Shalom and thank you for joining me today for another episode of Living Supernaturally, where we look into God’s word and encourage ourselves in our season of life. This week, we started yesterday, with looking at our responses to adversity. We saw yesterday that there are hardships and afflictions we face in our lifetime but we have hope and a purpose because Jesus has promised that He will help us overcome and He has asked us to take heart. We do understand is that in our adversities, we need to respond to these adversities and over the coming few days, we are going to be looking at one of the characters in the bible in the Old Testament which is Joseph and learn from what he went through about how we can respond to adversity. We see that Jospeh had a tryst with affliction through many years of his lifetime. To give you an introduction about Jospeh, he was the son of Jacob and Rachel, he lived in the land of Canaan and he was one among twelve brothers and they all lived together. Of all these sons, we see that Jacob preferred his eleventh son which is Joseph and gave him a long coat of many colors. This coat signifies that he was Jacob’s choice of being the future head of the clan and I’m sure that this made all the brothers very annoyed and jealous. When Jospeh was 17 years old, he had dreams which he shared with his brothers and both these dreams that he had implied that he would one day be in a position of leadership. Now, Jospeh at this point absolutely knew nothing as to how he would be groomed up for this position. His boasting angered his brothers and they were plotting for his demise. Jospeh’s brothers were all jealous of him and Joseph was one day sent by his brothers to check on his brothers who were shepherds and when they saw him, they plotted to kill him. This begins the first taste of adversity that Jospeh faced. He was sent for an errand and he didn’t even imagine that he would come in face to face with an affliction by his own brothers. The brothers act out of resentment and jealousy towards him. We know the story that the brothers sell him off to Ishmaelites merchants who were carrying spices and perfumes. These guilty brothers, they paint an animal’s blood on Jospeh’s coat and present it to his father and Jacob believes that his favorite son is dead. Think for a moment, what do you think would come across the mind of a 17-year-old, who is suddenly met with affliction? Stripped, mocked, sold off to an absolutely unknown set of people. It was sudden, frightful and his life would have changed in minutes. How easy it would have been for Jospeh to be in resentment r anger but that didn’t happen to Jospeh, the bible doesn’t record that. We read nothing about Jospeh seething in anger or in resentment but we see that he accepted his lot and rested in the sovereignty of God. How do we respond? Do we see our adversity as an impediment? Or do we see it as an opportunity to rest in God’s sovereignty? We need to see when we respond, we know that God is sovereign and our suffering doesn’t have to be in vain. He meets us with the grace we need, the strength we need, He is the God of hope and restoration. In the obscurity of your trials, you can hold on to the truth of knowing that God knows and He is sovereign and aware and He cares and is powerful and He will bring about the best purposes. Let’s pray together, Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can learn from Jospeh’s life. Help us to respond in a way that gives us the faith to trust in your sovereignty knowing that you are aware, that you care for us and you know the beginning from the end. May we stand in worship to you even as we wait for your love over us, in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

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