Steven Furtick - What if the Delay Is Part of the Plan?
This is an excerpt from: It's Going To Happen Here
God is sovereign in his scheduling of your life. Think of the two years Joseph sat in prison, wondering, «Will they ever remember me? A lot of good that did. Nobody appreciates me. Nobody ever tells me 'thank you' for washing the dishes». Maybe I’m not talking about Joseph now. Maybe I’m talking about you. «Nobody ever appreciates me for giving them a ride. What, do they just think I’m a free Uber Black? Do they just think I’m a free DoorDash? Do they just think I’m a free private chef? Do they just think I’m a free housekeeper? Nobody appreciates me». Yet there seems to be a sense in which if Joseph had gotten out of that prison any earlier than he did, he wouldn’t have been in position to fulfill the purpose he was created for.
I think of it in terms of food. You know, we’re talking about a famine. Holly and I have different definitions of when food is too old to eat. She has a very elastic understanding of an expiration date. She calls it an expiration recommendation, and she goes by smell. I go by what it says on the label. Especially when it comes to fruit, she likes a little bit of brown. I went to throw a peach away the other day, and she caught the peach before it went in the trash can. I didn’t even know she was athletic. I’ve never seen such hand-eye coordination from this woman in my life until I went to throw away a peach. She caught it and said, «Put that back». I said, «Put it back? It’s brown». She said, «Brown ain’t bad». Because she knows the difference between when it’s rotten and when it’s ripe.
Now, if you are Joseph, sitting in a prison for a space of two years, feeling as if the prime of your life is rotting away, and you are rotting away, and your physical strength is rotting away, only to find out that maybe the reason God kept you in that situation for that length of time… Maybe the reason the cupbearer forgot you so you stayed in there was if you had been released from that prison one day sooner, you would have missed the window of opportunity for you to demonstrate the gift God gave you.
Tell your neighbor, «You’re not rotten; you’re ripe». I see people in my heart who are feeling right now like, «It should have happened a long time ago,» like, «I’m behind all of my friends,» like, «It’s not going to happen for me because I’m supposed to be married by the age of 24». But God said, «I know what ripe looks like». God said, «I know the difference between when you’re still getting ready and when you think you’re ready». God says, «I know how to leave the thing in the obscure place until the opportunity has reached its optimal positioning».
High-five three people and say, «I’m ripe». This will work against discouragement. The Enemy will tell you too much time has passed, too many years have gone, too many other people have gone ahead of you, too many experiences have eluded you, too many things you should have learned you didn’t learn. I feel like preaching to tell somebody, at just the right time, if you humble yourself under his mighty hand… «I’m rusty, but I’m ripe». (Mixing my metaphors.) Let’s get back to the text. The Bible says Joseph had two children before the famine.
Now, it’s good that he had them before the famine. Sometimes God will send you a blessing before a trial to remind you of who he is so you don’t let the trial discourage you to the point that you want to quit. The Bible says two sons were born of Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, the priest of On. In case you’re wondering who that is, she was really important. These people were royalty, but they were not Hebrews; they were Egyptians. Imagine Joseph’s surprise when he realized, «God is going to give me a family, but he’s going to do it through foreigners».
You know how we get in our minds how God is going to do things in our lives? You know how you were picking out what college the kids were going to go to when they were 3 months old? You bought them a little Duke paci, and they had to be a Tar Heel. This serves to illustrate the principle that I really stood up to preach to you today, and it’s this: it’s going to happen here. Long were the days that Joseph would think, «Maybe one day I’ll get to go back home to Canaan. Maybe one day I’ll get to reconcile with my brothers who betrayed me. Maybe one day they’ll tell me they’re sorry and that they were wrong. Maybe one day I will again get to take in the familiar sights and sounds of the place where I came from».
Imagine Joseph’s surprise when instead of God taking him back to his homeland, he gave him the gift of a family in the place of his hardship. Usually, when we preach about Egypt, we talk about coming out of Egypt. In fact, in Deuteronomy, the Lord tells his people, after he brings them out of Egypt, «Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery». God is warning his people after he brought them out of that place that grew to be so dreadful for them…bricks without straw and forced labor under the heavy whips of their masters who knew not of Joseph. He said, «Be careful. Don’t forget when I bring you out».
Yet we’re reading a passage today that suggests that even in Egypt, there are some things God can do even though you didn’t choose to go there. I am preaching to somebody today who is in a place in their life where they did not choose to go there, dealing with a situation they did not choose to create for themselves. Joseph did not go to Egypt as a traveler; he went to Egypt as a slave, yet the Bible says in verse 52, «God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering».
