Joseph, A Prisoner of Hope-2

A Page from my Devotional Diary

"Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope,

even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you."

Zechariah 9:12

"If we must be prisoners, then let it be inside the bright walls of hope."

- Greg Bowens

"Joseph is a fruitful bough,

A fruitful bough by a well;

His branches run over the wall."

Genesis 49:22

Joseph belongs to the fourth generation after Abraham. The covenant promise was given successively to three generations: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and now it was Joseph's turn to receive the covenant promise.

The story of Joseph begins in Genesis 30:22-24 where we read: "Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her, and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, 'God has taken away my reproach.' So she called his name Joseph, and said, 'The Lord shall add to me another son.'"

There is something very significant about this event. The birth of his son Joseph signals to Jacob that his season of serving under Laban has come to an end. A new season was about to begin for him (Genesis 30:25).

At the time of Joseph's birth, Jacob had already been serving Laban for fourteen years, seven for his first wife Leah, and another seven for the woman he really loved, Rachel.

Something inside of Jacob senses that the time has come for him to move on. He tells Laban, "For what you had before I came was little, and it has increased to a great amount; the Lord has blessed you since my coming. And now, when shall I also provide for my own house?" (Genesis 30:30)

Jacob serves Laban for six more years. During this time God prospers Jacob in a supernatural way. At the end of twenty years, God tells Jacob specifically, "Return to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you." (Genesis 31:3)

In Jacob's words, the twenty years that he served under Laban had been difficult years. But these years, painful as they may have been, were certainly not in vain, for they served a greater purpose -- the shaping and molding of the character of the man after whom God's special nation will be named.

It is worth noting that as Jacob leaves his past season, and as he is about to enter a new one, God reveals Himself to him in a dramatic way. This life-changing encounter propels Jacob into the next level for which God gives him a new name and a fresh orientation.

With the birth of Joseph, Jacob goes up a higher level of living in God's kingdom agenda. How true it is that God allows the trials in our life to serve a deeper purpose, and this we see in the life of Joseph as well.

Of Jacob’s twelve sons, Joseph, the eleventh one, is destined to carry the covenant promise to the next generation.

Joseph's name literally means, God Will Add, or Joseph-el. This name proves to be a prophetic one, for after the birth of Joseph, God did add so much more to Jacob's life, in keeping with God's covenant promise to him.

Now Jacob loved Joseph more than all his children for being the son of his old age, and for being the first-born of Rachel, the wife that Jacob really loved. For these two reasons Joseph holds a very special place in the patriarch's heart.

At a young age, Joseph is already given a glimpse of his God-given destiny through a series of dreams. But because of these dreams, and the special love showered upon him by his father, Joseph becomes the object of his brothers’ hate and resentment, so much so that they come up with an evil plot to kill him.

However, instead of being killed, he is thrown into a pit, sold to Ishmaelite traders and ends up a slave in the house of Potiphar, a high official under Pharaoh in the land of Egypt.

God's favor is upon Joseph who prospers even as a slave, finding grace in the sight of his Egyptian master. In Genesis 39 we read that not only was Joseph blessed, in fact, from the time that Joseph became the overseer of Potiphar’s house and all that he had, “the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in the field.”

Joseph's inner man is being molded by God's unseen hand. A temptation hurled at Joseph becomes a test of his character, for not only once does the lady of the house attempt to seduce him, but repeatedly. Through it all Joseph remains faithful to Potiphar. But for scorning his master's wife and refusing to commit adultery with her, Joseph finds himself in prison.

The story of Joseph is well-known. He would spend two years in an Egyptian dungeon for a crime he never committed. What a seeming waste of time and giftings and talents! At seventeen Joseph is a promising young lad, the apple of his father's eye, well aware that there is a prophetic destiny in store for him. He ends up as a slave, and even worse, he languishes in a jail he certainly did nothing to deserve.

"But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison." Genesis 39:21

Unknown to Joseph, the prison he was in was designed of God to prepare him for a big promotion ahead of him. Destined to become Egypt's second in command, the man who would eventually lead and save an entire nation, Joseph had to learn how to be a very powerful person without giving in to pride and self-vindication.

In Psalm 105:18-19, we understand how Joseph was able to go through this time of injustice without becoming embittered or losing hope. "They hurt his feet with fetters, he was laid in irons. Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him."

It was the word of the Lord that nourished Joseph's spirit and kept his hope alive. By the time that his prison term had come to an end, Joseph was a completely changed man. Humbled, yet possessing dignity and God's wisdom. Having gone through the crucible, his heart was tested and made pure. From the boastful young lad that he was, Joseph had become a man of honor, fully capable of accepting Phaoraoh's offer to become the second in command of the most powerful nation in the world at that time.

