LESSONS FROM THE STORY OF JOSEPH

 

                          THE HEALING OF PAINFUL MEMORIES

                                                                 

I’ve based this blog on the story of Joseph and the Israelites in Egypt.

I want to say something; we will never be the Christians that we should be unless we are whole people.

When we came into this world we received the character and nature of our parents. When we are born again we receive the character and nature of Christ.

Everything reproduces after its own kind. Scripture calls it the law of inheritance. Therefore we should portray outwardly the inner quality of the nature of Jesus. Peter says that we have been born again of incorruptible seed and God wants us to be conformed to the image of Jesus according to Romans 8:29. All the potential is in there, it just has to be developed.

So how do I become Christ like? These Scriptures tell us what to do (Eph 4:22-24) ‘You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution, so that you can put on the new self that has been created in the likeness of God

(Phil 2:5) ‘In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus’. (1 Cor 2:16) ‘We are those who have the mind of Christ; (Rom 12:2) ‘Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. If you are Christ like then you will stick out like a sore thumb. Your conversation will be different, your behaviour will be different, you will not be following the flow.

                                    From Believers to Christians

 The big problem that Paul had with the church in Corinth was that they had not grown spiritually, they were still like babies and he could not feed them on the meat of God’s word only the milk, they were just acting and behaving like ordinary people. A Christian is someone who is Christ like in character and nature. These Corinthians were not. They were believers but they weren’t yet Christian. We have many people today calling themselves Christian but unless they are Christ like in character and nature, then they are only believers.

 

So the battlefield is the area of the mind and that’s why the Lord has given us his word, to straighten out our thinking.  What we believe is a result of our thinking. If we think wrong we will believe wrong. If our believing is wrong then what we say will be wrong, for what is filling your heart will come out of your mouth. It’s not too hard to place people in the church, just listen to what they say.

If you had £50,000 in the bank in your name, but you did not know it, you would not be any better off, even though the money was yours. And you would be a liar if you said the money was not yours. The same holds true with regard to spiritual things. If you don't know about the spiritual things that are already yours, they will not do you any good. You will be spiritually impoverished. You have to make them yours — not from a legal standpoint, but from an experiential standpoint. To build a solid faith life, you need to believe and confess daily what God the Father is to you, what Jesus is doing for you now at the right hand of the Father, and what the Holy Spirit is doing in you. So it is not only our thinking, but it is also the words we speak that will either ensnare and hold us in captivity, or else they set us free. It is what we confess with our lips that really dominates our inner being.

So with these thoughts in mind we need to understand that Egypt speaks of the world, we are in the world but we do not belong to the world. The Israelites were in Egypt but they didn’t belong there. They settled there but they weren’t meant to stay there. To get them to move out of Egypt the Lord created hardships for them until they came to their knees then he was able to get their attention. And the Lord may have to do that with some of us, because we can get very comfortable in our surroundings, but the Lord does not want us to be comfortable but to be conformed to his ways and the problem that the Lord has with us is that we don’t like to be disturbed. So with these thoughts in mind I would like to take a look at the story of Joseph and what are the lessons we can learn from him.

 

He had done no wrong and was sold as a slave by his brothers. He was bought by Potifer but the Lord was still with him and everything went well for him, so much so that he became Potifer’s personal attendant and head of his household. He was then accused by Potifer’s wife of something he didn’t do and was put into prison. In the prison the Lord was still with him and he was put in charge of all the prisoners. There he interpreted the dreams of the butler and the baker, Pharaoh’s officials which came to pass. He asked the butler to remember him to Pharaoh which he forgot to do. 2 years later Pharaoh had 2 dreams which nobody could interpret, suddenly the butler remembered and Joseph was taken from the prison, he interpreted the dreams. He was put in charge of the running the whole land and became the Prime Minister of Egypt.

 

When the famine came and Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, their response was that they were dismayed, probably because they knew what they had done to him and they were thinking now it was payback time. But Joseph said, you thought this was all for evil but you were only instruments in the hand of God, he used you, He allowed this to happen to me so that I could prepare a place of safety for you.

