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An archive of Jacob Nannie's Sermons & Lectures
Good morning, church. Today's reading is Genesis 37, verses 1 through 8, found on page 32 in the
church-provided Bibles. If you do not have one, you're welcome to take one there in the back.
Once again, it's Genesis 37, 1 through 8. Hear the word of the Lord.
Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. These are the family
records of Jacob. At 17 years of age, Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man
was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought a bad report
about them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons, because Joseph
was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a long-sleeved robe for him. When his brothers saw
that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring
themselves to speak peaceably to him. Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers,
they hated him even more. He said to them, Listen to this dream I had. There we were,
binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered
around it and bowed down to my sheep. Are you really going to reign over us? His brothers asked
him. Are you really going to rule us? So they hated him even more because of his dream and what
he had said. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Thank you, Sherry. Good morning, everybody.
You know, a couple weeks ago, Alex Honnold, that name might sound familiar to you,
Alex Honnold climbed Taipei 101 live on Netflix.
It's a very tall, 101-story building in Taiwan.
Some of you may know him from the movie Free Solo.
Free Solo is a movie where he climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park with zero gear.
right? It's free solo, no ropes, nothing, just himself and a bag of chalk. And I think some
tool in his ears. And I remember watching that movie on the edge of my seat, thinking there's
no way they would release this movie if he didn't make it right. Like he fell off. There's no way
they're going to show us that. Like, why would we be watching this? And you know, from the start,
he's going to make it spoiler alert that it opens with him making to the top. And even though you
know that the whole time you're sitting there thinking like, oh my gosh, what if he doesn't
make it? I know he's going to, but what if he doesn't? And he obviously survived that climb,
but this one was different because again, it was streamed live on Netflix. And if you watched it
live, which I did not, I watched it earlier this week. There's, there's no comfort in knowing that
he's going to make it to the top. You're watching live with the rest of the world. He could not make
it? How can someone stand at the foot of Taipei 101 and think, yeah, let's climb that?
There's so many dangers. There's so many chances of things going wrong. And they plan for this. In
fact, the people commentating on this climb for an hour and a half or so were given note cards
of what to say in the event that he fell.
They planned for disaster.
They planned for possible disaster.
But fear of such a disaster is not something that stops Alex Honnold.
And he said about fear,
I've done a lot of thinking about fear.
For me, the crucial question is not how to climb without fear.
That's impossible.
but how to deal with it when it creeps into your nerve endings.
So Alex also planned for fear.
He's planned to take on fear.
But again, what compels him to take on this fear?
No one's asking him to do this.
What compels him to just go for it?
That's a question I have for us.
What compels us in life to go for it?
We're not like Alex Honnold.
I mean, I don't think we are.
I don't know any climbers in here.
We're not going to summit El Capitan with no gear or Taipei 101, but though it sounds
cliche, we do have mountain faces and skyscrapers in life that we face, don't we?
We look up and the possibilities are endless of what dangers lie ahead.
Do we have the confidence to go for it, to climb those mountains?
It's a universal question.
What compels you or are you compelled to climb the mountains in life?
And this is a question that the final story in Genesis helps us answer this morning.
I promised you it's not going to take eight and a half years to get to the Bible.
We're ending Genesis today.
We're moving on to Exodus next week.
There's a final question here, and it tells us what makes us able to go forward
in the face of these mountains in life.
And it has nothing to do with us.
It's not about our strength and what we can do.
It's not about how strong our grip is on life.
It's about God.
It's about who he is and the ways that he's working.
And he's been working ever since the beginning.
He's been working all through Genesis, through Adam, through Noah, through Abraham, through
Jacob, and now through Joseph.
And what we've seen from Genesis 1 all the way here to the end of Genesis 50 is that
God wants to be with us. He wants to be with his people. We're meant to live life with God.
That's a message we'll see over and over again. It doesn't stop here in Genesis. It keeps
going all the way through to the end of Revelation. We'll see it again and again as we preach
this year. And this morning, again, as we close our time in Genesis, what we see is a climax
of this with God life as he promised it to Abraham.
God promised Abraham that he would make him
a great people and a great nation.
And here in Genesis 37, we see the last
of a long list of these genealogies and generations.
Congratulations for making them through,
making it through all this way.
But it's interesting, verse two of our chapter.
These are the family records of Jacob.
At 17 years of age, Joseph tended sheep with his brothers.
