If you’re wondering whether God is with you, step back and look again

By Dean Collins

I think it is normal sometimes to think, If the Lord is with us, loves us, and has a plan for us, shouldn’t things be a little easier? It is sometimes hard to continue with what we assume to be God’s plan when we keep bumping into setbacks, opposition, and hardships.

While I don’t think God ever wishes harm on us, I do believe the lens we use to see God’s plan is much narrower than God’s view at any and every particular moment. Maybe that narrow gate Jesus promised contributes to our narrower view.

God was with him?

Take the story of Joseph as Exhibit A. I have read the Joesph story at least 50 times. I’ve preached sermons from it. I did a first-person dramatization of Joseph several times in my late teens and early twenties. I have heard many sermons and written a few devotionals on these chapters from Genesis. But today one verse jumped out at me. “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master.” What struck me today was the placement of the verse.

The first mention of God being with Joseph was after the second time he had been sold as a slave. Genesis wasn’t written by Joseph, so we know this wasn’t Joseph’s autobiography. I wonder where Joseph would have chosen to use this line about the Lord being with him? And I think we need to ponder the question about how God works. Doesn’t it seem like God should have been “with him” after the first time he was sold as a slave? Or better, when he was captured and thrown into a pit by his brothers? Or maybe the Lord should have been with him and prevented him from sharing all of his adolescent dreams that showed his older brothers and his parents bowing down to him?

And what about after he was owned by Potiphar? Was God with him when he was seduced by Potiphar’s wife? And when he was lied about and angrily placed in prison? Which, by the way, is the next time we read about God being with Joseph:

“But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison.”

God shows up

I don’t know about you, but I would rather not be placed in prison. But the Joseph story suggests that God shows up in some dark and difficult situations. And it shows that his being with us will not necessarily prevent hard things and even unjust situations from happening. This is probably a good moment to add that Jesus did mention a narrow gate and that we are traveling on a hard way that leads to life.

If we broaden our view of Joseph’s experiences, I think we can conclude that God was with Joseph and all of his brothers because they were all subject to the promises God gave Abraham, Issac, and their father, Jacob. God’s favor and his presence with us are promised many places in Scripture.

God will provide

As followers of Jesus, we will experience setbacks, suffer loss, go through grief, and sometimes be treated unjustly by others. We know that what was meant for harm God used for good in the Joseph story. If you pay attention to the details, you see many examples of a wide range of faulty thinking and of strong emotions by both Joseph and his family. We are subject to all of the same on our journey. Not everything we think will happen will happen. The reasons for hard things may or may not be what we think. Our emotions will go up and down. And God will still be with us, just as he was with Joseph.

When someone we hoped would come through for us doesn’t, as was the case with the wine taster in this story, God still knows our needs and will still provide.

The next time one of us thinks God may have forgotten his promise to be with us, maybe the best thing we could do is to zoom out to a broader perspective. Consider the view that many of the psalms provide. Often in the psalms we will discover that even though we feel as though everything is horrible or lost, that is not the case. As the psalmist widens his view to take in God’s nighttime sky, the sun and the moon remind him that God is his shepherd. He sees more of God’s glory. When we experience God’s glory, our view is widened and we are strengthened to walk through the narrow gate and continue on the hard road that leads to life.

Your time with God’s Word
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭39:2‬, 6-7, 11-13, 19-23‭; 40:1-4, 14-15, 23; 41:1, 9, 14-16, 34-36, 38-44; Psalm 16:1-11; ‭19:1-3, 7-11 ESV‬‬

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

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