 

So after all that Joseph had been through we read in (Gen 41:51-52) Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh, "For God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house." The second he named Ephraim, "For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes."

 

Forget does not mean to blank out; the word for forget means to remit both in Hebrew and in the Greek.......Jesus said whose sins you remit etc. In other words we can hold people in bondage if we don’t become a peacemaker. What is a peacemaker? A peacemaker is someone who takes accountability for whatever happened in somebody else’s life even though they might not have been responsible. If Christ had not taken responsibility for our sins on that cross we would never have come to him. We were the guilty ones but He took the blame for us. Through Jesus, God reconciled the world to himself by making peace through the blood of his cross (Col 1:20)

                                                Joseph's Testings

Psalm 105:17-19. ‘Joseph, who was sold as a slave. His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron; Until what he had said came to pass, the word of the Lord kept testing him’.

Why did the word of the Lord come first and test Joseph, why didn’t the Lord test his brothers who were guilty of selling their brother into slavery? Surely they were the guilty ones.

Joseph had anguish and bitterness in his soul towards his brothers for what they had done to him. Holding bitterness towards someone is like having chains or iron around our ankles. It means we cannot walk as should be walking because we are carrying bitterness in our heart towards somebody.

Gen 41:51 = the brothers sin was envy, jealousy, fear, anger, bitterness towards their brother and it caused them to sell their brother. Jacob was really the cause of making Joseph’s brothers feel that way because he favoured Rachel more than Leah and favoured Rachel’s children more than Leah’s children and that’s what you see when that happens in a family system. Whenever you have a ‘mammy’s pet or a ‘daddies’ pet, you will always create disharmony in the family system. Joseph’s brothers were envious of his position, they were jealous of him, they were fearful of his prophecies.

So Joseph had bitterness in his life, he had anguish of soul and it was like a chain around his ankles so the Lord had to come to him first to remit or cancel out the debt that was against him; the jealousy, envy, anger, bitterness of his brothers and when he cancelled that out, he himself was healed.

God’s ways are not our ways. Our way is to wait for the person who has wronged us to say sorry first before we will forgive them, but the word of the Lord says the opposite, if you are on your way to the altar and your brother has something against you, go and be reconciled to him first, then come and present your gift.

The principle of God works like this. I won’t be forgiven unless I forgive. I won’t have mercy unless I show mercy, I won’t be blessed unless I bless.

So before Joseph could be healed from the wounding he received from his brothers and before reconciliation could take place, he had to forget (remit) ‘I remit all the pain I received in my father’s house’ and my sojourning in Egypt.

 

Some of that pain was being falsely accused of something he did not do, when wrongly accused by Potifers wife and ending up in prison. Many of us are in a prison house of emotional hurt and pain because we have been falsely accused of doing something we didn’t do or falsely accused of saying something we didn’t say.

                                                    Joseph's Response

So what did Joseph do, ‘I remit the sin or sins of my brothers, I remit their envy, anger, jealousy, fear, bitterness and when he cleared the ‘debt’, when he showed them mercy by providing them food to take back to the family, he himself was healed of his bitterness towards them. Later on there was reconciliation between his brothers

(James 1:19-20.) Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to rouse your temper; for your temper does not produce God’s righteousness.

This means that God is more concerned about the result our emotions and how they affect other peoples’ lives.  God wants us to respond according to His word that is within us.  If you want to be free from someone who has wounded our hurt you then whatever the hurt was whether it was rejection, anger or whatever, when you renounce the rejection, anger or whatever you experienced from them, then you will be released and healed. Then reconciliation can come and God wants reconciliation. In Jesus God was reconciliation the world to himself and as Paul says we pass on this gift of reconciliation to one another. We are ambassadors for Christ and we have the ministry of reconciliation

 

Peter tells us how to handle suffering.  He said there is some merit in putting up with the pains of unearned punishment, if it is done for the sake of God. Pilate was angry with Jesus because he did not respond to all the accusations that were brought against him.  So if you have been wounded or hurt by somebody, and still haven’t recovered from that wounding  then all you have to do is find out what sin was committed against you and simply say ‘I remit this sin’ and like Jesus hand it over to the Father.

