Part 2: Joseph's Story - "Into the Trials" (Genesis 37:3–36)
Sermon Summary
Genesis 37 opens the door to a story that is both familiar and deeply unsettling. Joseph’s life, often romanticized in childhood retellings, actually begins in a family marked by dysfunction, favoritism, and rivalry. Jacob’s open preference for Joseph, the son of his beloved Rachel, sets the stage for division and jealousy among the brothers. Joseph himself, far from being a model of humility, displays youthful arrogance—boasting about his dreams and acting as the family informant. If God had elevated Joseph to leadership at this stage, he would have been ill-equipped, lacking the maturity and character needed to steward such responsibility.
Yet, the story takes a dark turn as Joseph’s brothers, driven by envy, plot to kill him. Instead, they sell him into slavery and deceive their father with a bloodied robe. The pain Joseph experiences is not the result of distant enemies, but of those closest to him—his own family. This is a sobering reminder that some of our deepest wounds come from those we expect to love us most. In the pit, stripped of his security and future, Joseph is utterly alone. But even in this hidden, painful place, God is not absent.
God does not author the evil in Joseph’s story—He does not cause the betrayal or the injustice. But He allows it, and in His sovereignty, He redeems it. God weaves even the broken threads of human sin and suffering into His larger tapestry of redemption. This is not to say that wrong becomes right, or that pain is trivialized. Rather, God’s faithfulness is such that He can bring good out of what was meant for harm. Joseph’s journey from the pit to the palace is not a story of instant triumph, but of God’s quiet, persistent presence in the unknown.
This pattern is echoed throughout Scripture, culminating in the story of Jesus, who was betrayed and crucified by human hands, yet whose suffering became the means of salvation for many. When life unravels and the future is uncertain, the call is not to understand every step, but to trust God’s heart and take the next right step. Weakness and uncertainty become the very places where God’s strength is revealed. The invitation is to obedience in the present, trusting that God is working—even when we cannot see it.
Key Takeaways
1. God’s Work Begins in Messy PlacesGod often initiates His greatest work in the midst of dysfunction, pain, and hiddenness. Joseph’s story begins not in a place of strength or clarity, but in a family torn by favoritism and rivalry. This reminds us that God is not limited by our broken beginnings; He meets us in the mess and starts His redemptive work there. [06:21]
2. God Does Not Author Evil, But He Redeems ItWhile God does not cause the jealousy, betrayal, or injustice in Joseph’s life, He allows these things and ultimately weaves them into His purposes. This does not excuse sin or minimize suffering, but it magnifies God’s ability to bring good out of evil. Our pain and the wrongs done to us are not wasted in God’s hands. [18:33]
3. The Deepest Wounds Often Come from Those Closest to UsJoseph’s greatest betrayal came not from enemies, but from his own brothers. Many of us know the pain of being wounded by those we love. Yet, even in these moments of profound loss and isolation, God’s presence is steadfast, and He is able to use even these wounds as part of His redemptive plan. [19:47]
4. Weakness and Dependence Are the Soil of Spiritual GrowthJoseph’s journey is marked by repeated setbacks and losses, each one stripping away his self-sufficiency. It is in these places of weakness that he—and we—learn to lean harder on God. Spiritual strength is not found in self-reliance, but in deeper dependence on God’s faithfulness and provision. [26:42]
5. Faithfulness Means Taking the Next Right Step, Not Knowing the Whole PlanGod rarely reveals the entire path ahead. Instead, He calls us to obedience in the present—to do the next right thing, even when the future is unclear. Trusting God in uncertainty is not about having all the answers, but about being faithful with what we know to do today, believing that God is working out His purposes in ways we cannot yet see. [29:30]
Youtube Chapters
[00:00] - Welcome
[02:02] - A Funny Start: Playing Joseph in College
[03:21] - Faith in the Unknown: Series Introduction
[05:13] - The Real Joseph: Messy Family Dynamics
[06:56] - Jacob’s Favoritism and Its Consequences
[08:43] - Joseph’s Dreams and Immaturity
[11:10] - Joseph Sent to His Brothers
[12:29] - Joseph’s Character Flaws
[13:45] - Betrayed and Sold by His Brothers
[18:33] - God’s Hand in the Midst of Sin
[19:47] - Betrayed by Family: Relating to Joseph’s Pain
[21:30] - God Begins Work in Hidden, Painful Places
[22:58] - God Weaves Redemption Through Brokenness
[24:49] - The Larger Redemption Story: From Joseph to Jesus
[26:42] - Weakness as the Place of God’s Strength
[29:30] - Taking the Next Right Step
[33:20] - Trusting God in the Unknown
Bible Study Guide
Bible Reading
Genesis 37:1-36 (ESV) — (Read the full chapter together, focusing on the family dynamics, Joseph’s dreams, his brothers’ betrayal, and Joseph being sold into slavery.)
