All the years Joseph spent wandering from one problem to another. From the pit to Potiphar’s house to the prison, and finally to the King’s palace. All that while, he couldn’t have occurred to him to contemplate what his contemporaries were busy doing which by conventional wisdom, a-must-do to be dubbed responsible. But this is not to say Joseph was doing nothing. As a matter of fact he was doing a lot more than those who seemed to be busy doing something ‘’responsibly’’. He was doing better than those who at that time were in the universities studying to get a degree, those who were planning their wedding engagements, those who were learning the presumed best-selling trade skills at that time just like every Tom, Dick and Harry throng after tech skills today just because of the mouth watering paycheck associated with it and other endeavors rooted in the need to keep up with the joneses.
All of Joseph’s experience were preparatory to his stepping into the promising future God foretold him repetitively in the dream couple of times.
The Bible says in Gen 39:23 that the attention of the prison’s warder were shifted from Joseph while He was in the prison and succeeded at all he did. A carnal person will wonder what kind of success is obtainable in the prison. But what is success to the divine is failure to the carnal.
But why did I say Joseph was doing better than most of all his busy contemporaries despite his being in incarceration? It is because He was under God’s tutelage. His kindergarten experience he had while still with his folks in his father’s house, elementary education he had when he was in the dry pit, he was enrolled in the potiphar’s house for his high school needs and within the confines of the walls of an Egyptian prison; he undertook his university education. God was busy using all of his life’s challenges and persecution on different fronts to deconstruct him and bring him into a new awareness of self in preparation for the main level God wants him to be to handle the main event.
He rode on the ebb and flow of a divine order and orchestration. He did not struggle with the tide. It is not by power and not by might; says the Lord of host. Zechariah 4:6.
Joseph was never busy pursuing economic development strategists that most probably could be rife in his time, or do you think madness like that is just beginning in our generation? But at last, did he not have access to stupendous wealth? I mean holistic one. Money, power and respect (MPR), all combined in one for one man. What even if at the end he did not have access to money like he did, what does it count? To serve God is not a license to getting millions of Naira. Whether you will have a lot of money or not is your maker’s prerogative. You have no right to query Him. This was why Jesus said whoever is not willing to leave his/her family in order to follow Him is not worthy to be called His disciple. But what is more familiar to one than one’s desire? If you are not ready to forego your desire to be rich and allow only God’s will, then you are not willing to be part of God’s kingdom.
Joseph did not eventually become wealthy because he desired to be wealthy but became rich because it is catalytic to his life purpose coming to fruition. His Staying in the purpose of God will automatically give him access to money, power and respect because it is a necessity for him to do the work of God peculiar to him.
This is why Joseph must have unlimited access to MPR (money, power, respect): God has ordained him to be the siphon planted in Egypt, through whom the Egyptian wealth to be employed in cultivating the children of Israel to that numerical strength He wants them to attain before making them slid into slavery and eventually delivered, shall come.
God promised Abraham the deliverance will be great and awesome ages before Joseph was even conceived; hence having them like the numerous stars pervading the night sky he showed Abraham in a vision must occur. It is part of the game plan and somebody is needed for God to achieve all of these through. Joseph made himself available.
God had to train Joseph to the point he is trusted enough to make a godly use of the MPR God had reserved for him in Egypt that happened to be a foreign land to him because neither by nativity nor birth, he belonged there. Imagine a foreigner from an unknown background with a rough and squalid antecedent, becoming a prime minister. The citizens obviously must be sleeping. God is involved, hence, nothing is impossible.
God would never have entrusted such position in the hands of an ungodly or a carnal individual with lack of self awareness who when might have gotten to this position will be busy using the resources to fund his insatiable and lustful appetites.
Imagine he is not God-conscious; he would have destroyed his brothers when they came to Egypt for foods on account of how cruelly they dealt with him in the past. Is destroying them not destroying the plan of God to grow the first few that arrived Egypt to settle? Those whom God later multiplied into the mammoth population preserved to fall into slavery and eventually delivered?
No life pursuits matter except God’s purpose and will for you. In this is wrapped all you needed to be fulfilled in life. When your pursuits are the Kingdom of God which in other word is the will and purpose of His for you and your doing its righteousness which is tantamount to yielding to it, then, your chase is not in vain like King Solomon seemed to generalize. He uttered these words based on his personal experience about life which was rooted in how he wasted it on pursuits of worldliness. He did not realize his vain pursuits while he was dinning and sipping on exotic wine with his bevy of beauties in his palace. He uttered this statement when Mr. death was hovering above him on his dying bed. His experience compelled him to realize and talk like that.
In the contrary, death did not compel Jesus Christ our Lord to murmur vanity upon vanity while nailed to the cross; rather, he confidently told God, ‘’I have glorified you Father, glorify me’’. He was able to talk in this manner because of his experience too. His experience took its root from living not for himself but for God alone. He allowed nothing to lure him from walking the path God the Father had called Him to walk in while on earth. He did not allow a call to come take up a political position or indiscriminate use of his powers to turn stone to bread for the sake of the belly even amidst a compelling hunger to make him derail from the way.
When it’s time for you to die, what are you going to utter silently or loudly with your mouth or within your heart? Are you going to tell your maker; I have done for you well, please do me well too. Or you are going to repeat vanity upon vanity like Solomon did? It is up to you. You have the grace to live the life God has called you to live here on earth which is only through Christ. This is the original freedom. Any other is counterfeit.