 

Jesus told us to ‘love you enemies, do good to those who would hurt you, pray for those who would persecute you, be compassionate as you Heavenly Father is compassionate, do not judge and you will not be judged, do not condemn and you will not be condemned, pardon and you will be pardoned. By doing that we are fulfilling the royal law of loving your neighbour as you love yourself.   

 

As soon as Joseph remitted the sin of his brothers, then the Holy Spirit began to convict the brothers and then they were able to take accountability for their sin against their brother. Joseph didn’t jump in and say O brothers I forgive you.  But because he cancelled out the debt first, then the Lord was able to convict them and then they confessed to Joseph their sin against him. Then he was able to forgive them, not just remit their sin; that was the 1st thing. He was healed, then they came under conviction and then reconciliation took place.

 

Many of us don’t really understand the ways of the Lord. Many of us don’t understand that the Lord uses tests and trials and it is through these that we discover if we are built on sand or on rock.

During the Charismatic move of the 60’s and 70’s many people had a new experience of the Lord in their lives and many of the gifts of the Spirit were evident. But having the gifts of the Spirit didn’t change their character or their nature. Many in the church had this ‘born again or new life’ experience and it was wonderful.

Right at the end of his priestly prayer in John 17 Jesus prayed that the love that the Father had for him would be in his disciples. I believe that’s what many experienced during the Charismatic move. There was a love, peace and joy that none of us had know before.

Like a young couple who have just fallen in love with each other and all they want to talk about is each other. We were like that, all we wanted to do was talk about the Lord and we just loved the new songs of the spirit and couldn’t wait for next week’s prayer meeting, there was a new hunger for the word of God. We had an experience, it was real, it affected us and I can’t speak for others but it certainly changed my course in life.

 

I stopped buying newspapers, took the bible to work instead. I gave up playing in pubs and clubs and took up playing in the music ministry and have done so ever since. The phrase ‘Blood is Thicker than Water’ was to take on a whole new meaning. This does not speak of the natural family members we were born into for it means that “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”. In Christ we are family. I have brothers and sisters in the body of Christ who are more family that my natural siblings.

 

So like Israel when they escaped from Egypt there was a new song in our hearts, a new road to travel but most of us did not realise that there was a wilderness ahead. There was really very little or no teaching on this new life in Christ.

 

Everything that we receive from the Lord is in seed form. I once had a bucket of grass seed that was spare, and it sat for years in my shed there was nothing wrong with it and I gave it to a neighbour and he sowed it and it grew. In order for a seed to grow it needs to be dropped in dirt, it needs to be covered in darkness and struggle to reach the light. A seed needs to be watered and fed because if this doesn’t happen then it will die, and this is what has happened. In fact many became disillusioned and walked away. Many didn’t realise that it was only your spirit that came alive. Many didn’t realise that now there would be a war going on between the spirit and the flesh. St Paul says that it is by the spirit that we have to put an end to the misdeeds of the body.  We have to do it but most of us are still waiting for God to do it.

 

The baptism in the spirit brings you alive in Christ but it does not change your nature or your character. Our old nature with all its habits and weaknesses is still there, but it is now up to us to overcome them by the spirit that is now growing within. This treasure is in earthen vessels. Jesus on the inside working to the outside, growing and developing until the whole nature and character of Christ within is seen on the outside. God’s love that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy-Spirit has to be developed. The whole purpose of Israel’s wilderness experience was for them to learn that ‘man does not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’, testing and trials come to find out if God’s word is established in us. Israel kept going round in circles and if they failed one test, they went round again before they could move forward. The same happens with us. James said we were to treat them when they come as a happy privilege.

 

If you look at Moses, he knew all about the miracle working power of God in his life but it didn’t change him either and that day up the mountain his prayer was ‘God show me your ways so that I can understand you’. That should be our prayer.