Acts 2:22-24 (ESV) — “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
Observation Questions
What are some of the signs of dysfunction and favoritism in Joseph’s family as described in Genesis 37? How do these family dynamics set the stage for what happens to Joseph? [[06:21]]
How does Joseph act towards his brothers, and how do his actions and dreams affect their feelings toward him? [[09:19]]
What do Joseph’s brothers do to him, and how do they cover up their actions to their father Jacob? [[16:09]]
According to Acts 2:22-24, who was responsible for Jesus’ death, and how does Peter describe God’s role in what happened?
Interpretation Questions
Why do you think God did not elevate Joseph to a position of leadership when he was still young and immature? What might have happened if Joseph had been given power too soon? [[13:45]]
The sermon says, “God does not author the evil in Joseph’s story—He does not cause the betrayal or the injustice. But He allows it, and in His sovereignty, He redeems it.” What does this mean about God’s character and how He works in the world? [[18:33]]
Joseph’s deepest wounds came from his own family, not from strangers. Why do you think pain from those closest to us can be so difficult to process? [[19:47]]
In Acts 2, Peter says Jesus was “delivered up according to God’s definite plan,” but also that “you crucified and killed him.” How can both human responsibility and God’s sovereignty be true at the same time?
Application Questions
The sermon points out that God often begins His greatest work in messy, hidden, or painful places. Is there a “messy” or painful area in your life right now where you need to trust that God is at work? What would it look like to invite God into that place? [[21:30]]
Have you ever experienced betrayal, hurt, or disappointment from someone close to you, like Joseph did? How did you respond, and what did you learn about God’s presence in that season? [[19:47]]
The story of Joseph shows that God can redeem even the worst situations. Is there a part of your story that you struggle to believe God could use for good? What would it look like to surrender that to Him? [[22:58]]
The sermon says, “Weakness and dependence are the soil of spiritual growth.” In what area of your life do you feel weak or out of control right now? How might God be inviting you to depend on Him more deeply? [[26:42]]
When you face uncertainty or don’t know what the future holds, do you tend to freeze, try to control everything, or something else? What is one “next right step” you sense God is asking you to take this week, even if you don’t know the whole plan? [[29:30]]
The sermon mentions that God doesn’t need your strength, but your dependence and obedience. What is one area where you need to stop striving in your own strength and instead trust and obey God today? [[29:30]]
Think about a time when you saw God bring good out of a painful or unjust situation in your life or someone else’s. How did that experience shape your faith? How can you encourage someone else who is in a “pit” right now? [[24:49]]
TRANSCRIPT
If you haven't already, go ahead and grab whatever copy of the scripture you have with you and open up to Genesis chapter 37. Whether that's an app on your phone or it's a good old-fashioned paper Bible like I have, we're going to be in Genesis chapter 37.
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**The Thespian Story: A Funny Start**
Personal story about playing Joseph in a college musical.
Now, I don't know about you, but I've had moments in my past where I look back and I just have to laugh at myself. If you can't laugh at yourself, can you really say that you know yourself?
One of those moments was back in college. Some of you may not know this, but when I was in college, I was a thespian. If you don't know what a thespian is, it's an actor. I got cast as Joseph in *Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat*. That's me right there. You see right there? That's me. I got cast as Joseph. So, go Joseph! You know what they say, right?
And it's funny. It was exactly as you imagine: way too much fabric, too many songs, and a lot of awkward choreography. At some point, someone snapped this photo of me and put it in a newspaper. Actually, a friend of mine from college sent this to me last year and said, "Dude, I was going through my stuff and look at this. I found this of you."
So anyways, hilarious, right? That's me there. But if you're familiar with the real story of Joseph, you'll know that it's far more dramatic. As we'll see in a second, Joseph's life was actually very messy. It was very unfair, and it was very terrifying. But the constant theme of Joseph's life was this: he had no idea what was coming next.
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**The Next Right Thing: Faith in the Unknown**
Series theme—trusting God in uncertainty, not comfort.
He had no idea. No idea what was coming next. And today we step into week two of our series entitled *The Next Right Thing*. We're really exploring what it looks like to take faithful steps in uncertain situations.
