Let the Spirit Guide You as He Directed Joseph(Genesis 37:5-37:38)
Jesus said, "When He the Spirit of truth is come. He will guide you into all truth." Too many people fail to experience the Spirit’s leading, empowering and adapting corrections because they have preconceived notions of what they should be doing. Joseph refused to give in to bitterness, anger or feeling of hurt even when he was betrayed by members of his own family. Let us trust the Lord to teach us to be more sensitive to the leadings of the Spirit as He speaks through His word, circumstances and godly people.
Illustration: This also comes from the Lord of hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance. --Isaiah 28:29
When we go through deep trials or great suffering, we need to be reminded that God is working purposefully, intelligently, and lovingly in our lives. Isaiah used the illustration of a farmer to teach this truth to the Israelites.
A farmer works with a specific purpose in mind. I know of an area that was solidly wooded 60 years ago when a young man bought it. Without the use of modern machinery, he cleared it of trees, plowed it, and seeded it. His one purpose was to harvest a crop.
When God digs into our lives, His plowing has a purpose too--a spiritual harvest that will enrich us for eternity.
A farmer also works intelligently. Isaiah described the careful selection of plots for different seeds (28:25). God too is careful to select for each of us exactly what we need for spiritual growth. Our trials are not the result of fate.
Finally, a good farmer uses as gentle a method as possible to thresh his crops (vv.27-28). Our loving God exercises the same principle. He never causes us needless pain.
Isaiah concluded that the Lord is "wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance" (v.29). Have you come to that same conclusion? (Our Daily Bread)
1. The Holy Spirit spoke to Joseph in ways that seemed to bring great distress to Joseph. Moses wrote, "Then Joseph had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. ‘I had another dream and this time the sun and the 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? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind." (Gen. 37:9-11) Ask the Lord to help you to be obedient to the God regardless of family pressures to go along with traditional cultural practices and customs of cooperation.
2. The Holy Spirit led Joseph in many ways, but chose to speak to him through dreams. Moses wrote, "Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, ‘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.’ He brothers said to him, ‘Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule over us? And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said." (Gen. 37:5-8)
Even when others tend to misunderstand and criticize you for your God given directions, ask the Lord to allow you to persevere in your belief that He will perfect the plans that He has called you to accomplish. As Samuel said, let us also pray, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."
3. The Holy Spirit may choose to bless you through the most unusual of pathways, as He did by allowing Joseph to be sold into slavery within Egypt. Moses wrote, "Judah said to his brothers, ‘What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood! Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood. They sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt." (Gen 37:36-38)
Ask the Lord to carry out His plans for your life regardless of the betrayal, distress or persecution it may bring your way.
4. The Holy Spirit gave Joseph a legacy as one of the most Christ like people of the Old Testament because of his willingness to make the most of every situation. Moses wrote, "When Joseph’s brothers came and threw themselves down before him they said, ‘We are your slaves.’ But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them." (Gen. 50:19-21)
Ask the Lord to help you model your leadership after Joseph’s Christ like willingness to adapt, remain teachable and open to making the most of every God-directed situation.
5. The Holy Spirit gives us personal and organizational goals that others may misunderstand and try to oppose.
God’s Spirit wants us to press ahead with our God inspired purposes as Joseph did regardless of what others might say or do to block our progress. Moses wrote, "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." (Gen. 37:17-19)
Ask the Lord to help you press ahead with your God given personal and organizational goals regardless of the fierce opposition that you encounter.
6. The Holy Spirit enlightens our subconscious and conscious brain with the ideas that give birth to God’s plans, processes and procedures. Paul wrote, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe." (Eph. 1:18)
Ask the Lord to allow you to correctly implement the ideas that He plants in your subconscious and conscious brain (as He did during Joseph’s dreams) so that you can fully carry out His plans, processes and procedures.
7. The Holy Spirit corrects us when we allow God’s purposes to be mixed up with our own pride, selfish desires and immaturity. Paul wrote, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Tim. 3:16,17)
Ask the Lord to show you where you have polluted, diluted or distorted His plans for your life with your own selfish desires.
8. The Holy Spirit convicts us when we allow God’s purposes to lay dormant, under developed or poorly implemented. Joseph refused to allow the luxuries of Potiphar’s palace to tempt him to forget the Lord and His priorities. When Potiphar’s wife said, ‘Come to bed with me!’ Joseph said, "How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her." (Gen. 39:9,10)
Ask the Lord to help you avoid any compromises with the world, the flesh, or the devil in your relationships or your ministries.
Illustration: You were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance. --Ephesians 1:13-14
One day my friend Arthur Lewis, an expert in biblical Greek, was walking along the streets of Athens. Accompanying him was a professor who teaches Greek. They stopped occasionally to read the signs in shop windows.
As they gazed into a jewelry store, they saw a sign with the word arrabon on it. When they entered and talked to the proprietor, he told them that in modern Greek the word arrabon means "an engagement ring." The Greek professor thought for a moment, then commented, "How interesting! In the New Testament that’s the term for ’a guarantee, a down payment.’"
In Ephesians 1:13-14, we are told that the Holy Spirit is given to believers as an arrabon, a down payment, a guarantee of heaven. The blessing of the Spirit’s presence in our hearts is a foretaste of the greater blessings we will enjoy when as the bride of Christ we are eternally united with our Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus.
Now the Spirit lives in us to give us guidance and power to live for God (Jn. 16:13; Gal. 5:22-23). But someday we’ll have even more: We will live in the very presence of God. With joyful anticipation we await that day--for our future is guaranteed! --VCG
God’s guidance and help that we need day to day
Is given to all who believe;
The Spirit has sealed us--He’s God’s guarantee
That heaven we’ll one day receive. --JDB
The greatest joy on earth is the sure hope of heaven
(Our Daily Bread)
