Last week Roger asked a question that may be one of the most important and significant questions that you or I could ask. It is a simple question that, if we allow it to become the filter through which we view every area of our lives, could dramatically change who we are, how we relate to those in our world, and how we live out the responsibilities that make up our lives. The question is: "What would someone—in your life circumstances, with your challenges, your abilities and gifts, your needs, your possessions, your struggles, and your responsibilities—do if they were absolutely confident that God was with them? What would it look like if every morning, every moment, every event of the day—before I reacted, over-reacted, responded to or pulled back from, what would it look like if I was to ask myself what if God was with me.

What if that question were to live on the forefront of our minds and lips? If before every opportunity, every doubt or insecurity or fear, every situation that we jump at because we feel confident or those where we pull back and procrastinate because we aren’t sure what to say or do, we were to pause and ask, "What would someone do, what would I do, if I was absolutely confident that God was with me?" What if this question were the lens through which we viewed our every need, our prosperity, our response to people and circumstances that come into our lives. What would someone, who is me, do if I were absolutely confident that God was with me? The answer to that question can change your life. If that question were to live front and center in our minds it has the potential to bring balance and integrity to all our decisions and the potential to get to the depths of all our insecurities and fears and even to some of the misplaced, arrogant pride that seeps into our lives. It has the power to bring all of life into proper perspective, because if you are a God follower, a Christian, how you answer that fleshes out your faith in God and the promise that He makes to you that He is with you all the time, in everything.

The way we are tracking this question is through the episodes of Joseph’s life. Not the Joseph of Mary and Joseph in the Christmas story, but another Joseph that shows up towards the end of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. It is the story of a guy who has more challenges than you or I will ever have. He has more wealth, power and prosperity than you or I will ever have. And has more opportunity to get back and pay back the people who hurt him the most than you or I will ever have. It is a story of extremes: Extreme hardship and mistreatment by his own family and extreme prosperity and influence that comes his way. You met him last week and heard about the down time—the pit—he went through. I’d like to present him again and talk about another episode of his life that has a very different ending for him.

There is a recurring phrase in the story of Joseph, "the Lord was with Joseph…" Over and over that phrase is repeated as if to remind us when we are reading that God is with him: in the desperate times when he may have felt abandoned and alone to times of potential opportunity and prosperity. In fact we are probably more apt to forget about God in times of prosperity and opportunity than we are in times of need.

Joseph lived out this question; what would someone do in your circumstances—thrown into a well and sold as a slave by your own brothers, accused of rape and thrown into prison. What would someone do if they were absolutely confident that God was with them in the midst of that kind of mistreatment? People notice that kind of confident faith in the midst of tremendous crisis. But how does he do when the other extreme presents itself in his life where he is faced with tremendous opportunity and prosperity?

Genesis 41 walks through this experience for Joseph. Remember, one of the trademarks of God’s presence with Joseph was his ability to interpret dreams. For two full years Joseph remains in prison, forgotten by the Pharaoh’s cupbearer, maybe feeling a little forgotten by God. The Pharaoh has a couple of dreams. "In the first dream he is standing by the Nile when out of the river came up seven cows, sleek and fat, grazing among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank. And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek and fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up. He fell asleep again and this time he dreams: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk. After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted—thin and scorched by the east wind. The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy full heads. Then Pharaoh woke up."

Pharaoh is troubled by these dreams and calls in all his advisors, magicians and wise men of Egypt to interpret these dreams, but no one can tell him what they mean. Then his cupbearer suddenly remembers his own dreams and he says to the Pharaoh, "Today I am reminded of my shortcomings. Pharaoh was angry with his servants and imprisoned me and the chief baker…we each had a dream one night…there was a young Hebrew there, a servant of the captain of the guard… we told him our dreams and he interpreted them for us and things turned out exactly as he interpreted them to us…So Pharaoh sent for Joseph and he is quickly brought from the dungeon…shaved and cleaned up and Pharaoh says to Joseph, "I had a dream and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it."