Because here's what I know, and here's what you know: it's not *if* we find ourselves in situations where we don't know what to do, it's *when*. Right? In fact, I would say that most of your adult life is learning how to navigate uncertainty with maturity. Because if you talk with people who are older, the older they get, the more they say, "I don't know anything." Right? It's often like, "Yeah, the older I get, the more I realize I don't know anything."
One of the main things we discovered in our time together last week is that the Bible teaches us that following God into the unknown isn't primarily about shaping our comfort or our success or making life easy.
Now, if you're like, "That's not the kind of church I wanted to sign up for or the kind of Christianity I wanted to be a part of," well, there are some churches where you can go and they'll tell you, "Follow Jesus and it'll be easy, and you'll be prosperous, and you'll get everything that you want." You can go there, but I will guarantee you, you will be sorely disappointed because that's not actually the truth.
Instead, following God into the unknown is more about—listen—following God into the unknown is actually more about God revealing His character, about His plan, about Him showing you what He desires and inviting us to participate in what He wants to accomplish in the world. This is why navigating the unknown is so important.
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**The Real Joseph: A Messy Family**
Exploring the dysfunction of Joseph’s home life and Jacob’s favoritism.
If you couldn't tell from the intro video, we'll be looking at the story of Joseph—one of the clearest examples of what following God into the unknown looks like. In fact, a huge chunk from here on through the end of Genesis is dedicated to telling this story of Joseph.
Now, I don't know how much you know about the story of Joseph, but if his story was told to you like it was told to me as a little kid in Sunday school, there is a natural tendency—like we do in Sunday school when we talk about Bible characters—to picture Joseph as this extraordinary person, born with wisdom and patience and all kinds of courage.
But when you actually read the Bible, when you actually read the text, you'll find that Genesis shows us something a little bit different about this person we call Joseph.
Joseph's story actually begins in a family that is messy. It's competitive and filled with tons and tons of tension. No one here grew up in a family like that, right? Of course, some of you did. And that's where God begins to tell a greater story about how He meets us in the unknown and how you and I can try to follow Him by committing to this simple principle of *the next right thing*. It's the next right thing.
So, Genesis chapter 37, let's look at our text for today and dive in.
Starting at verse 3, it says this:
"Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a robe of many colors for him."
Now, I promise we're not going to go verse by verse all the way to the end of the chapter, but I just need to stop here and say, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Genesis or the story of Joseph, you might be like, "I don't know who that guy is." Well, neither do I—I just made up his name. Joseph. Joseph.
Israel—some of you might not know—is not just a nation, but Israel was actually the new name given to Joseph's father, who was originally named—does anybody know? Jacob. Jacob.
And just like Jacob's mother—if you know the story—Jacob's mother favored him over his brother Esau. We notice that this kind of generational sin, if you would call it that, has now passed on from his mother to Jacob. And so we notice Jacob's favoritism.
Joseph was born to Rachel, who was not just one of Jacob's wives, but as the book of Genesis records in chapter 29, it says this: Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.
So, we see this broken theme of favoritism happening in this story of who Joseph is and where he's come from. This obviously made Joseph a target of envy for his brothers. Many of us can relate to favoritism, and whether we admit it or not, favoritism always causes division. It just does.
Granted, Joseph wasn't exactly helping himself, though. Let's look at how Joseph interacts with his brothers. I think you'll see pretty quickly that Joseph really was the youngest. If you're the youngest here, no shade. It's just true.
Let's look at verse 4:
"When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him."
Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more.
He said to them—well, let's see why they hated him. Listen to this dream I had. I don't know if that's how he sounded, but we're going to go with it. A little bit like Pinocchio.
"This is the dream I had: There we were binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf."
"Are you really going to reign over us?" his brothers asked him. "Are you really going to rule us?"
So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said.
Then he had another dream, of course, and told it to his brothers.
"Look," he said, "I had another dream. This time the sun, moon, and even eleven stars were bowing down to me."
He told his father and his brothers, and his father rebuked him.
"What kind of dream is this that you had?" he said. "Am I, your mother, and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you?"
His brothers were jealous of him.
Now, listen to this: his father kept the matter in his mind.
Some of you know the story of Jacob. Jacob himself had encounters with God in dreams. So though his brothers thought, "This guy's crazy," Jacob knew from experience he couldn't totally discredit what Joseph was saying.