And what's interesting is that in Hebrew, the words go from Jacob right to Joseph.
There's no gap.
I mean, isn't that interesting?
Why did the author of Genesis write that way?
Why did he go right from Jacob to Joseph?
I mean, when we're reading this morning, you hear these are the family generations, records
of Jacob, and you're primed to hear a long list of names, but it goes straight to Joseph.
That's because Joseph is the key figure in this story of God accomplishing his purpose
for his family, the family that God promised Abraham just 20 chapters ago.
And as we read through Genesis 36, where it had more family lineages, we see that the
sons of Isaac, his elder son, does well.
Esau does well.
He has a family.
He's grown into a nation with kings.
They're all settled in their own land.
It's going good for Esau.
But then the story shifts to Jacob, Isaac's other son, and his family,
which is going to be much more complicated.
As Pastor Manny preached last week, families can be messy, right?
Families can be complicated.
And Joshua later sums up these two brothers well and their families well.
Joshua 24.4 says,
And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau.
I gave the hill country of Seir to Esau as a possession.
Jacob and his sons, however, went down to Egypt.
That just really succinctly captures what happens to Jacob's family.
This is a harsh foreshadowing of what we're going to see in the Exodus story next week.
And as the story continues from Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph, we see a lot of favoritism.
Again, Pastor Manny preached on this last week.
In last week's sermon, Jacob went to great lengths to take the place of Isaac's son.
firstborn son, to receive Isaac's blessing. He went through deception to receive that blessing.
And the favoritism continued in the story. Jacob's favorite wife was Rebecca instead of Leah. Indeed,
he loved her more than Leah. Happy Valentine's Day, Leah.
That was a little harsh, sorry. But the climax of this favoritism is Joseph.
Joseph is Jacob's favorite son.
That's what the text says.
He's his favorite son out of all the brothers living with Jacob, with Israel, as he's renamed.
The youngest, Joseph, he's the most spoiled and favored.
He receives the most.
He's been given many things, a coat of many colors.
He's even been given dreams by God, dreams that the brothers hate, dreams where he's the hero.
And as we read the story, this picture of Joseph emerges.
He's spoiled, he's immature, he's unwise, he's boastful, he's talkative.
And this is easy to imagine if you knew someone was growing up without discipline
and not being shaped by difficult experiences in life.
This is easy to imagine for siblings who are the favorite.
In fact, some of you might be stirring in your seat right now
because you have a sibling who's the favorite, right?
And if you're thinking, oh, Joseph seems like a cool guy.
What's wrong with being favored?
You're probably the favored sibling.
But again, the text is clear.
Jacob loved Joseph more than his other sons.
That's what it says.
For example, when his brothers, who were all older than him,
they go out to tend the flocks, and he stays behind.
Why?
Because he's an overseer.
He's the favorite.
he's an informant. Verse 14, then Israel said to him, to Joseph, go and see how your brothers and
the flocks are doing and bring word back to me. He's not being sent out to go work. He's being
sent out as a favored son to go check on his older brothers. And as he approaches them, they see him,
they say this, they saw him in the distance and before he had reached them, they had plotted to
kill him. They said to one another, oh look, here comes a dream expert. You hear the sarcasm? Here
comes a dream expert. They're fed up with Joseph. First he has these dreams, we all bow down to him
and now he's coming out here to micromanage us and inform on us. It's frustration. You know what
their first thought is? Let's kill him. And thankfully Reuben, who's sensible, he convinces
them that killing them is not the right move here. They don't want a repeat of Cain's killing
of Abel. And they know that if they kill Joseph and they cover up his blood, as the text says,
or bury him, then just like in Genesis, in the beginning of Genesis, his blood will cry out
from the ground. So what do they do instead? They make money off of Joseph.
Verse 27, come on, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay a hand on him for he is our brother,
our own flesh. And his brothers agreed. When Midianite traders passed by, his brother pulled
Joseph out of the pit, sold him for 20 pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites who took Joseph to Egypt.
20 pieces of silver.
Now, it might not sound like a lot,
but that is years and years worth of wages during this time.
And just like that, Joseph is sold into slavery.
Verse 1 of chapter 39.
Now, Joseph had been taken to Egypt,
and an Egyptian named Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh,
and a captain of the guards,
bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him there.
And in one of his most formative years,
And in vulnerable times, Joseph is alone.
