Joseph Lessons

I have started my book titled A Man of Integrity and Forgiveness - Joseph. I am only in the fourth chapter and have already learned a ton. The first chapter was more about Jacob, Joseph's Dad, than about Joseph. This was to give you the setting of what was going on when Joseph was born. Jacob had several children with three different wives before Joseph was born. That tells us something right there! Joseph was then born to a fourth wife when Jacob was in his forties. Joseph became his Dad's favorite son, not a good idea for a parent to pick favorites and an even worse thing to let the rest of the children know that you have a favorite. This made for lots of jealousy and ill will towards Joseph by his siblings. In Jacob's past he had been known to deceive people, he was a passive father, he was too busy for his family, too preoccupied and unconcerned. As you can tell, there is a lot too learn from Jacob as to what kind of a parent you don't want to be! The two main ideas the author wanted you to take away from this chapter was, "No enemy is more subtle than passivity" and "No response is more cruel than jealousy".

The second chapter got into Josehp's life and trials. After his brothers sold him into slavery he ended up as the head servant in Potiphar's home. Potipar was an Egyptian officer. Joseph finds himself in a foreign country, with a culture and language that he knows nothing of. If all of this isn't bad enough, Potiphar's wife has the hots for Joseph and is not shy about it at all. She is constantly trying to seduce poor Joe. 2Timothy 2:22 says, "Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts". And run is just what Jospeh did the last time Potiphar's wife tried to seduce Joseph, as a matter of fact he ran out of her house without his garment! Talk about being able to resist temptation!

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 1Peter 5:8 Stay alert! We all know the areas in our lives where we are tempted. Don't even think you can be strong and fight it off, stay away from these areas as much as you can. Pray a ton for help in these areas, have a friend help hold you accountable. Call on this friend when you are being tempted and RUN. Get out of there. It was better for Joseph to run out of there naked, or close to it, then it was for him to try to talk to her. He ran. The fact that he left without his garment does not mean he almost caved to the temptation. She grabbed his garment and said, "Lie with me". This is when he took off running, not even thinking of the fact that she still had ahold of his clothes! Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7 Sometimes we can avoid temptation before it gets started by staying out of certain situations or places. Other times we are being tempted before we even knew it was coming. Whatever the situation we need to resist and run. If we do not, it is only a matter of time before we will give in to the temptation.

I will probably be sharing more of what I learn from Joseph's life. I will warn you ahead of time in each of those blogs in case you don't want to read about what I am gleaning from this book! Or, maybe you should borrow this book from a library and see what God says to you through it. When I am done reading the book I would be more than happy to lend it to you also!