Verse 12:
"His brothers had gone to pasture their father's flock at Shechem. Israel said to Joseph, 'Your brothers, you know, are pasturing the flocks at Shechem. Get ready. I'm sending you to them.'"
I can just see him like, "Yes, Father."
Then Israel said to him, "Go and see how your brothers and the flock are doing and bring word back to me."
So he sent him from Hebron Valley, and he went to Shechem.
A man found him there wandering in the field and asked him, "What are you looking for?"
Can you just see it? "Where's my brothers at?" The guy's like, "Alright, you sick little puppy, you're lost, right? Can I help you?"
Joseph said, "I'm looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are pasturing their flocks?"
"Oh, they moved on from here," the man said. "I heard them say, 'Let's go to Dothan.'"
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.
Then they saw him in the distance.
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Oh, let's stop there real quick.
For those familiar with Joseph's story, you'll know that eventually Joseph becomes one of the most powerful leaders in Egypt. You know this. In fact, he becomes second to Pharaoh. He gets a title akin to prime minister or sometimes ambassador.
But if all we knew about Joseph was what we just read, nobody would be cheering for Joseph.
What have we learned about Joseph so far? Joseph is somewhat portrayed as a braggart at best. "Look at me, I have these dreams." And at worst, someone who is willing to talk down to his brothers.
At worst, he believed his dreams and instead of keeping it to himself and letting God work out this dream in his life, he was like, "Ah, my brothers need to recognize they're going to be bowing to me one day because God told me."
At worst, he was willing to talk down to his brothers.
Based on the interaction with his father, it also seems that one of Joseph's roles was to be the family snitch—go check and see what your brothers are up to.
This is Joseph.
Now, let me ask you a question: what kind of leader is a person who is a braggart, willing to talk down to people, and is a chronic tattletale?
Some of you are like, "Oh, that's my boss at work." No, no, no. No.
What kind of leader is that? Not a very good one.
This is important because if Joseph had become the leader God would eventually allow him to be at this point in the story, he would have been an absolutely terrible leader. He would have been someone who destroyed people's lives rather than someone who eventually would be the one who saves the lives of an entire nation.
So it kind of makes sense why Joseph's brothers do what they do next.
If you come from a family with multiple siblings, you probably had the same thought about the younger sibling and maybe seemingly favorite of the family.
What would you do? Hopefully, you didn't do this, but here's what they did.
Verse 18:
"They saw him in the distance, and before he had reached them, they plotted to kill him. They said to one another, 'Oh, look. Here comes that dream expert.'"
Okay, so unlike Christina, they were able to come up with names for people.
"Come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of the pits. We can say that a vicious animal ate him, and then we'll see what becomes of his dreams."
Oh my goodness. These guys are really... wow.
When Reuben heard this, he tried to save him.
Guess where Reuben sits in the family birth order? Who's the one that's always trying to do the right thing?
Yeah. You don't even need to know the Bible to know Reuben's probably the oldest. Yes, he is the oldest.
So when Reuben heard this, he tried to save him.
He said, "Hey, let's not take his life."
Reuben also said to them, "Don't shed blood here. Throw him into this pit in the wilderness, but don't lay a hand on him."
Intending to rescue him from them and return him to his father.
So that's what he wanted to do—the right thing.
When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped off Joseph's robe—the robe of many colors that he had on.
Then they took him and threw him into the pit.
The pit was empty without water.
I think that was a good point to say, "Okay, they threw him into the pit. It was a cistern. Don't worry, he wasn't going to drown. It was dry."
So they sat down to eat a meal.
When they looked up, there was a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.
Their camels were carrying aromatic gum, balsam, and resin, going down to Egypt.
Judah said to his brothers, "What do we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come on, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay a hand on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh."
His brothers agreed.
When Midianite traders passed by, his brothers pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took Joseph to Egypt.
When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes.
So somewhere we're missing it. It's not a very good storyteller.
They should have told him, "Oh, so Reuben went off. He told them what they should do."
Then Judah, the other brother, decided to be the spokesperson.
He said, "Okay, Reuben's not here. Here's what we're going to do."
Reuben comes back and sees what happened.
He was going to save him, and what did he do? He tore his clothes, which was a sign of anguish during this time.
He went back to his brothers and said, "The boy is gone. What am I going to do?"
So they took Joseph's robe, slaughtered a male goat, and dipped the robe in its blood.
They sent the robe of many colors to the father and said, "We found this random coat of many colors. We don't know what it is."
How many coats of many colors are probably hanging around there? No, they knew what they were doing.