 

If you look at John the Baptist, he was the one who said ‘behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. But then if you look at what he said in Luke 7 where he sent two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he was the one to come or did they have to wait for someone else.  And Jesus’ reply was ‘go back and tell John all that you have seen and heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear and the dead are raised to life, the Good News is proclaimed to the poor and blessed is the man who does not lose faith in me’. The JB says faith; the Greek word is ‘skandalizo’ which means to take offence. So Jesus was saying blessed are those who do not take offence in me and lose faith.

Why would John take offence? And what was Jesus doing that would make him lose faith. And remember that many people including the Scribes and Pharisees also took offence at the ministry of Jesus, why?

 

Well John was a preacher of righteousness; he wouldn’t baptize you unless you were already in repentance. He didn’t associate with people of immoral lives, or drunkards and he challenged the Pharisees on their outward show of religion, and now here is Jesus associating with tax collectors, prostitutes and was known as a glutton and wine drinker and Jesus was not living up to the expectations of what John considered the Christ to be and that’s where the offence came.

There are many churches and church people like that today. They separate themselves away from the very people that need their help. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t curse, don’t swear and take what St Paul said in 2 Cor 6 literally and separate themselves and keep aloof from everyone else, but that needs to be balanced with what Jude said in his letter that ‘when there are some to be saved from the fire, pull them out; but there are others to whom you must be kind with great caution’.

 

Yes the Lord has called us to be the light of the world, but you don’t hide away your light to those who need to see it. We are living in a world full of darkness and sin and if ever the world needed to see the light of the Gospel it is today. Yes we are in the world and we don’t belong to the world, but light is meant to attract and our calling is to snatch people from the darkness and the false lights that entice but don’t fulfil because only the Lord can satisfy the longing in our souls.

 

In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians Paul says that ‘from now onwards, we do not judge anyone by the standards of the flesh’. In other words we need to see people from God’s perspective. When we look at people through our natural understanding, then we will only see evil in them, we will not see their good. We will not be looking at the potential in them all we will see are their faults and failings and we will judge them accordingly.

 

When we begin to see people through the eyes of Christ, then we will begin to see all the potential and the good that they can offer, then we will begin to sacrifice our own lives and our own reputations  so that all that potential and good can come forth.

 1 Cor 13 tells us that this agape love covers all things.

 

Jesus saw the potential in the woman caught in adultery when everyone else was accusing her. (Proverbs 10: 12) Love covers all offences. In other words, love puts a cloak of decency over the other person. Whether they deserve it or not.

The Lord saw in Gideon ‘a mighty warrior’, when he was crouching with fear in the winepress.

He saw in Peter a rock when he was more like a skittle on a bowling alley; God looks at the finished work.

 

In the example of Joseph, when the storms of life seemingly sweep over us in our times of testing, it’s very easy to get depressed and dejected, but if we can learn from Joseph and get our eyes off our own situation and keep them fixed on the Lord we can experience deliverance.

Joseph was inside a prison but he did not let the prison get inside him. In a drought you can still bear fruit.

If you are battling depression, rejection or oppression hand it over to the Lord and keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and praise and thank him for the answer and let him fight your battle for you, because ‘the battle is not yours, but God’s’.

The Psalmist learnt this lesson, ‘why are you cast down (depressed) my soul, why groan within me? Put your hope in God for I will still praise him’ (Ps 42:5).

Notice the Psalmist said ‘I will’, so it is an act of the will and nothing to do with our emotions.

 

 When you learn to ‘praise the Lord’, irrespective of ‘feelings or emotions’ when you come to understand that whatever you are going through, the Lord is with you, when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death that’s when you will experience a break-through. Instead of reaching for the ‘anti-depressants’, reach out to the Lord with praise on your lips and a two edged sword in your hand (the scriptures) and let the Spirit of the Lord deliver you. The answer is look to the bigness of your God and not to the bigness of your problem. When you magnify the Lord your spirit rejoices.

 

 Most wounding we receive is from those closest to us. Joseph was able to say ‘the Lord has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortune’.  If you show mercy you will receive mercy if you forgive you will be forgiven. If you bless, you will be blessed.

