Relax. Everything's going to be awesome.

Genesis 39

Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife

 ¹ Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.

 ² The LORD was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. ³ When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did, ⁴ Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. ⁵ From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the LORD blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the LORD was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. ⁶ So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.

   Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, ⁷ and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!”

 ⁸ But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. ⁹ No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” ¹⁰ And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.

 ¹¹ One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. ¹² She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

 ¹³ When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, ¹⁴ she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. ¹⁵ When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”

 ¹⁶ She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. ¹⁷ Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. ¹⁸ But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.”

 ¹⁹ When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. ²⁰ 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, ²¹ the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. ²² So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. ²³ The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

Okay, so, let’s get this straight from the get-go. Joseph had a much much MUCH rougher life than me. It sucked to be Joseph for a long time. But there is one part of his life that make me wonder if he felt like I did. I wonder if he ever felt like he had everything that didn’t matter.

This whole chapter is very clear that everywhere Joseph went he had great success because God was with him. Joseph was devoted to God. How many people do you know that, when confronted with sin say, how could I sin against God in such a way?

Joseph is one of the few Vacation Bible School Heroes that stands up to scrutiny. Other than the thoughtless and possibly arrogant way he acts towards his brothers in the beginning of his life, there just isn’t much record of Joseph doing anything wrong. Joseph is about as good a person as you’ll find in the old testament.

And despite that, for the first half of his life he gets a pretty rough deal. Things start to look up for Joseph, and then he gets knocked right back down. First he’s enslaved, but then he becomes his masters right hand man. Then his master’s wife tries to seduce him, Joseph does the right thing and says no (over and over I might add). So clearly in return for this, he gets sent to prison on charges of attempted rape. While he’s in prison though, Joseph becomes the top guy again, and some prisoners come along who used to be pretty big in Pharaoh’s eyes. One of those guys gets released and promises to talk to Pharaoh about getting Joseph out of prison. That guy promptly forgets.

A lot of days, I feel like that. Everything I need in life is pretty much taken care of at the moment. Has been for a lot of my life. I’m extremely blessed in the family I have and in the friends I’ve (somehow) made. God’s made me fairly intelligent, or given me the capacity to fake intelligence. I’ve never gone hungry. I sleep in a warm bed at night and I wake up with a hot shower. That puts me six up on most of the people who have ever walked on this planet and it’s not even close to a comprehensive list.

But “want” is a funny thing. Now, I can’t prove it, but I suspect Joseph was a little bit like I am sometimes (way more often than I have any right to be). I’d be willing to bet that there were a few nights where he looked up at heaven and said, “Well I’ve got everything I need. But God, I want to be back with my family.” I wonder if everything else felt meaningless at times without them.

That’s how I get a lot of times. It’s silly, but there are days when I look around and see everyone else (it seems) getting into relationships or more often these days, engaged, and all those blessings I listed just don’t carry the weight they should.

And the the trap I tend to get caught in next is the “Aren’t I good enough?” trap. Some days it’s “Am I not cool/funny/nice/good-looking/anything else enough for some girl to be interested in me? One that’s not sixteen?” Other days it’s “God, aren’t I better than all those people who go out and just try to have sex, or get drunk, or never think of you at all, or who claim to follow you but are just lying? So why do they seem to have what I want?”

It’s not a good place to be.

Here’s the thing, the quality of your life and how God will deal with you are not based on how good you are. Stop running an imaginary race where you don’t know where the finish line is. You cannot be good enough to earn blessings. It does not work that way. Life isn’t a race. It isn’t a performance test.

Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. We don’t live in a world where that makes sense yet. Getting the good things you want isn’t a matter of getting God to like you enough. I really believe that one day, you’ll be able to understand how each step of your life was put there to guide you forward, but that day isn’t today, or tomorrow, or any other day until after you die.

And that is okay. And it is okay to want to ask God what in the world He’s doing. And it is okay to ask God to fix it. It’s okay to ask God to stop doing what He’s doing. It is okay to be broken.

God is fixing you, putting you back together, making you into something better and stronger. That isn’t a quick process. It isn’t easy. It isn’t always fun. It hurts. It can rip you apart. It can make it seem as though the entire universe and all its workings are against you. And it is okay to feel that way.

The only way I’ve found to deal with that is to talk with/yell at God until you’ve gotten all the despair and anger out and then ask Him to help you through the year/month/day/minute. Then try to get up, put your guard up, and get back in the fight.

But it is okay to feel like you’re losing. It’s okay to not be okay.