But they tried to deceive their father, which, by the way, is what their father did to his father, if you know the story.
"Examine this. Is it your son's robe or not? I'm not sure."
His father recognized it.
He said, "A vicious animal has devoured him. Joseph has been torn to pieces."
Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth around his waist, and mourned for his son many days.
All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted.
"No," he said, "I will go down to Sheol to my son mourning."
His father wept for him.
Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards.
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Now, for some of you, that's more scripture than you've read in a whole year at once. But that's okay.
Here's a great thing:
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**God’s Hand in the Midst of Sin**
God doesn’t cause evil, but He allows it and redeems it.
Here's an essential thing we need to remember about this story: God isn't the author of the path for Joseph. He's not the author of the jealousy, the betrayal, or the injustice.
But God allows it.
And then, as we'll find out in the end, He redeems it.
God weaves even the broken parts of Joseph's story into His purpose—not because He approves of sin, but because God is faithful to His plan, and He's powerful enough to redeem what's been ruined.
When we see what happens next—Joseph is thrown into a pit, sold as a slave, betrayed by his own brothers—it's painful to read. I don't know if it is for you, but it's painful to read.
You can almost feel the weight of the betrayal. They're doing this to their own flesh and blood.
Joseph's world collapsed. Everything he thought he knew—his home, his security, his future—it was gone.
What's tragic is that it's not the attack of enemies that puts him there. It's his own family.
I don't know about you, maybe you've experienced something like that. Maybe not being sold into slavery, but being betrayed or wounded by someone close to you, someone who was supposed to love you like family.
That's where Joseph finds himself. He's completely alone in a foreign land.
But if you read the story, you'll know this: Is God absent? No, God is not absent.
We'll see in the coming chapters that God's presence follows Joseph through every stage, every season of his life—through the pit, through Potiphar's house, through false accusation, through prison, and eventually in Pharaoh's palace.
But that doesn't make what happened right.
The end doesn't justify the means.
You need to know this: nowhere in scripture does it say that God is the author of evil.
Some people think, "Oh, God is so good. How come He made these things happen?"
No. God is not the author of evil.
But He is the master—listen—of redemption.
He's the master of taking things that man meant for evil, that the evil one meant for harm, and turning it for good.
He's the only one who can take human sin.
By the way, He's the only one who can take sin, jealousy, betrayal, and turn it into something that actually saves lives.
And that's the bigger story Genesis wants us to see—not just how Joseph survived the unknown, but how God worked through the unknown to accomplish His purposes.
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**Hidden Painful Places**
God often begins His work in hidden, painful moments.
Here's a truth that's easier to put on screen as a preaching point than to actually believe as good news for your own life:
God often begins His work in hidden, painful places.
If you didn't know that, this is a constant theme in scripture.
God often begins His work in hidden, painful places.
It was in a tiny little town of Bethlehem, through the birth of a virgin, that God began His work.
It was the agony in the garden of Gethsemane with just a few disciples—just about twelve of them, well, eleven.
It was in a hidden and painful place, but not for long, because someone would show up.
What looks like disaster—the pit, betrayal, the loss—is actually the start of a process God is using to prepare Joseph for something greater.
Joseph's story demonstrates a consistent principle you'll find all throughout scripture, which is this:
God works through human sin without approving it.
He works through brokenness without saying, "Yeah, that brokenness is okay."
He works through pain and suffering without making you say that was okay.
It's okay to say broken things are broken.
Wrong is wrong.
But God is the redeemer of injustice, redeemer of sin.
Joseph's brothers' jealousy and deceit were evil, but God was still at work quietly weaving His plans into the fabric of the events of Joseph's life.
You have to read the rest of Genesis to know this, but eventually those very trials become the means through which Joseph rises in Egypt.
And guess what? He preserves the lives of the family members who initially sought to kill him.
Think about that.
God's sovereignty does not override human choice, but He can redeem even our mistakes, the mistakes of others, and the brokenness of this world.
As one Bible scholar notes in his commentary on this passage, he says this:
"God was not at all absent when Joseph was thrown into the cistern and sold. He was using the sinful motives and actions of the brothers to begin a process that would lead to the rescue of the family of God from the effects of a devastating famine."
God can use the difficulties and pain of life to accomplish His purposes through you and for you.
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**The Larger Redemption Story**
From Joseph to Jesus—God’s master plan of redemption.
Of course, Joseph isn't the only person who embodied this principle. You know this.