Or is he?
Because what does verse 2 of chapter 39 say?
The Lord was with Joseph.
God, who has purposed to be with us, he's now here with Joseph.
Joseph was never alone during this time.
No matter what he felt or experienced, God was with him.
The Lord was with Joseph.
And the author of Genesis is clear about this all throughout his story.
God is with Joseph.
And because of this, Joseph is a successful man.
Verse 2 again.
The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man,
serving in the household of his Egyptian master.
When his master saw that the Lord was with him
and that the Lord made everything he did successful,
Joseph found favor with his master and became his personal attendant.
Potiphar also put him in charge of his household
and placed all that he owned under his authority.
Friends, God was with Joseph, making Joseph successful.
And Potiphar recognizes, Potiphar recognizes that God is with Joseph.
And again, it's God making Joseph successful.
Do you catch this?
Do you catch who's getting all the credit in this story?
It's God, and it's this with God life that's going well for Joseph.
It's going well for Potiphar, even, and Potiphar's household, until it's not.
Because seeing that Joseph is a handsome and strong man, Potiphar's wife tries to sleep with Joseph.
Although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her.
She grabbed him by his garment and said, sleep with me.
But leaving his garment in her hand, he escaped and ran outside.
She put Joseph's garment beside her until his master came home.
When his master heard the story his wife told him, he was furious and had him thrown into prison.
So Joseph was there in prison.
Joseph, a man of integrity, walking with God.
Sound familiar? Sound like Noah? Sound like Abraham?
Joseph was falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison.
Another situation where he's loved and favored, this time by Potiphar.
His coat is stripped from him, and he's placed in another pit.
Another pivotal moment in life where Joseph's all alone.
But is he alone?
No, because again in verse 21,
But the Lord was with Joseph and extended his kindness to him.
Thrown in a pit, the Lord is with Joseph.
The Lord makes him successful.
Even in prison, the Lord causes Joseph to prosper in all that he does.
The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph's authority because the Lord was with him.
I mean, the author of Genesis is not letting you forget this.
The Lord is with Joseph, and the Lord made everything he did successful.
And then we see during his time in prison,
Joseph, his insight into dreams has not left him.
But it's not Joseph's skill.
It's God.
He even says that.
Dreams belong to God.
And it's God being with Joseph and gifting him with the gift of interpreting dreams
that gets Joseph out of prison.
Indeed, it's now Pharaoh, not Potiphar, who says, can we find anyone like this?
A man who has God's spirit in him.
God is with Joseph.
Joseph has not conjured up God.
Joseph has not used God as a talisman.
No, God is in Joseph.
God is with Joseph.
And seeing this, Pharaoh has Joseph interpret his dreams.
dreams about seven years of abundance and then seven years of famine.
Joseph, because God is with him and in him and making him successful,
he offers a solution, a 20% tax and a national grain reserve.
And because God is with Joseph, Joseph is with God.
He's a man of integrity walking with God.
He's again placed in a position of power in Pharaoh's house.
and this position's a very fortunate thing
because here is where his brothers come to Egypt
in search of food.
But remember, these are the same brothers
who, when they saw him, wanted to kill him.
Same brothers who threw him into a pit,
same brothers who sold him into slavery.
Now, here they come to Joseph for food.
These are the same brothers that Joseph had a dream about,
where they each bow down to him.
And indeed they do when they come to him for food.
But only one of his dreams has come true.
One dream had 10 brothers bowing down,
but a second dream had 11 brothers bowing down.
The people who wanted to kill Joseph were all here.
What about those Joseph wanted to see the most?
What about his father?
What about his mother?
What about this 11th brother that he's not yet met?
so joseph tested them so that he might see his youngest brother and father
and when all 12 of them are gathered together they come to him finally through all his testing
they're all gathered together he can no longer keep this facade
so in verse 3 of chapter 45 joseph said to his brothers i am joseph is my father still living
But they could not answer him because they were terrified in his presence.
This is the brother we're going to kill.
And now here he is providing for us.
They're terrified.
But he reassures them that there's no need to be afraid.
Yes, they did a terrible and evil and wicked thing, selling Joseph into slavery.
But God was with Joseph.
And now don't be grieved or angry with yourselves, Joseph says,
for selling me here because God sent me ahead of you to preserve life.
God sent me ahead of you to establish a remnant within the land
to keep you alive by a great deliverance.
Therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God.
Joseph, a man of integrity, living in intimacy with God,
ultimately leads the way of family reconciliation.
But he wasn't flawless.
He did test his brothers.
He did conceal his identity.
He even planted a silver goblet in Benjamin's sack.
It took him some time to get to reconciliation.
He didn't just jump straight there.
He was bitter.
It perhaps took even longer than we imagine to reveal himself.
But in the end, he has faith to reinterpret his family through the lens of faith,
through the lens of a with God life.
And indeed, it's the closing words in Genesis that ring in our ears.
And that ring in our ears all throughout the rest of the Bible.
In chapter 50, verse 19.
But Joseph said to them, don't be afraid.
Am I in the place of God?
And here it is, friends.
You planned, you worked together, you wove together evil for me, against me.
God planned it for good to bring about the present result, the survival of many people.
His brothers planned evil, did evil, and God planned that for good.
And hasn't this been happening since the beginning of our story?
Humans do evil, and God turns it into good.
And no matter what humans do, no matter how evil they get,
God makes a way for them to be with him and experience the good life with him.
And Joseph's life follows a pattern that we see all throughout Scripture.
The righteous often suffer before they are vindicated.
Proverbs tells us that the righteous fall and rise again.
Moses was rejected before he led Israel.
Job suffered before he was restored.
Jeremiah wept before he was ever vindicated.
The servant of Isaiah 53 was crushed before being exalted.
Jesus supremely had to bear the cross before the crown. These are all wicked and evil things that
happened to God's righteous servants. Joseph's slavery and imprisonment were not interruptions
to God's promises, but the very means by which he was bringing out a good result. The very means by
which his promises are fulfilled. His humiliation put him in a position to preserve life.
The pit that Joseph was in led to the palace he ended up in. And what looked like evil in the
hands of men, wickedness in the hands of men, became good in the hands of God.
His suffering was not wasted.
It was woven into this salvation plan.
Friends, just as Joseph's words wrap up and ring throughout Genesis,
I want these words to ring in our ears right now.
Only God can take it all and make it good.
Only God can take it all and make it good.
That's what the Genesis story is telling us
that we'll see over and over again, only God can take all of it, even the wicked and evil acts
done against you, or maybe even done by you, and turn it to good. Timothy Keller speaks to this
reality in his book, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering. Here's what he says,
we should not overlook the importance of grasping truths in the right order.
So it is important to know that nothing that happens,
not even the most horrendous events,
are outside God's wise purpose and control.
And that he promises to overrule and weave even the worst circumstances
into a plan for ultimate good.
Church, we can't do that.
We can't weave plans into our good.
We can't take it all and make it good.
We can't even take it all and make sense of it half the time.
Thinking back to Alex Honnold, he might be able to summit Taipei 101,
climb El Capitan on his own with no help, not even from ropes.
But we can't do that.
We physically can't do that.
But also in life, we can't do that.
We can't take it all and make it make sense.
We can't take it all and make it good.
and were not even promised the happy ending that we might want.
In fact, we know that this family at the end of Genesis is not promised a happy ending.
It's this family that stays in Egypt.
It's this family that encounters a pharaoh who did not know who Joseph was.
It's this family that eventually is plunged into slavery for 430 years.
But God is working through the story.
The point is, we're all standing at the foot of a mountain.
At the foot of a skyscraper, even.
And that is the rest of our lives.
And we often stand at the foot of that and look up at this daunting task.
And ask, are we going to go for it?
And it's scary.
We're scared.
I mean, isn't life scary sometimes?
It's daunting.
I mean, to be transparent with you, right before the service started,
even during the standing greet, I was texting my wife because we're trying to buy a home.
And it's like, we got to make all these moves right now.
It's daunting.
It's scary.
But the precious truth in that moment I had in the lobby,
in the moments we're going to have in life,
the thing that we hold on to is that God is with us.
Whether you're in the palace or in the pit, God is with you.
And there are three things I want us to know as we climb this mountain in life.
The first is that on the climb of life, even if God seems silent, he is with you.
Even if God seems silent, he's with you.
That's what we saw in this morning's story.
We've seen that in the most uncertain times of Joseph's life.
Times where God seemed silent is where the text says the Lord was with Joseph.
the author of Genesis makes it clear again and again.
