He turned to me and heard my cry
Imagine being thrown into a
pit without doing one thing to deserve it. This is not a pit of sin,
but of innocence, the kind most of us never consider and usually don’t
see coming. You must be thinking you can only be in a pit if you put yourself
there. Contraire, you can wind up in a pit faster than you can see what or worse
who put you there. In
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So when Joseph came to his
brothers, they stripped him of his robe-- the richly ornamented robe he was
wearing--
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and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was
empty; there was no water in it.
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As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of
Ishmaelites coming from
26
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Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him;
after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood." His brothers
agreed.
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So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out
of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who
took him to Egypt.
Today, the ways we can get
thrown into a pit are as wide-ranged as the scattered nations.
v
Melissa finding out she had cancer
v
Deborah’s loss of a daughter 9
hours after birth due to anencephaly
v
We all just experienced the loss of
a brother in the faith who was violently gunned down in a parking lot
v
v
Janet burying a grown son Jim after
drowning
v
Deanna’s
husband let after years of marriage
v
Tammi’s husband falls from a
ladder and shatters both wrists
in a instant
v
Donna and Kay losing a young
sibling in a farm accident
v
Like you……
Every person here, every
account, happened to real live people with flesh and blood. Bodies that bruise,
scar, and feel pain. Many people around us have suffered and may still be
suffering from a situation they did not bring upon themselves. The N
It is possible to experience
a jolt such as these without descending in a pit, but the chances of enduring
such horrors for at least a short period of time may be about as good as Joseph
gripping the edges of that cistern and resisting his brother’s shove.
Some of us have
experienced a pit before,
well before Joseph’s young age of 17. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, mental
abuse, neglect or an overly dominating and controlling parent is not unheard of.
I know of more than one believer who as a child or young lady experienced
foster care or grew up in an unstable home.
These can all be complicated
to deal with emotionally or spiritually. For starters, when someone throws you
in a pit there’s obviously someone to blame and if there isn’t someone then
there’s always yourself.
Starting in a pit of
innocence can quickly turn to bitterness and rearrange itself to actually become
a pit of sin. It’s easy to think that forgiving a pit thrower will make what
happened all right. Be sure that it does not and never will make it excusable or
okay. You can however be sure that forgiving will make you
okay.
Our grudges only further
entangle and enmesh us with the person or circumstance that we won’t forgive.
Even hanging onto bitterness over a physical disease has real consequences and
never promotes health or healing. Sometimes the very thing we don’t want to
think about ends up with us everywhere we go and for way too
long. We become “subject to” these things through our unforgiveness.
Do you want to be “subject to” your circumstance?
You can never use your own
violation or circumstance more dramatically than when you agree with Yahweh and
start forgiving. Forgiveness was the force behind Yahshua’s death and
resurrection. Forgiveness is power. It’s your right as a child of Yahweh, take
it and wield??
it. Start today and confirm it tomorrow. Don’t
let anyone make you think that forgiveness is a covenant with weakness. Nothing,
absolutely nothing, demands more elbow grease than thrusting your arms upward
and giving Yahweh the solitary right to vengeance.
Satan no doubt enjoys his
job as the accuser because it’s so rewarding.
For example, a woman who is
raped may be tormented of times when she wasn’t innocent in her physical
relationships in the past therefore she must have asked to be raped. Wrong.
A woman left suddenly by her
husband may feel if she had pleased him more sexually or hadn’t nagged him he
wouldn’t be gone. Well, maybe she deserved to go through counseling but, not
cheated on and divorced.
Often kids take on extreme
guilt because they are certain their
parent’s
divorce was their
fault. They should have listened more,
cleaned their
room more, not fought with a sibling so much,
etc. Look at what they’ve caused. This world is so desensitized by
divorce that parents for the sake of not feeling guilty about their decision
never ask their kids how they feel about the situation. Most never even care
about the repercussions their actions will have on the ones they love. Quickly
look at Malachi 2:16, "For Yahweh Elohim of
You can be in a pit of
innocence even if you haven’t been so innocent. Only the smallest child is
innocent in all. Joseph wasn’t even innocent. If you ask me Joseph knew he
would ruffle his brothers feather’s that day by wearing that no doubt nicer
than any coat his brother’s had ever owned out to check on them that day in
the fields. Even a seventeen year old has the sense to know he’s bragging and
someone’s going to get jealous.
Still, Joseph did not
deserve that pit.
So the question I pose is
not, “have you done anything wrong?” but rather “have you done the wrong
the fits the pit?” If so, we all have, we’ll discuss that in a future issue.
One of the most complicated
places we go is to blame Yahweh. The problem with blaming Yahweh is that it
charges Him
with wrongdoing. We as humans are incapable of understanding His ways at times
but rest assured by these scriptures that He
is all good and wise.
1 John 1:5 says,
“
Yahweh is light and in Him is no darkness
at all. “
Romans 8:28 says,
“ And
we know that all things work together
for good to those who love Yahweh, to those who are the called according to His
purpose.
Satan
knows that talking us into distrusting Yahweh keeps us broken and ineffective.”
Somewhere along the line
Joseph decided to look up. His decision to view Yahweh as entirely sovereign and
ultimately responsible was not the death of Joseph, but rather the life. Listen
to Joseph’s approach to the very ones
that tried to kill him.
Joseph
said to them, "Do not be afraid, for am
I in the place of Yahweh?
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"But as for you, you meant evil against me; but Yahweh meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it
is this day, to save many people alive.
Had
Joseph’s circumstance not had a glorious purpose it would have been disarmed.
You can reap negative
consequences for years and add insult to injury by piling all manner of sin onto
your victimization. Yahweh knows the plans He
has for you. Jeremiah
29:11 says,
”For
I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says Yahweh, thoughts of peace and
not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
The
things that have happened to you can be used every day, whether or not you speak
of it. They are part of who you are, who Yahweh has made you. Consider that you
might be much neater healed than you would have been well!
Your
wealth of experiences makes you rich, spend it on hurt people.
Yahweh can use any tragedy.
You don’t have to be in the ministry full time to touch someone in your
neighborhood, at a ladies’
retreat, at a feast, or a stranger. People are dying to know there’s an
Elohim, and that He’s
for them and not against them. There is no telling what the enemy has wanted to
use against you and me, but in each of our lives Yahweh has allowed only what
after much thought and deliberation could be used for His good.
Should you be willing to
leave a legacy of faith, some of those lives you help will grace this earth
after you’re gone. Lives needing the kind of help you can give surround you
right now. Each one of them is worth the work.
You’ve been through your
stuff; I’ve been through mine. In one way or another, each of us has been
thrown into a pit. Most of us can rationalize staying angry, bitter, fearful, or
insecure for the rest of our lives. Be careful others don’t give you
permission to stay in your pit and don’t invite others into your pit.
Let this sink in, if Yahweh allowed you to be thrown into a pit, you weren’t picked on; you were picked out. Yahweh entrusted suffering to you because He had faith in you. Live it up. All the way!