So, now here comes the question. How can God make you fruitful in something you want to be free from? We all have things… You can shake me off if you want to, and you can pretend like this is for the person sitting on your row if you want to. We all have things we need to be freed from, want to be freed from. We all have places we never planned to go. Some of us have mental conditions that were passed on to us genetically. They are not even the result, necessarily, of behavior. Some of the demons you’re fighting are from your daddy, and the demons don’t leave just because you said the name of Jesus. They still have to be fought against for the rest of your life. You imagine a day when you’ll be free of this, when you’ll no longer desire this, when you’ll no longer feel this way, when depression will no longer show up like a dark cloud over your life, when anxiety will no longer overwhelm your soul.
«One day I’m going to be free from this». I came to preach you can be fruitful in it while you’re waiting to be freed from it, and it’s going to happen the moment you decide to name it Manasseh. Manasseh means forget. Let’s study this. Sit down. We have to study it. It sounds good, but let’s study it. Verse 51: «Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, 'It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.'» Well, if you forgot it, why are we still talking about it? You don’t forget something like this. You don’t forget having your coat of many colors stripped from you, dipped in animal blood, and presented to your father as a proof or a token of your death when you are still very much alive. You don’t forget being pushed into a pit, half-dead, and carted to a foreign place to serve as a slave. You don’t forget any of that.
The Bible says he said he forgot. So is he lying? No, no. It’s not a lie; it’s a lens. When he says, «What God gave me…» How many have something God gave you? He says, «When I consider what God gave me, and then I think about what was taken from me, the years that were stolen from me, the peace that was stolen from me…» I believe Joseph probably struggled with intense self-hatred temptation, because when you are treated this way by your brothers, it makes you doubt yourself. Many people who come through abuse take the anger they cannot bear to project outward or do not have the power to project outward and turn it inward. Then it eats you alive, and it chews through all of the fruit of your future because you are stuck in something someone else did.
But Joseph said, «When I see what God gave me, this baby I’m holding in a place I never chose to go to, in a situation I never thought I would have to settle into, in a season of my life I never saw coming…» It isn’t that he stopped remembering what he went through; he just refocused what he was looking at. The word of the Lord is «Refocus». I know your body is holding a lot of trauma, but refocus. I know you have abandonment issues because everybody you let in somehow let you down, but refocus. There’s a Manasseh in your arms. Refocus. I know that some things you were cheated out of were unfair, and I know if you could go back and have it happen differently, you would. You didn’t choose it.
The things you never chose don’t mean you can’t grow through them. Just because I didn’t choose to go through it doesn’t mean I can’t choose to grow through it. It is a matter of focus. LJ, you played so well on the album. Don’t y’all love LJ? LJ, Scotty, Shae, Otis… They played so well. Y’all, when you go on YouTube and look at the songs, don’t go into the comments. The comments will kill your joy. We will put a song out that says, «Oh, my God, you’ve been so good to me,» and someone will put in the comments, «Well, what if he hasn’t been that good to me? That must be nice for you that God has been good to you, but God hasn’t been that good to me».
One day, I’m going to make up a name so I can go on YouTube and say all the stuff I want to say back and nobody will know it was me. I’m going to have the IT department set it up really securely where nobody can track it back through any kind of AI or AARP or any of that stuff. Then I’m going to go on there and say, «The goodness of God is a perspective». The goodness of God is not freedom from problems. The goodness of God is not freedom from pain. The goodness of God is a perspective that starts with him and works its way outward. Joseph is not saying it didn’t happen. Joseph is not in denial. Joseph is not stuffing it down so it’s just going to come out sideways.
As a matter of fact, when he says, «I forgot my father’s household,» all of us who know what happens in Genesis 43, 44, and 45 kind of want to laugh, because the people he’s trying to forget, his brothers who betrayed him, are actually about to show up asking him for food. Sometimes God will call you to feed something you wanted to forget. Sometimes God will call you to go back to a place that caused you so much pain, and the wounds you suffered will become a womb that births healing for someone else.
That’s what I think Joseph is saying. «He caused me to forget, to refocus, to see what God is doing right here in Egypt. I never thought I would have an Egyptian wife. I never thought I’d have these half-Egyptian kids. I definitely never thought I’d be overseeing all of the grain in a time of famine. I never thought people would be asking me what to do. People have been telling me what to do my whole life. My big brothers told me what to do. Potiphar told me what to do. The jailer told me what to do. Now, all of a sudden, I find myself in a position where God has given me the ability to make a decision». He realizes, «While I was enslaved in Egypt, God was increasing me in the very place where I was enslaved».