!”
Genesis 37-50
There is a country song was played on the radio some time ago by a band named Ricochet. The song tells the story of a man who was sitting in church when he noticed a young woman he had grown up with—and she was looking at him! And he liked it. In the song he describes some of her qualities that made her appealing to him...
She’s got her daddy’s money, her momma’s
good looks,
more laughs than a stack of comic books
a wild imagination, a college education
add it all up it’s a deadly combination.
She’s a good bass fisher. A dynamite kisser,
country as a turnip green.
She’s got her daddy’s money.
Her Momma’s good looks
and look who’s looking at ME!
Cute song. What gets my attention is that the singer was describing a woman most people would consider to be successful. She had a lot of advantages. Plenty of money. Good looks. And apparently good taste because she was looking at him.
There are people in this world who look at this kind of person and they get a little jealous. They begin to think: if only I could have their advantages. If only I had their family, their money, their education. Then I could do great things in life.
An excellent study was done several years ago of 300 highly successful people.
• Winston Churchill
• Franklin Roosevelt
• Helen Keller
• Albert Schweitzer
• Gandhi
• Albert Einstein
Among the areas they studied were how these individuals grew up. What was their family life like? What they found was very surprising. (1) They discovered that 75% of these individuals grew up in poverty; were raised in broken homes by parents that basically rejected them. (2) 85 of these individuals had become outstanding writers. Of that 85, 74 came from homes where there was always intense drama. Constant yelling, rage and abuse were common patterns. (3) over 25% suffered from major problems. A number of them were deaf, some of them were blind and many of them were crippled. When I read this my immediate question was this... How did their home life and all they endured, how did all of this affect who they became? How could someone with so many setbacks become so very successful?
In our text this morning we meet someone like this. We read about a man named Joseph. His life is described in the book of Genesis and his story covers 14 chapters. Let that sink in for a moment. God spent only two chapters in Genesis describing how he created the entire universe and then we find 14 chapters where he describes the life of one man. In five words in Genesis he simply says he made the stars also. It is estimated there are over 300 billion stars in the universe; more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in the entire world. Yet he gives these five words of explanation. Then we come to the life of Joseph and one fourth of the book of Genesis is dedicated to his life. How can that be? It is why I think that our heavenly father has proven to us that he is much more interested
• In our salvation than creation
• in saving souls than he is in shooting stars
• more than making creation, he is interested in molding character.
When we first meet Joseph in chapter 37 we find that Joseph has been sent by his father Jacob to go and check on his brothers as they are tending to the flocks in the pastures and he is told to see if all is okay with them. If we back up for a moment in this chapter we learn some things about him... Follow with me now.
Verse 3. His father loved him; that is Joseph, more than any of his other sons. Joseph was the youngest. He made a robe for him—a coat of many colors.
Verse 4 speaks volumes. “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.”
Verse 5. Joseph had a dream and when he told his brothers, they hated him even more. Probably because in his dream all of his brothers were bowing down to him. The sun, the moon, the stars were also bowing down to him.
So when Joseph arrives in Dothan, he finds his brothers and his brothers make two comments. (1) They said here comes that dreamer! (2) Now let’s kill him and throw him into a well and say that wild animals devoured him. Ever notice that often a description is given of someone and it sounds negative when we first hear it but it actually becomes a compliment to their character? When the Pharisees encountered Jesus they called him a “friend of sinners.” It was meant to be a derogatory term. But aren’t you glad Jesus is a friend to sinners? So here they said, “hey look, here comes that dreamer; making fun of Joseph, yet it was his dream and his faithfulness in following that dream that actually made him successful.
But through all of that Joseph had to endure a horrible event... His brothers threw him into a cistern/ a well ---these were often used to imprison people and the cistern had a covering over it and it was in the desert. Eventually Joseph was taken from there and sold into slavery. To hide all of what they had done from their father, they killed a goat and then dipped his coat of many colors into the blood and told their father a wild animal had killed Joseph. Later Joseph was sold to a man named Potiphar. Joseph’s work for Potiphar was outstanding but something happened because Potiphar’s wife became interested in Joseph. She tried to lure him into sleeping with her; when he declined she got mad and made a scandal out of it. Potiphar sent Joseph to prison. So he was a prisoner in a pit— then sold as a slave--then sent to prison and all of this occupied about 13 years of his young life. The time from the age of 17 to the time of 30.
Joseph had 12 brothers--- his father was married to 4 different women and the sons/his brothers, fought constantly. The only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they all hated Joseph. Because of their hatred, Joseph was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery and accused of a crime he didn’t even commit and then thrown into prison. Joseph was a slave. He was torn from his home. He was dragged across the desert. He was surrounded by people who spoke a language he didn’t even understand. He was the lowest form of life in Egypt. He had no rights, no status and apparently no value. But he had a God who cared for him.