Paul speaks of spiritual warfare in Eph6 and the battlefield is in the mind. Scriptures that deal with the healing of the mind are (2 C02 10:4-5) & (James 5:16) Paul says ‘For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.  James says ‘confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you may be healed. These deal with the inner or the soul of man. If we have weakness or wrong thinking in the emotional or mental parts of our being, then they will cloud or mar the character of Christ within. If there are experiences that you wish you never had or if there are situations that you wish you could have changed, then you probably need healing, because most people are bound by their past memories and if you are living in the past then you cannot move forward. In Christ our past has been blotted out, but in our own minds and hearts this may not be so. Things in the past can become stones in Jacob’s well and will cause us to be unable to drink joyfully from the wells of salvation. It is wrong for us to forget or try to block out certain things in our lives.

The Scriptures have a lot to say about painful memories and what causes them. (Gen 41:9) the story of the butler. His memory got him into trouble. (Gen 42: 21-24) Joseph’s brothers had deep remorse. (Ps 42:4) ‘These things will I remember’, memories of past blessings caused deep loneliness. (Ps 51:3) the memory of past sins caused weakness within. (Ps 137:1) memories of Zion caused deep pain. (Lk 22:61) Peter wept bitterly because of his failures.

 

We will not be fruitful in our lives and we will not experience the love, peace or joy that the Spirit brings, unless we allow those memories of the past to be healed by the Lord. How can you produce faith if there are fearful memories? How can you produce joy if you have bitter memories? How can you produce love if you have hurtful memories? That’s why the story of Joseph reveals the power of Christ that causes us to forget. Our minds have to be renewed before we can enter into the transformed life. Painful memories have to be dealt with. Paul tells us that every thought or imagination that exalts itself above the knowledge of God is a stronghold in the mind that has to be torn down. In Exodus 15 & 16 we are told that every time something happened to them, ‘they remembered’. They may have left Egypt physically but they were still mentally and emotionally attached there. So the Lord had to allow certain circumstances to happen to them in order to deal with their past. The scars of the past needed to be dealt with before they could enter and experience the blessings of the Promised Land. Those past memories would cause them to be unfruitful in the land of Canaan. They had bitter memories of their stay in Egypt, so the Lord brought them to a place of bitterness, Marah means bitterness and it was hear in a place of bitterness that the Lord revealed to them that ‘I Am the Lord who heals you’. A root of bitterness can destroy a whole community. How does a root of bitterness form in a person’s life? It is a rejection of the word of God that says ‘forgive one another’. Why do people suffer from anxiety? It’s a rejection of the word of God that says ‘do not be anxious for anything’. For every emotion we experience, there is a scriptural answer for them, so you could say that a person’s problems are all related to their obedience or disobedience to the word of God. These are the things that we should confess in order to be forgiven from them. That’s what David did. In Ps 51 he admitted his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah her husband and his sin was forgiven, but for a period of about 2 years he went into depression and in Ps 32 it was when he confessed his fault which was the guilt which was the emotion he was suffering from associated with the sin that he was released. Guilt will bring the past up into the present and on into the future.  Likewise the mind will do the same. Instead of being able to live free from the past, many people still live in the past because of the guilt in their hearts and minds.

 

At Marah the Lord instructed Moses to put a tree into the bitter waters. If you put Jesus into that situation, then automatically the bitter waters will become sweet. David said ‘I went back till all was told’. He asked the Lord to go back with him to uncover the past so his mind could be healed. Catharsis is going back and re-living over again by speaking. Redeeming the past means that we are to go back and redeem lost opportunities by reliving over again those past memories by bringing them to the surface so that we can be healed from them. We have a right to go back with Jesus and redeem the past, because he took all those painful situations for us on the cross. So instead of being bitter and resentful and angry about those past situations, start to thank God for them, because the Lord knew that those situations that caused so many weaknesses within your life were going to be the turning point in your ‘spiritual life’ that would one day bring you closer to him. Don’t be bitter, or angry or resentful about those situations or people anymore because those situations and those people were only instruments in the hand of the Lord. That’s what Joseph said, ‘you brothers thought this was all evil’, but God was able to use that for good and he was able to forgive his brothers from his heart because God had caused him to forget. Confessing brings healing and the reason many cannot ‘feel’ or ‘touch’ God is because the emotion that is blocking them from the other person becomes a block between them and God.

