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let us being our time of worship by singing; I am a new creation, no more in condemnation. And I say amen to that.
Scripture Reading Genesis 45:4-15
Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come closer to me’ and they came closer. He said, ‘I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt and now don’t be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years and there will be five more years where there will be neither ploughing nor harvest.’
‘God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh and the Lord of all his house and the ruler of the land of Egypt, hurry up, go to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt, come down to me, do not delay.’
‘You shall settle in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children as well as your flocks and your herds and all that you have. I will provide for you there since there are five more years of famine so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’
‘And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honoured in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.’ Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept while Benjamin wept upon his neck and he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them and after that his brothers talked with him. (Genesis 45:4-15)
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As we go into a time of prayer, we will sing; Seek fist His kingdom. Because when we do, all things will be added unto us.
Let us pray.
Please take time and come before God to pray personally. Bring to God your worries, concerns, hurts. Bring to Him you joys and thanksgiving. Come to Him and pray.
Dear God,
Thank you for your great love and blessing over our lives. Thank you that your favour towards your children has no end. It lasts for eternity through the richness and power of Christ. Forgive us for sometimes forgetting that you are intimately acquainted with all our ways, that you know what concerns us and you cover us, as with a shield.
It's hard sometimes to fully let go of worries when we can't see all that you’re doing Lord. We confess our need for you, because we struggle with trusting when we know that our circumstances are in need of a miracle by your hand.
But again, we choose to believe, for it's in these very times where you are at work, reminding us that without you, it is truly impossible. Thank you for being the One who gives the power, the One who can open the right doors, the One who can make things possible. It leaves us nowhere to look but to you alone.
We ask for your guidance so that we might walk fully in your blessing and goodness today. We ask for your face to shine on us. We pray that you would open the right doors and opportunities for our lives and for our loved ones. We pray that you’d work powerfully to close the wrong doors too, protecting us from what we need to walk away from.
Establish the work of our hands. Bring to fulfilment all that you have given us to do in these days. We pray that you would make our way purposeful and our footsteps firm out of your goodness and love. Give us a heart of wisdom to hear your voice; please make us strong through your huge favour and grace.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Let us share together in the Lords prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
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Remember to always keep on praying for each other.
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Before we go to the word, lets raise our voices and sing; Lord I come before your throne.
The Big Picture
God is a God who delights in handing us opportunities. Opportunities to do good. Opportunities that are good for us. Opportunities that fit into His amazing plan for this world. But sometimes, sometimes we miss them because we’re so immersed in the detail that we miss the big picture.
I’m convinced that one of the hardest things in life is to keep our eye on the big picture.
Maybe it’s something at work, at church, at home. Maybe it’s a plan you have for your life and yet time and time again things happen to derail it. Or maybe it’s simply setting your life on a course to follow Jesus with all your heart and yet you discover that the road is narrow and hard and inconvenient and uncomfortable and some days downright painful. And when that happens, the big picture, the end goal, the reason you’re following Jesus with all your heart, well, It just kind of evaporates doesn’t it?
One of the main reasons we miss God’s opportunities on those days when we feel that following Jesus isn’t as good as we thought, is because we lose sight of the big picture. I do understand that we can’t always see the big picture, which makes things much harder. Such as traveling on one of those dark, scary, uncomfortable, valley journey’s and you can’t see far enough ahead to know what comes next, to know how it’s going to turn out, to know why He’s put you in this place to start with. Often, it’s only in hindsight that we can see what He was up to all along and even then, sometimes we don’t get the full picture.
Think of Joseph, Jacob’s son in the Old Testament, when he finally stood on the place that he dreamed of as a young teenager. He dreamed of a position of power and privilege as the ruler of Egypt. Do you remember how he got to that position? He first had to be sold into slavery by his brothers. Now, many many years later, his brothers stand before him begging to be saved from starvation. Instead of getting revenge he forgave them, and he explained to them why God had allowed all this to happen. Let’s take another look at that portion of scripture.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come closer to me’ and they came closer. He said, ‘I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt and now don’t be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years and there will be five more years where there will be neither ploughing nor harvest.’
‘God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh and the Lord of all his house and the ruler of the land of Egypt, hurry up, go to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt, come down to me, do not delay.’
‘You shall settle in the land of Goshen and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children as well as your flocks and your herds and all that you have. I will provide for you there since there are five more years of famine so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’ ‘And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honoured in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.’ Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept while Benjamin wept upon his neck and he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them and after that his brothers talked with him. (Genesis 45:4-15)
What a beautiful picture of reconciliation after such treachery that brought so much suffering. But the bit that I really want you to notice here is that Joseph finds meaning to all his suffering because he sees the big picture. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant of all the earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So, it wasn’t you who sent me here but God, he’s the one that made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
In other words, by looking back and seeing the journey through God’s eyes he sees what God was up to all along. God’s purpose was to do his family good, to preserve and protect them and for that purpose, a purpose he couldn’t see in those dark places along the way on a journey which had taken over twenty years. But now, Joseph could see it looking back and yet even at this point, can I say, Joseph really had no idea, none whatsoever of the important part his small journey was playing in God’s overall plan for humanity.
In that portion of scripture did you notice that the brothers were to go back and get their father Jacob and bring the whole family down and settle in Egypt? Out of that, over the next four and a half centuries the Jewish people grew into a mighty nation whom God saved through Moses, crossing the Red Sea with forty years in the wilderness before He brought them back to the Promised Land.
Through Joseph God started a lineage of generations that finally, many years later, resulted in the birth of Jesus who came to save you and me by dying on that cross. Joseph’s story, Joseph’s journey is still having eternal ramifications in your life and mine through Jesus Christ the Messiah. I find that mind-blowing. The big picture is so big that none of them really knew what God was up to through this terrible journey of Joseph’s.
Honestly, the only way to lay hold of the big picture when we’re immersed in the trials of our journey is by faith. Just believing that God has a plan, that God knows what He’s doing. Dare I say, it doesn’t matter how much it hurts on the way, eventually God will reveal to us through hindsight, that part of the picture, that He wants us to see. Holding on to God’s picture by faith is what keeps us going, step by step, doing good, doing right, looking for the God-given opportunities that He sets before us:
And faith is the assurance of things hopeful, the conviction of things not seen and indeed by faith our ancestors received approval and by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen has been made from things that are not seen. (Hebrews 11:1-3)
When we lose faith in the faithfulness of God and His big picture, although we can’t see it for ourselves, we stop doing what’s right, we stop looking for His opportunities, we stop hoping and dreaming, we stop doing what we know is right even when the rest of the world seems to have gone stark raving mad and none of the pain and suffering makes any sense.
Don’t give up, don’t lose faith, don’t stop looking for those God-given opportunities to use your gifts and abilities to do what you know is right, to forgive those who have hurt you. Don’t give up because one day you’ll stand before God and you want to hear Him say ‘Well done good and faithful servant’.
That’s why Jesus died for you, that is why Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in you the moment you put your trust in Him. That’s the big picture, so whatever you do don’t miss out on God’s opportunities. Amen.
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When we see the bigger picture, we can see all God's opportunities and because of that we lift up our voices and say; I love You Lord.
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.
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