what makes a great dreamer...

here in genesis 39 there are two key truths that show us how joseph was able to survive the setback.

1.   again and again we see that the LORD was with joseph and

2.   joseph was with the LORD.  joseph continued to trust in GOD, to say no to temptation because the eyes of GOD were upon him.  he tried to be faithful to GOD even in difficult situations. 

two things you and i need to remember.  some of you the reason you came to the front porch today was to hear these two things.  that’s why GOD brought you here. 

remember you will never find a place as a believer in CHRIST, where the LORD will not be with you.  never.  this isn’t just in the old testament.  you can pick up a new testament and turn it to romans 8, the last couple of verses where paul says, i’m convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of GOD which is in CHRIST JESUS our LORD.

nothing can separate us from HIS love.  you can never find a place where GOD won’t be with you. 

two, you and i as believers, we’ll never discover a place where faithfulness is impossible.  never. 

that’s the real truth of joseph's life.  he was faithful in his father’s house.  he was faithful in potiphar’s house.  he was faithful as a son.  he was faithful as a slave and then as a prisoner.  he had learned the secret of being faithful to his commitments no matter what.  that’s what makes a great dreamer.  that’s what makes a great GOD-given dream. 

just a thought from the front porch…

where GOD does something powerful…

even though he didn’t see the dream. joseph shows us how to live the dream even when we don’t see it. 

i’ve written down some pictures for you.  ways to picture how you and i do this.  when i say live the dream, the picture in joseph's life is…

-you lead in slave’s clothing.  there will be times in your life when you feel like, “i'm not at the place of GOD’s dream.  what do i do?  give up on it?”  no.  you lead in slave’s clothing.  even if you feel like, “i’ve got greater qualifications than this!  this isn’t where i’m supposed to be.”  you still do what GOD’s made you to do. 

joseph did that in potiphar’s house.  you and i are to do that.  the new testament tells us to do that.  the bible tells us that you and i are citizens of heaven.  you don’t feel like a citizen of heaven yet sometimes.  we’re still in this world.  but still, in colossians, we’re told to act like, live like citizens of heaven because that’s who we are.  you lead in slave’s clothing.  live the dream even though you don’t see the dream.

-the second picture is you work while you’re in egypt.  he’s not in israel.  he’s not in GOD’s promised land but he’s working.  he’s in egypt.  he did not want to be there.  he didn’t deserve to be there. 

have you ever been in a place where you didn’t want to be and you didn’t deserve to be?  joseph knew all about that.  but there he was.  what was he going to do?  he was faithful.  even there, even in egypt, he made the choice to be faithful. 

we spend a lot of life in egypt, don’t we?  places we’d rather not be, doing things we’d rather not do.  if you and i are going to be all that GOD wants us to be, we have to learn to work in egypt.  when we’re in those places we’d rather not be and doing those things we’d rather not do, we need to be faithful to do GOD’s will.  that’s where GOD’s at work in our lives. 

the truth is, your real success as a believer in CHRIST, your real impact on this world, the success of your GOD given dreams depends not so much on your blessings in israel as your faithfulness in egypt.  those times you’re in a place you don’t want to be, doing something you don’t want to be doing.  but GOD has you there for a purpose. 

some of you are there right now.  your job is in egypt.  or your family is in egypt right now.  you’re in a place that you don’t want to be.  joseph teaches us that’s the place to be faithful.  that’s the place GOD builds dreams.  that’s the place where GOD does something powerful.         

just a thought from the front porch…

motivation and faithfulness…

noah built an ark, noah entered the ark and then noah on the ark. when i think of noah on the ark it teaches me the motivational power of faithfulness.

how many days was he there? i think the first number that comes to many of our minds is forty. but that’s not what the bible teaches. not at all. it rained for forty days and forty nights. but the bible says that after noah got on the ark, the floods started on the seventeenth day of the second month and noah got off the ark on the twenty-seventh day of the second month – a year. he was on the ark a year and ten days. and he was on the ark seven days before the rains started. so that adds up to noah being on the ark a lot more than forty days. he was on the ark 375 days – 375 days of faithfulness, 375 days of trusting GOD. after 120 years of trusting GOD which is how long it took him to build the ark.

one of the most impressive things to me about noah is his faithfulness. when i think of a man who would go onto an ark like that and trust GOD through that time, maybe some of the animals hibernated but not all of them did.

can you imagine cleaning up after animals for three hundred plus days? can you imagine listening to animals for all of those days? can you imagine smelling animals for all of those days? the incredible smells! faithfulness. noah and his family were faithful to GOD.

sometimes faithfulness isn’t fun. cleaning up after the animals on that ark wasn’t fun. worrying about whether the waters would ever recede – it wasn’t fun. but it had to be fulfilling, deeply. noah had to stand back at the end of his day and recognize when he saw that the entire earth was covered with water, “we’re it. we’re all that’s left. if sixty years into this project, i’d said, ‘no, GOD, where would my family be now? where would these animals be now?’” so on the days that aren’t fun when you’re being faithful to GOD, just stand back for a minute and look at what GOD’s doing through your life in this world.

just a thought from the front porch…