Throughout our story, it seems that fate keeps switching hands back and forth,
which makes the story a little bit uncertain
if you're not having the bird's-eye view that we're granted.
The Hebrew word for hand occurs eight times in Genesis 39 alone.
Joseph is taken from the hand of the Ishmaelites in verse 1.
The Lord made everything in Joseph's hand successful in verse 3.
Potiphar puts everything in Joseph's hand in verse 4 and verse 6 and verse 8.
Joseph's garment falls into the hand of Potiphar's wife in verse 12.
Authority over the prison is placed in Joseph's hand in verse 22 and 23.
Hands keep switching.
However, it's not these hands in chapter 39 that are working all things together.
It's not Joseph's hand.
It's not the Ishmaelite's hand.
It's not Potiphar's hand.
It's not Pharaoh's hand.
It's not Potiphar's wife's hand.
No, the author of Genesis makes it clear
that amidst all this uncertainty,
all of this bleakness,
it's the hidden hand of God.
The one who holds all the power.
It's the hidden hand of God that is at work.
And friends, amidst all the uncertainty of your life,
all the bleakness you might face,
remember that even if God seems silent,
even if he seems silent
even if it seems like
your fate is switching hands
remember that God is with you
and your life is in his hands
and we have to let that reality sink in
that your life, our life
is in the hands of God
and as it sinks in
as we grasp that
we will come to know and experience
that on the climb of life
life with God empowers
our Monday world.
We'll notice that on the climb of life,
life with God empowers our Monday world
and empowers us to keep moving forward.
It empowers us so when our grip is getting weak
and our arms are trembling
and we're looking up at the thousands and thousands
of feet left to go in life,
God being with us will empower us.
This is, again, something the author of Genesis
makes abundantly clear.
The Lord was with Joseph.
And what was Joseph's secret sauce?
Why was he so successful
despite being despised
by his brothers,
thrown into a pit,
sold into slavery,
accused of rape,
thrown into prison?
What was keeping him going?
What was keeping him successful
despite the hills and valleys
of his life?
Was that God was with him.
God was empowering him.
God was directing Joseph's story.
He didn't succeed because he mastered his circumstances,
but because God was sovereign over his circumstances.
Joseph was a part of God's redemptive plan.
Joseph was not the architect of it.
It was God's plan.
And through Joseph's faithfulness,
God accomplished far more than Joseph himself
could have imagined.
And friends, maybe your life looks like Joseph.
Maybe it's up and down, left and right, forwards and backwards.
Maybe it's devastating.
Maybe it's tragic right now.
Maybe it's bleak.
And if that's the case, if you're there, remember that God is with you.
If you feel the weight of the world bearing down on your soul,
remember that God is with you.
And that God is able, through being with you, to accomplish infinitely more than you can think or ask for.
Maybe your life is infinitely better than Joseph's.
Maybe you take a sober look at yourself and say, I've actually had a pretty good life.
Maybe you haven't had a hard life.
Maybe you're just in the season of rest from that hard life.
You also must remember that God is with you
and it's him who is sustaining you and empowering your life.
It's God, not you, who's accomplishing more than you can think or ask.
Don't be fooled by your own competence.
It's easy in the rest periods of life to think that we are doing the right thing,
but it's God empowering us.
Our life is not in our hands, they're in the hands of God.
So whatever you're doing tomorrow, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, and the rest of the week, remember
life with God empowers your Monday world. Life with God empowers your life. And this is true
because we who have been washed by the blood of Jesus, we have the Spirit of God in us.
The same Spirit that was with Joseph, in Joseph, interpreting dreams, taking him from pit all the
way to palace, that same spirit is in you right now. In fact, friends, the same spirit that raised
Jesus from the dead is with you now. This is not an abstract reality. God is with you. God is in you.
God is empowering you to live the good life. And as we live the good life with God, with all its
complexities. As we're on the climb of life, remember that God is the one who is in control
of your story. God is the one who is in control of your story.
This is Joseph's conclusion at the end of Genesis. You planned evil against me.
God planned it for good to bring about the present result. But it's even bigger than that.
God is not just in control of Joseph's story.
He's not just in control of your story.
He's in control of the story, the whole story.
Everything we've been tracing from Eden and we'll keep tracing all the way to Revelation,
God is in control of that story, independent of your life.
He's the Alpha and Omega, the A, the Z, the first, the last.
