God Is For You!
“And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” Genesis 45: 5-7
In Genesis 42:36, a worn-out father named Jacob told his sons, “You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!”
No matter what you’re facing, there’s one thing that you have to know in your heart and mind: God is for you. Deep in your heart, you must know that God is not against you. God is not for you dying, suffering, or lacking. God is not for you being defeated and beaten up by the world and the devil. In this text, we see Jacob in a situation where, number one, he’s in a famine. He doesn’t have enough. He’s run out of resources and doesn’t know where to turn. There’s not enough food to feed his family or money to pay the bills. He feels overwhelmed. At this moment, Jacob feels defeated because he’s financially devastated. Then, on top of that, some years before, he received the message that his son Joseph was dead. Jacob never had closure on the issue. He saw his son go out the door one day and never saw or heard from him again. All he received was the bloody coat the brothers brought back, but he never truly knew what had happened.
On top of that, after he sends his boys to Egypt to try to bring food back to feed his family, the scripture says that he’s now faced with a new dilemma. When his sons came back, they told him that Simeon was locked up in the Egyptian jails. Then they say to him, “If you don’t give the prime minister of Egypt your youngest son, Benjamin, then we may never see Simeon again.” That’s when it hits Jacob. He’s had all that he can take. He said, “Wait a minute, let me get this straight. I’m in the middle of a famine, my boy Joseph is missing, and I never heard from him again. Now I’ve got Simeon in a jail in a foreign country, and the guy’s demanding that my youngest son, Benjamin, who’s been here with me, has got to be taken back and put in a dungeon somewhere?” And then he makes this statement: “Everything is against me!”
Maybe you are reading this and feel like everything is against you. But what Jacob didn’t understand was that Joseph was not dead. Joseph was alive and had the keys to the kingdom and wealth of Egypt. God had already sent Joseph ahead to prepare a great future for Jacob and the rest of the family. Jacob could only see the hardships, but God was behind the scenes, working it all out for his good.
Sometimes we get focused on what we think is against us when, in reality, God is working those things for our good. We think we have to work our way out of our problems and figure out how to fix every issue. But sooner or later, you will come to a place where you have so many issues that only God can fix them. When everything looks like it’s against you, don’t forget that God is for you!
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