Lifes Little Detours Pt. 4 Know Who You Are

byjmutisy5

933 followers

8 years ago

As already observed, Joseph’s family was dysfunctional. He was also hated by his brothers who sold him into slavery and declared him dead. He was accused of attempted rape, yet he never gave up. With all these things, he never became bitter because at the age of seventeen, he had a dream (Gen 37:5) and it was that dream that sustained him. He knew who he was.

God had given him a dream and that dream sustained him and defined his identity. Soren Kierkgaard once said, “What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, what I am to know . . . the thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do . . . to find the idea for which I can live and die.” Do you have a dream? Is it sustaining you? Are sustaining it? Some people’s dreams are stifled by other people’s view of them. When I was born, my mother gave me the name whose literal meaning was “a sufferer,” because she had suffered during her pregnancy, but I refused the name at the age of five. I could not stand being called “the sufferer” and I did not want that to define who I was.

When I became a Christian, my utmost desire was to know who I was and find a reason for existence. I studied my family of origin by asking my mother a lot of questions to understand why I was the way I was. It was my conviction, and it still is, that unless I understand myself and where I am, I cannot design a course of action for myself that will take me to my destiny.

Joseph’s circumstances, in slavery and in jail, did not pull him down. He did not even dwell on his sorrows; instead, he rose above his circumstances. When he was sold as a slave, he became the best slave. When he was put in prison, he became the best prisoner. He did not just lie on his back and float. He trusted God, knelt down and prayed. He could have chosen to sit and mourn his circumstances but he did not. He followed the popular principle, “If the house is dark, don’t curse the darkness, light a candle.” He saw challenges and trials as a ladder to help him go up. Like the story of the girl who was going up a stony hill with her young brother. The young brother was trailing behind her crying. The girl asked the brother why he was crying, he said, “the stones are hurting my toes.” The girl responded, “We do not kick against the stones, we step on them.” As we go up the hilly road of life pursuing our dreams, we are not to kick against the stones; we are to step on them. Paul knew the same principle when he wrote, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:12-14).

The story is taught of a mother and her daughter who went Christmas shopping. They kept on hopping from store to store. The mother became cranky. As they walked out of one store, the mother asked the daughter, “Did you see the nasty look that salesman gave me?” The daughter answered, “He did not give it to you. You had it when you went in.” The mother was not able to rise above her circumstances. You want to pursue your dream? You must rise above your circumstances. You cannot allow your life to be determined by what people say or think. You have to rise above it. The best way to rise above your circumstances is to control your attitude. John C. Maxwell writing on attitude states: “We cannot choose how many years we will live, but we can choose how much life those years will have. We cannot control the beauty of our face, but we can control the expression on it. We cannot control life’s difficult moments, but we can choose to make life less difficult. We cannot control negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds. Too often we try to choose to control things we cannot. Too seldom we choose to control what we can . . . our attitude. . . . God chooses what we go through; we choose how we go through it.”

Neither the sorrows of yester-years nor the challenges of the present should determine our destiny. We should live above our circumstances, forgetting what has happened in our past, not allowing the circumstances of the present to hold us but focusing on the future where our dream is situated.

The challenges of this life can make us utterly hopeless if we focus on the troubles of the moment. But if we focus on our drams and the potential future they hold for us, they will sustain us. In this life there will be trouble, pain, suffering, failure, disappointment, heartache and loss, but such are temporary. We should never take Ed Norton’s advice that when our boat is upset, we lie down and float. Clearly Joseph would have disagreed with Ed Norton and I disagree with him too. For Joseph when the tides of life turned against him, and the current upset his boat, he did not waste his tears on what might have been and he did not lie on his back and float he focused on his dream. He pursued it until it became a reality. Although his circumstances kept on changing, his dream did not change. Being a slave or being in prison did not erase it. He faced his challenges and made his dream a reality. Do you have a dream? Is it worth pursuing? If the answer to these two questions is yes, then that dream can sustain you in spite of your circumstances. All you need is to focus.