He spoke the world into existence in Genesis 1, and he's redeeming it even now.
moving history forward to the day when all things are made new and he dwells with his people
forever. God is in control of his story. Evil is not ultimate. History is not random.
And God is weaving a redemption far greater than any one single life.
And the same God who rules the cosmos was with Joseph in the pit and is with you now.
Joseph, again, comes to see that God was in control of his story.
And maybe he knew that in the pit.
Maybe not.
Maybe he knew that in prison.
Maybe he didn't know that in prison.
But when he got to the palace, he recognized that.
When he could look back and see how God had woven every tragedy he'd faced into salvation,
he was able to see that God was in control of his story.
And this is how Genesis ends.
Not with perfection.
Again, we're going to turn the page into Exodus,
which is a book on the slavery of God's people.
It doesn't end with perfection.
It's not restored.
Eden has not yet been remade,
but it does end with a promise
that God plans it for good,
that God is still with his people,
that God is still writing the story.
Friends, do not despair in your pits.
Maybe that's seasonal depression.
Maybe that's bad relationships.
Whatever that pit is, don't despair.
Don't despair in your prison of addictions or whatever you might face.
Because the God who is with Joseph is the God who walks with his people intimately.
Walks through Exodus, through the wilderness, through the kings and the exile,
through the cross, through the empty tomb, and all the way to new creation.
God is with you.
He's in control of your story because, again, he's in control of the story.
And one day when the whole narrative reaches its final chapter
and every sorrow is wiped away, we'll see how it all weaves together
into this good and beautiful redeeming plan of God being with his people.
But it's hard to see.
It's hard to see because we're so limited.
We only have 80, 90, maybe 100 years on this life.
It's hard to see how all these things weave together for our good,
but God does intend it for good.
And the climax of this reality is seen nowhere else but on the cross.
The most evil act in all of human history is the killing of God's son.
But it's also the most beautiful act in all of human history.
It is the most beautiful display of God making a way to be with his people
and triumphing over sin, death, and the devil.
A beautiful display of God crushing all that would keep us from life with him.
But it's wrapped up in this immensely evil and bloody act.
It's hard to see.
So when life gets tough, look to the cross.
And when you're looking at the cross, Tim Keller again says,
You are looking at an absolute beauty,
but because you cannot fit it in your own limited understanding,
you're in danger of walking away from God.
Don't do it.
Do what Jesus did.
Trust God.
Do what Joseph did.
Trust God, even in the dungeon.
It takes the entire Bible to help us understand all the reasons
that Jesus' death on the cross was not just a failure and a tragedy,
But with consummate wisdom, it takes a major part of Genesis to help us understand God's purpose in Joseph's tribulations.
Sometimes we may wish that God would send us our book, a full explanation.
But even though we cannot know all the particular reasons for our crosses,
we can look at the cross and know God is working things out.
Again, we don't have the minds to comprehend what God is doing with the course of our lives,
but we know that the greatest evil ever seen is a part of God's good redemptive plan.
We have the scriptures to look at the most evil tragedies in the world are part of God's good plan.
We saw in Genesis here this morning, we'll see it over and over again until it climaxes at the cross of Christ.
As the story progresses, may we confidently say with the Apostle Paul in Romans
that we know, we know, we know, we know all things work together
for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.
Amen?
Let's pray.
Father, we confess that so often, God, I confess that so often,
I cannot see what you are doing.
We fill the pit more than any palace we've ever experienced.
And sometimes your silence, God, feels heavier.
Feels more present than your actual presence does.
But today we remember that you are the God who is with us.
The God whose hidden hand is never absent.
The God who takes what humans mean for evil and weaves it into good.
So teach us, Lord, to trust you on the climb of life.
When we cannot see the ending, help us cling to you.
God, fear is going to creep into our nerve endings in life.
Steady us.
And God, I pray you steady us by your abiding presence.
And when suffering confuses us, God, anchor us in the cross.
Help us to look back at the cross of Christ
and see that the greatest evil committed,
the crucifixion of your son,
became the greatest good the world has ever known.
Help us to know that if that's true,
you can work our circumstances for your glory and our good.
Thank you, Lord, that nothing is wasted in your hands.
Help us to trust you in our pits of despair,
in the waiting, in our prisons.
Help us to trust you when the story does not make sense to us.
And Father, right now, we place our lives back into your hands.
The only hands, God, that are strong enough to hold and keep them.
In Jesus' name, amen.