This week Scott continued with our series ‘Joseph – The Promotable Life’, by sharing how Joseph listened and lived as he encountered God’s power, which made his life promotable.
We read in Genesis 41:41-52 how Pharoah promoted Joseph to be in charge of all of Egypt after Joseph had used the insight and wisdom God had given him to offer a strategy to help save the nation from 7 years of famine.
We have all encountered moments in our life when it feels like the handbrake has been pulled up; where your dreams and future seem taken away in a heartbeat, where the floor has fallen under you and your world has come crashing down. When this happens, we can lament with the phrase in Ezekiel 33:10, which says “How will we survive?”
Our lives may mirror Joseph’s extreme up-and-down, rollercoaster kind of life, but we only need to look to his example of how we should live through them. Being promotable doesn’t mean being fixated on promotion or success by following and applying some rules. It means having a set of principles and values that make us stand out from the pack. A promotable life means being used by God for the establishment of His Kingdom. It is not the world’s interpretation of success and we may never achieve being top of society, but it is in heaven where our life’s choices will count.
To learn to navigate through life’s sudden highs and lows, we need to be doing the following:
- To listen
Give your full attention to sound. Mathew 4:4 reminds us that we must live by the Word of God. Just like Joseph, we too can receive a real prophetic word from God, giving us His inspired insight into our and others’ problems or a glimpse of the future, which offers us hope and gives us solutions. These can be experienced audibly, heard in our hearts, through the reading of God’s Word, by a vision, or even in our dreams. We need to lean in with trust, listen well and then obey these promptings of the Holy Spirit, who works with us and in us to reveal things to us.
- Live it Out
Just like in the ‘Back to the Future’ movie, you need to remain alert and accept the weight of the responsibility to either change or walk into the future God is showing you. Proverbs 27:12 warns us to be prudent to act when we can see danger ahead. The solution Joseph offered Pharoah was an inspired message from God, which was the Lord’s plan for Joseph to share. There is a sweet spot when we operate in God’s lane, and stop trying to force our plans in our lives and onto others.
We need to allow God to speak through us, and obey to share what He is telling us, even when it makes no sense. The work we are called to do is hard, not easy, but it is work that needs to be done and God is calling us to walk in it. It is where God’s plan and our effort come together to create something beautiful and powerful. We need to be looking forward, listening and being obedient to what God is telling us.
As parents, our biggest job is to teach our children to listen to us and God is doing the same to us. He wants us to know and hear His voice, accepting that there will be consequences when we don’t listen to Him.
Stop chasing after promotion and status and instead, chase after God’s presence with an expectant heart to hear what He is telling you.