“Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The LORD was with Joseph and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.” (Gen 39:1-5NIV)
One of the things we must keep in mind is that we are not in charge of life – God is. And because we are not in charge of life, we cannot make certain things in life go the way we want them to go. But if we will learn to see God in whatever situation we may find ourselves and also learn to make the most of that situation, God will surely use the situation to bring about the fulfilment of His good purpose for our lives.
Now that is one of the things we learn from the bible story of Joseph. He was sold to Egypt as a young man. He was sold by his own brothers because they were jealous of him. But did he allow that to destroy him? No! Did he see that as the death of all the dreams of greatness God had shown him? No!
What, then, did he do? He sought to use his position as a slave to learn and make himself fit for greatness in life. In other words, he looked beyond his low status in life as slave to what he could use that position to learn and accomplish in life. Therefore, as we see in our opening text, it was not very long at all before he distinguished himself to his master as someone more than a slave, as someone that was absolutely reliable and a great manager of people and resources.
Now because Joseph distinguished himself in this manner, his master, Potiphar, put him in charge of everything he owned. Thin about that. The man entrusted him with everything he owned, home and abroad, even though he was only slave, even though he did not know his family background and even though he had received no recommendation letter from anyone about him. Why? The young man used his low position to prove himself as someone more than a slave.
We too need to learn to prove ourselves to be worthy of people’s trust and of great positions in life wherever we are. People, if they are not stupid, racial or selfish, will not just put us in great positions in life because we desire them or because we have dreamt about them. Rather, they will put us in positions of greatness in life because we have proved ourselves worthy of them.
How do we prove ourselves worthy of great positions in life? It is by handling whatever our hands find to do where we are in great and excellent ways. In other words, even if what is entrusted to us where we ae is something little or insignificant, if we will give it the touch of greatness and significance, people will take note of it and of us. And that will inspire them to try us with bigger things.
But if we are handling whatever is committed into our hands loosely and without seriousness, we will just be proving ourselves to be loose and unserious. And no one, in their right senses, will ever see us as fit for any kind of greatness, even though we have been recommended to them by very important people in life.
For instance, how do people become head of cleaners in most of our companies or organisations? It is usually through the way they handle their jobs as ordinary cleaners. Yes, cleaning jobs workplace (and I am not referring to those who have set up cleaning businesses here) are among the most demeaning jobs you can give to anyone in today’s world. But if someone can rise to be the head cleaner in an organisation, that person will be proving that he can be a leader in handling something better, if circumstances of life permit him.
Well, the point of it all is that we must not allow ourselves to become useless in life because we are not yet occupying a great position. Instead, we are to use whatever position we are in life, however low it may seem, to learn and prove ourselves as deserving something better. Then God, who comforts the downcast and raises up beggars from the dust, will cause His favour to rest upon us and use that position as a stepping stone to take us from where we are to where He wants us to be in life.
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