Devotional by Rory Larsen

The Bible clearly states that the stories and people written about in the Old Testament were given to us for our instruction and learnings. (1 Cor. 10:11, Romans 15:4) The story of one such person stands out above the rest in the story of Joseph.  I would like to go beyond our Sunday School version of events and really try to understand what this man’s story can mean to me in my walk with Jesus.

Let’s get real with it.  Joseph was a real man who experienced such depth of betrayal over an extended period of time in his life, to the point that he must have even felt deserted by God at times.  He had the promises of a bright future, unsolicited dreams of promise from God, he had his fathers “favorite” child status.  Yet in the prime of his life, he was betrayed by those who were supposed to care for him the most and his brothers threw him in a pit, as they debated on whether to kill him or not.  They ultimately sold him into slavery whereby he was cast away forever from the people who were supposed to love and care for him the most.  

Joseph was roughly 17 years of age at the time, and he spent the next 13-YEARS or so in captivity.  His time in Egypt started out pretty good as far as being a slave goes.  Yet in time, he was accused of a crime he didn’t commit and thrown into a dungeon where he spent a good part of his life shackled to a stake and the promises of God.

Think about that for a moment.  Here is a boy, given dreams of a future rulership by none other than God himself and this same boy now finds himself imprisoned with irons around his ankles and a shackle about his soul.  The Bible doesn’t tell us a lot about his extended time in that dark, damp cave.  But we can extrapolate that his confinement, much of it solitary, left him in a place of total introspection.

“Were my dreams really from God?”

“What have I done that God has abandoned me?”

“Is this what the rest of my life is going to consist of?”

His entire existence at this time was not only a shackling of his physical body to irons, but his internal soul was shackled as well.  What was in the heart of God during this time in Joseph’s life?  The Bible says that Joseph’s character was being purged or refined for something greater.  “His feet were bruised by strong shackles, and his soul was held by iron.  God’s promise to Joseph purged his character until it was time for his dreams to come true.  Eventually, the king of Egypt sent for him, setting him free at last”. (Psalms 105:18-20 TPT)

When God gives a man a vision or a dream of a future, many times that same man wants to rush ahead and accomplish those dreams without the partnership of the One who inspired those dreams.  God at times finds it necessary to withhold those promises to refine a man’s character to make him a more suitable vessel for God’s ultimate purposes.  Here is what I know about the withholdings of God.  

In His withholdings…

-He is with you… you are not alone.

-He is holding you… He is your comfort in an uncomfortable place.

-He is withholding you…restraining you both in physical circumstances but also in soulish constraint to purge your character.

That dangling promise that Joseph received from God in his early days served as a mechanism to purge him of flaws that only God could see.  During this dangling of promises that Joseph experienced, two things occurred.  His ankles became bruised from the irons of confinement, a constant reminder that if those God given dreams of promise were ever going to be achieved, God was going to have to perform it.  Secondly, and probably most important, internally his soul was bruised or “made sensitive” by the shackles of restraint and the dangling of God’s promise.