And that is why this story is so very important. Because some of you identify with Joseph. If you have ever felt abandoned by your family... If you have spent too much time in what might be described as the PIT of life... If you have been treated unfairly... If those in authority have taken advantage of you... If your family was dysfunctional, beyond what you even want to talk about, you need to listen to these five words. “The Lord was with Joseph.”
Do you see it? Look at them with me.
v.2.
v.3.
v. 5
v. 21
v. 23
The Lord was with Joseph. I have come to the conclusion that no matter what life hands you, you cannot only survive, you can thrive, you can not only get by, you can be successful if you will recognize these simple words… the Lord God is with you. God himself lives inside of you.
The term dysfunctional, as used to describe families was coined around 1990 and caught my attention through the work of a counselor named Dr. Claudia Black. She has stated that there are three basic rules of every dysfunctional family, three rules they live by and to move out of that pit, all three of these rules must be broken…….. completely. I will get to those in a moment.
The earliest memory I have of how dysfunctional my family of origin was goes back to when I was about six years of age. I walked into the house one day and witnessed my father who was very drunk and was in a complete rage in our kitchen. I stood there in the doorway of our kitchen, almost frozen and watched and listened as my father…
• Cursed and screamed at my mother
• physically threatened her
• pulled dishes out of the cabinets and threw them across the room—-almost like frisbees, smashing them against the walls--when he finished with the dishes he proceeded to the refrigerator, taking out glass jars of mustard, ketchup whatever was there and threw them across the room. Our kitchen at the end was an absolute wreck and so was my mother and I had no idea how to process all of what I had seen and what I would continue to see for the next 17 years of my life. But all of that is not what makes a family dysfunctional. It is the three rules that are strictly enforced that you have to live with.
The following day one of my friends came over and I was telling him what my dad it done—showing them where the stains had been all over the walls, describing the wreck that had taken place. As usual, my mother had already cleaned the mess up. My mother overheard me and I clearly remember this was what she did—she bent down and looked at me right in the eye and she said shhhh! In other words, we don’t talk about this to anyone. And I didn’t. I held our family secret in until I was almost 35 years of age and never spoke to anyone about it. These are those three rules and if there is a problem in your family or in your children’s family or in the life of someone you care about---these are the three rules that must be broken. They must change.
Rule number one in a dysfunctional family. [1] Don’t talk. Do not talk to anyone about your home life. You see, dysfunctional families cannot air their dirty laundry in public. You absolutely cannot talk about the dirty secrets that take place in your house. No matter what. Families must learn to talk. No matter how difficult or how embarrassing the problem may be you must talk about it. Otherwise you go into denial and you stuff everything inside and then you grow up and you simply repeat the cycle. You do the same thing your parents did. Did you know that 90% of children who are abused will grow up and then abuse their own children? 90%.
[2] Don’t trust. Do not trust anyone, especially adults. Children learn through constant broken promises that their parents cannot be trusted to tell the truth. My life was a constant array of my parents making promises they never kept—my mother was actually the worst one— that was her way of making things better you see—she kept telling us—this will stop—I will buy this for you— whatever she needed to say she would but all these promises had a common denominator— they were never kept. So because of rule number one, I couldn’t talk to anyone. I grew up believing that I also couldn’t trust anyone.
[3] Don’t feel. Do not express your feelings to anyone. Whatever you think you are supposed to feel in a given situation, you learn to stuff those feelings inside. Push them way down and forget about them. I have spoken with people through the years who have been terribly abused, physically, sexually, emotionally and they have learned to push it all inside. To stuff it down. The problem is, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t stay there. It expresses itself in all kinds of ways...
• it can drive some to become perfectionists
• Depression
• rage/anger
• controlling behavior—you can’t let things get out of control
All of these are ways to cope. So you must find safe people to talk to. I don’t care what age you are. What your place is in life. You need safe people you can talk to. You’ve got to learn to trust some people. Not everyone, but certainly someone. You’ve got to tell someone how you feel. You got to get those feelings out in the open. This is how you face this giant.
In 1991 I finally went to a counselor, told my story--he listened mostly. It felt good for me to talk about it ….and when I concluded he simply said “well, this is what you need to do. You must go and talk to your Father. He could have just as easily told me I must swim the English Channel or climb Mount Everest… It was the hardest thing I could have ever been asked to do. Ever. I thought you know what I’m paying you to help me and now you’re telling me I need to DO something. Weren’t you listening? I didn’t cause this. They did. So I started to get up and I simply said, “Well I can’t do that.” As I got up from my chair he said, “that’s fine…. you will just continue to deal with this for the rest of your life.” I thought, how unfair. But I knew he was right.
So I did it. I talked to my Father. I forgave him. And it opened up a new relationship with him. And I’m telling you the same thing today. If you’re going to solve this issue, this problem, this difficulty…there is one answer…you have to face your giant. You have to learn to break the rules you grew up with and break the cycle of dysfunction before it is too late.
Whoever that giant may be in your life…..confront it today or he will rule you for the rest of your life. What will you do? You cannot do it alone but with God himself on your side, you can have the victory in this battle.