While in prison, Joseph persevered, resulting in the shaping of his character. And as we read the story of his life, we realize that this man became God's agent, not only to save an entire nation from starvation, but also to prepare the way for the fulfillment of God's prophetic destiny for the nation of Israel!

--0--

How easy it is to become embittered and let go of all hope whenever one finds himself confined in a prison of any kind, be it a literal prison, or a psychological, financial, emotional one.

Each day we face the possibility of being deprived of a freedom we have often taken for granted. We read of many biblical instances of men and women being imprisoned for no just cause: Job, John the Baptist, Paul. But even today, or in recent years, we know of men and women who have gone to jail and received treatment so inhumane, we would be led to ask, "Where is God in all this?"

To benefit from any prison that we find ourselves in, the answer remains the same: HOPE. Keep the flower of hope blooming in your heart.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychoanalist, became a prisoner of conscience of the Third Reich. Even in the utter humiliation and degradation of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp, losing all his loved ones including his beloved wife, he was able to retain the most important freedom of all, the freedom to determine one's inner attitude and spiritual well-being. He realized that the choice was his: no one, without his permission, could ever take control of his inner life. That was the last freedom he had, and he held on to it, by tenaciously holding on to hope. (Read Frankl's story in his book Man's Search for Meaning).

Jurgen Moltmann was another prisoner of war, this time in a British camp during World War II. And during his confinement he observed that his fellow prisoners who kept hope alive in their hearts fared the best. This led him to write his now famous book Theology of Hope, where he writes that as Christians we ought not to abandon the hope that the God of promise offers.

Indeed, hope is possible because our God is the God of Promise.

MY STORY:

I was once a prisoner, too. Not literally, nonetheless the confinement was real. Shattered dreams, unmet expectations, broken relationships. Circumstances going in my life that I never hoped for. Nothing that a young woman like me, with a heart full of dreams and aspirations, would expect.

I need not go into too many details here. After all, it isn't the details that matter. But God knows what I am talking about. The disappointment, the pain -- not only for me, but for my parents and my only sister as well....

But it is precisely in this prison where God reveals Himself to me in a life-changing way. "Keep hope alive, my dear daughter," was His message to me. Specifically, this is what He said:

"Therefore, I will allure her,

will bring her into the wilderness

And speak comfort to her.

I will give her her vineyards from there,

And the Valley of Achor (Trouble) as a door of hope;

She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth...."

Hosea 2:14

The singing part is what caught me by surprise. I would hear songs in my heart in the midst of my "imprisonment." That was when I realized that joy is actually the by-product of hope; the song of joy flows from the wellspring of hope. He has put a new song in my mouth.... Psalm 40:3

Just like what happened to Joseph, my time in prison changed me and molded me. Made me see life from the perspective of hope. Gave me a platform from which to speak into the lives of those needing a ray of hope to shine in their lives. Taught me to hunger for things that are eternally significant. Reminded me that as a daughter of the King, nothing happens to me without my Father-King knowing it. I learned what it means to wait creatively ... and in doing so, discovered that the song of joy can be heard in the midst of disappointing circumstances.

Though the learning is far from over, I now understand what it's like to become a prisoner of hope. I don't know Greg Bowens personally, but something in the way he says it strikes home: "If we must be prisoners, then let it be inside the bright walls of hope."

The writer to the Hebrews also expresses this idea so beautifully:

"And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of ... others [who] had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented-- of whom the world was not worthy." (Hebrews 11:32, 36-38)

Of whom the world was not worthy. How I love that passage!

There is another line in the book of Revelation that describes this company of saints: "...and they did not love their lives to the death." (Revelation 12:11)

In the final analysis, it is this kind of prisoners who will see God's redemptive purposes carried out in their lives: those who are ready to go through the dark dungeon with nothing but the fire of hope and the song of joy to keep them alive.

Before his brothers at whose hands Joseph suffered a grave injustice, he sums it all up: "But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good...." (Genesis 50:20)

How awesome the work that God can do in the lives of people who, finding themselves in any kind of prison, choose to keep hope alive, letting the oil of joy flow from their hearts.

Hope is a such a powerful and prophetic message to this dying world, where it is a common, ordinary thing to complain, grumble, and demand for rights at the slightest delay, discomfort, interruption, or injustice.

Why not rather be those who would choose hope, and keep its fire alive in our hearts?

Oh, may we be a company of men and women whose characters are being molded, prisoners of hope singing heaven's song of joy in the midst of this fault-finding generation!

May we be among those who, like Joseph, will one day receive the sure promise of fruitfulness and double restoration!

First published on this weblog on July 23, 2009