And he definitely wasn't the best example.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus, when he was called to preach in front of thousands of people on the day of Pentecost—which many people refer to as the birth of the New Testament church—said this in Acts chapter 2:
"Fellow Israelites, listen to these words. This Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God with miracles, wonders, and signs that God did among you through him. Just as you yourselves know, though he was delivered up according to God's determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail him to a cross and kill him.
God raised him up, ending the pains of death because it was not possible for him to be held by death."
When you and I face seasons that don't make sense, when life feels like the bottom has fallen out, it's easy to think that God has abandoned us.
But what we see in Joseph's story is that God is still working even when we can't see it.
This is where I love the words of renowned Bible scholar and theologian James Packer, who wrote this:
"Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow."
It's almost like there's an upside-down economy to the kingdom of God.
The harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.
That's a story from Joseph: weakness can become the place where God's strength is revealed.
Every time Joseph faced another setback, another betrayal, another loss, he had to lean into what it meant to take the right next step—not to fix everything, not to control the outcomes.
Some of you know, we don't have time to go into the whole story, but he just had to trust and obey in the moments that God gave him to obey.
I think the same is true for us.
We may not get to see how the pit connects to the palace or how injustice connects to redemption, but God does.
When we can't see God's hand, we can still trust God's heart.
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And so maybe today your unknown looks like pain, looks like injustice.
Maybe your pain looks like suffering at the sin of others.
Maybe pain looks like a diagnosis you didn't expect.
Or it's a relationship that's fallen apart.
Or maybe you're just trying to figure out what the next season of your life looks like.
And it just seems like all the attention you need to figure out the next step is being clouded by trial after trial after tribulation after tribulation.
It feels like you just can't get a break.
Whatever it is, here's what Joseph's story reminds us:
You don't need to know the whole plan to just take the next right step, to do the next right thing.
Listen, God doesn't need your strength. He doesn't need you to be strong in this moment.
I think there are times for courage. There are times to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just get on with it.
But sometimes God doesn't need you to be stronger.
He just needs you to be more dependent.
And He needs you just to be obedient.
What's the next right thing that God is calling you to?
Because here's the thing: we confuse what God ultimately wants to do for us with what is the next right thing.
In other words, we get so obsessed like, "God, what do you want to do with my life? What do you want to do with my life?"—like this big goal.
But yet we fail to realize that there are things we know God wants us to do right now.
Things that we know.
I often tell the story when I was pastoring in Florida, and we were at a juncture in our life.
We didn't know what to do, and it felt like God was leading us maybe away.
But we loved the church we were part of, and it just felt like God had called us there.
The advice of an older, wiser Christian was, "You know what you should probably do when you don't know what to do? You should just figure out what it is that God wants you to do."
So what we did was we found a babysitter, and this same person who gave us advice got us a little hotel room so we could do a little retreat.
We got a pad of paper, opened up our Bibles, and just said, "What is it that we know God wants us to do?"
We wrote down verses like Matthew 28:19-20: "Go into all the world..."
We said, "Okay, God wants us to be witnesses. He wants us to..."
We opened up verses like Jesus's Sermon on the Mount: "Bless our enemies. Be good to them."
So God wants to use us to be good.
We figured out all these different things, and we asked, "What are the things we know God wants from us? Things we already know."
It had nothing to do with whether we should move.
Then the advice he gave after that was, "Once you figure out what you know God wants you to do, then here's what you do: you hold up that list and then you go—based on what we know God wants us to do—does that look like the same path you're on, or does it look like something different?"
That helped us a lot.
As we stepped into doing the next right things, as we sought to discern whether our environment helped us accomplish what God wants us to do or not, it actually answered some of those questions.
I don't know if that helps. That's not even in my notes, but I felt like I should share it.
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The next right thing is a concept I've hung on to for many years as your pastor, even as we've gone through what we've gone through as a church.
That is what has kept me probably sane through all of that.
Instead of trying to figure out what it's going to look like, what we're going to do, how we're going to survive something, I don't know.
Thank the Lord, through stories like this and mentors who come alongside me, I've heard, "You don't need to figure out what you ultimately need to do. Sometimes you just need to concentrate on what is the next right thing."
What is the next right thing?
So what is the next right thing for you?
Maybe it's just trust.
Because even in weakness, God is working out His good purposes in ways you can't see.
Listen, believer, God is working here.
He is working—even if you can't see it.
Maybe that's exactly what He's doing in your life right now.
Do you believe it?
So take the next right step.
Obey Him.
Find it and trust in Him.
