Excuse Me - Can You Help Me Lose My Life?

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. - Luke 9:24

Anyone who knows me knows that, for me, the person of Joseph found in the Old Testament is similar to my experience with the movie Groundhog Day. I get something new and fresh and alive each time I read about or listen to his story.

Joseph was the son of Jacob, and the youngest. He caused his older brothers, who were many, immense consternation because God had given him a gift. Joseph had dreams. The dreams were focused on Joseph, what was in his future and how it related to his brothers.

Unfortunately, they really were not the kind of things you want to tell a bunch of hostile brothers. Ultimately those dreams got Joseph a one-way ticket out of Dodge (er...for Joseph this would be his home in Canaan) compliments of said brothers. Thus began an exciting adventure in the life of Joseph.

However, when the time came for God to fulfill Joseph's dreams, Joseph himself had virtually no interest at all in it. Jesus said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it" - Luke 9:24. If you ever get the chance read chapters 37-50 of Genesis. One message you will get from it is this: God wants to teach us a different set of values so that the kind of thing we start out wanting becomes secondary. Joseph seems originally focused on position and power over his brothers. God has something in mind for us that is far greater than the interest we began with.

Ultimately Joseph's day of exaltation arrives. Through the entire disaster that had become Joseph’s life a very real humiliation had taken place in his life. You see in the in-between from the time of God’s promise to him and its realization Joseph had experienced being sold by his brothers into slavery, and then dragged off to Egypt. As if that wasn’t bad enough later he is falsely accused and cast into prison.

Then came a different situation. Joseph had a triumph and was given power and position. It was a kind he really never asked for nor, at this point, anticipated. He doesn’t appear interested. He watches as the Pharaoh takes the ring of power off his own finger (think of Green Lantern and Power Ring) and puts it on Joseph's finger.

Joseph never asked for that. In all honesty all Joe wanted was to go home. He longed to go back to Canaan and his family, his life. This would suffice for any dream of power, esteem and position; as if to say, “Just let me take my position amongst my brothers O God!”

But no, instead we find an extraordinary incongruity: a humiliation (as in I am humiliated and now in a place to trust my God) in the heart of vindication (as in Joseph should never have been treated this poorly for 20 years of his life.)

Joseph would experience a triumph that was the opposite of everything he, himself, could have envisaged. Joseph wanted to go home, but a one-way ticket to Canaan wasn't available. Before he knew it, he had Egypt in his hip pocket. He had never prayed for that. But God wanted Egypt. What God wanted is what Joseph got. What does God want from you? What land are you to occupy? Is it physical? Is it amongst a people? Is it in a job? What is it that God wishes you to occupy that you really don’t care that much about but with which you have God’s favor?


Joseph was given something that he could be trusted with because it didn't mean that much to him. In the reality that comes from above God is calling and it is in this my loved ones we find the biggest and most significant love we could ever imagine. I am trusting and obeying…or really trying to…

I remain…

InHISgrip,
~J~