getting fit...

i've been focusing on the life of joseph lately...boy did he get a lot of bad raps in his life...he was up and he was down...he became the favored son and then was thrown into a pit...sold into slavery by his brothers...found and put into a place of honor...rose to a high position in potiphar's house, only to be falsely accused and hauled off to jail...helped others get out of prison and then was forgotten by the men he helped...finally...some seventeen years later...after his brothers threw him into the pit...he was elevated to the highest position in the land, just below pharoah himself...

maybe like joseph...you've been stripped of your position and cast into darkness...and maybe it has happened more than once to you...maybe like joseph you have been released from the dungeon, only to find yourself thrust back there again by hard circumstances...

do you feel forgotten, abandoned...maybe even a bit hopeless?

i love the end of joseph's story...for it truly holds the key...he somehow understood what God had in mind..."you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (genesis 50:20)

as joseph said this to his brothers...who had started the whole chain of events in his life...he knew that this was meant to be...

the up's and down's of joseph's life were exactly what God used to shape him into the man who would one day save an entire nation...and from whom would come Jesus of Nazareth...who would one day redeem the entire world...

i've been thinking of all the shaping that has been taking place in my life...and especially most recently...

as in joseph's life...our real shaping...the shaping of our hearts...well...as much as we may not like it...comes through struggle, through hardship, through pain and suffering...basically the shaping comes from the flat-out hard stuff of life...

it's not produced in comfort or complacency...it happens in the desert, in a back hole, or in a palace prison...it happens in the lonely and desolate places where we're all alone...

all alone...except for God...

our shaping can be a time of breaking...of our pride, our control, our pasts, our fears...even our dreams...we're stripped of what we have known and what we have relied on...even of what we have been promised...

why?

i've asked that question many many times during my time in the desert...i believe in our brokenness God can begin to do something through us that we could never imagine doing on our own...

that excites me!

like joseph, we have all been given a dream, a vision...we each have our own land to redeem...it may be our family, community, our industry, our nation...our generation...and through the desert...we are being prepared...through all the painful and difficult circumstances in our lives, to take that ground...

when we allow God to shape us...we then are truly "fit"...for life and for loving service to God and to one another...we are being shaped into people of faith, integrity, and purity of heart...people who can be trusted with the dreams that God has placed in us and the purposes He has for us...