Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Genesis 45:5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.
BLESSINGS TO OTHERS BY LIVING A CHRISTIAN LIFE
In the end, Joseph's life turned out better than he or anyone could ever have expected. After facing much adversity and temptation, he ended up becoming second in command in all Egypt and in charge of food distribution during a seven year famine.
It was at this time that he met his brothers again. His brothers came down from Canaan looking to buy grain. And Joseph, after all he had been through, was in a position to give it to them. And not just to them, but to many who were in need. In fact, on account of Joseph and the stores of food he had laid in during the good years, hundreds of thousands of lives were saved.
He was in the right place at the right time--and that was no accident. God had seen to it that Joseph was in a position where his life could be used to bless others.
He does this with us too--even when we do not always realize it or think of it. He puts us in positions where we can be a blessing to others. Maybe it is by a word of comfort that we are able to speak to someone else. Maybe it is by something we do for a neighbor. Maybe God uses us to bring someone else to faith in Christ.
I would invite all of you to take a look around and see how the Lord has placed you in this life--and think about how you might be able to use your life in different ways to be a blessing to others. It's a bit foreign to our natural way of thinking--which is to think mostly about ourselves--but with God's help we can look outward too and see how we can serve one another.
Jesus, of course, was the master of this. He did not come to earth to serve Himself, but to serve all of us. He was a blessing not just to those whom He laid hands on and healed, but He served the whole world, becoming a blessing to the whole world when He gave His life into death on the cross in order to pay for the sin of the whole world. In the greatest act of self-sacrifice ever known, Jesus gave to us the greatest blessing that could ever be known: holiness before God. A ransom price paid with His life so that we could go free and not be condemned. In Jesus, all the nations of the earth are blessed.