                                     The Purpose of Wounding

Why would the Lord allow me to be wounded or hurt and offended by others? It is so I can be sensitive to the person who has offended me so that I might respond by putting love towards them.  If you take Esau and Jacob as an example of what I’m saying. The Lord allowed an offence to come between them. Esau was a hard hearted man and Jacob was a cheat. The Lord wanted to speak to both of them. Many years later Jacob was returning home and Esau was still angry and out to get revenge. Jacob wrestled with God all night long and the Lord had to wound him in his strength to get the better of him and that’s what the Lord will do to us. There are areas where we like to be independent of the Lord and he will allow things to happen to us in order for us to lean on him. The Lord was able to transform Jacob the cheat into Israel the prince of God and from that day on he was a marked man. So when the brothers met, Jacob now the spiritual one took responsibility for his cheating and in bowing 7 times to the ground he was expressing humility to Esau and there was forgiveness. Esau’s heart melted, what was he seeing? He was seeing through the face of Jacob the nature and the heart of God and in return Jacob needed to see the face of God. By taking responsibility for his cheating, after the reconciliation Jacob was able to say’ today I have seen the face of God’ (Ex 33:11)

Proverbs 25:28 tells us that a person who has no rule over their spirit is likened to a city without walls and open to all kinds of attacks from the enemy. Your emotions are the walls around your spirit. The enemy wants us to respond to situations negatively to weaken our spirit so that we cannot stand effectively in prayer. A person with a wounded spirit is like a leaky cistern so that they cannot retain the blessings from the Lord. Instead of being an over comer they live in a cycle of defeat and spiritually impotent.

                                               Guidelines for Release

So to sum up, James 5:16 exposes the area to be healed by speaking about it.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 breaks down the area and my mind is renewed by confessing the word of God, by meditating on the word of God and by personalising the word of God. He leads me near restful waters to restore my soul.

 

An example of prayer would be like this, ‘Jesus I confess you as the Son of God, I expose unto you now my mind my will and my emotions. I ask you to search me out by your Spirit and bring me healing and deliverance.

I confess unto you now my (fear, anger, guilt, shame, bitterness, worry, anxiety, grief, hatred and I ask you to forgive me and release me from its power.

 

Next you should just keep your mind on the Lord and breath in the Holy-Spirit and bring up into your memory where that emotion came in. Next you should pray ‘in the name of Jesus I command that (emotion) to be torn down and my mind released from it in Jesus name  ‘Lord I confess the wounding, rejection, hurt and pain that I received in my father’s house, heal me and set me free from the grief, from the pain, the bitterness, the anger that I am holding on to and I hand it all over to you, I place it on the cross where it belongs and I ask you to forgive me for it and release me from it in Jesus name, Amen.

Finally, renew your mind and fill it with the word of God; that will straighten out your thinking.

Pray for others. Get your mind off your own situation and get it on somebody else’s need.

Be like Mary and magnify the Lord, not the problem and your spirit will be lifted up.

Psalm 32
1 Happy the man whose offence is forgiven, whose sin is remitted.
2 O happy the man to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no guile.
3 I kept it secret and my frame was wasted. I groaned all day long,
4 for night and day your hand was heavy upon me. Indeed my strength was dried up as by the summer's heat.
5 But now I have acknowledged my sins; my guilt I did not hide. I said: "I will confess my offence to the Lord and you Lord have forgiven the guilt of my sin"
6 So let every good man pray to you in the time of need. The floods of water may reach high but him they shall not reach.
7 You are my hiding place, O Lord; you save me from distress. (You surround me with cries of deliverance.)