What does Joseph, who seems absolutely confident that God is with him, do? He says, "I cannot do it…but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires." You could probably hear all the oxygen being sucked out of the room. That room was filled with people whose goal was to be close to power, wealth and prestige. And they had probably gotten there by telling the Pharaoh exactly what they thought he wanted to hear. Can you imagine what was going through the cupbearer’s mind as Joseph said first he couldn’t do it and then that God could? In Egypt the Pharaohs were often considered to be gods themselves, so for Joseph to throw out an answer like that had the potential to make a mockery of the Pharaoh himself.

Because Joseph was confident that God was with him he publicly declares his dependence on God. That is what someone who is confident that God is with them does. They don’t give in to the pressure to please people or compromise their faith in intimidating situations. This had to be intimidating. All of us have been in these situations, maybe not to this extreme, but situations where we could easily acknowledge the difference that God has made in our lives, but because of the environment we convince ourselves that this is not a place where God belongs, so we don’t declare that what we do or who we are is because of Him.

I think Joseph could declare his dependence on God publicly in this unbelievable opportunity in the palace because he was confident God had been with him in the pit. Joseph was faithful in obscurity and he was going to be faithful in opportunity. When we make a daily practice of getting to know God: reading the Bible, prayer, thinking about God’s presence with us, our confidence in God, our faith grows so that when we are faced with either the hard, down times or the prosperous, opportunity times we will respond in ways that others will recognize that God is with us. It takes a conscious decision to do that on a daily basis. Dallas Willard in his book, Hearing God says that God is with us in a conversational manner. A conversational relationship. He does speak to us through His Word, the Bible, and through other means that we can train ourselves to recognize. The Apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 9:25—27: "Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training…Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly…No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." The illustration of a well-trained athlete, confident and competent at game time, is the same as someone who is trained in recognizing God’s presence with them in the crisis and opportunities of life.

Pharaoh proceeds to tell Joseph his dreams. The seven fat cows devoured by the seven ugly lean cows and the seven fat heads of grain that are devoured by the seven withered, thin and wind-scorched grains.

Genesis 41:28-40: "Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘the dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years and the seven good heads of grain are seven years…the seven ugly cows that came up afterward are seven years and the seven worthless heads of grain…They are seven years of famine.’"

He explains that there will be seven years of great abundance in the land, but seven years of famine will follow and in those seven years of famine all the abundance will be forgotten and the famine will ravage the land. Joseph says to Pharaoh, "‘It is just as I said to Pharaoh: God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do…The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon.’" Then Joseph, confident that God is with him, moves beyond interpreting the dream to advising the Pharaoh what he should do: "‘And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. This food should be held in reserve for the country to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt so that the country may not be ruined by the famine…Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, Since God has made all this known to you there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.’"

People that are confident that God is with them boldly take action. Joseph wasn’t an armchair prophet or just a consultant that came in, interpreted the dream and said, "Pharaoh, good luck."

Joseph knew that faith takes action. It isn’t passive. About a month ago I was in Mexico City for some meetings with my ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ. We are trying to figure out how in a city of almost 20 million people we can build movements of students in the universities where every student knows someone who truly follows Jesus. One of the strategies for that city is to find the Christ followers on the campus and ask them if they would be willing to learn and lead a movement like this. So one day our assignment was to go on a campus in the city and just see if you can find a Christian and ask them if they would be willing to lead this. I have to admit that I thought, "Yes I’m confident God could lead us to this person, but I’m a little skeptical." With my skeptical faith I took action. I probably wouldn’t say it was bold initially. I was with two other people and we walked on to this campus. We started asking students if they knew any Christians. "Who are the most spiritual people on campus?" Pretty soon students would say, "Oh, you need to meet so and so." Or one group was told that the Christians usually meet on this part of the campus. One girl was asked if she knew any Christians on campus and she got this big smile and said, "I’m a Christian, and I think my pastor would be interested in helping to do this." By the end of the day we had a list of students who had expressed interest in learning more about this on multiple campuses throughout the city.

When God gave Joseph the interpretation and Pharaoh appointed him in charge, Joseph remained confident that in this sudden opportunity and prosperity God was still with him and because God was with him he needed to leverage what he had, his position, his possessions, his power, for others. Genesis 41:46–49: "Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh King of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout Egypt. During the seven years of abundance the land produced plentifully. Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities…" and Genesis 41:56, 57: "When the famine had spread over the whole country, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians…"

Joseph didn’t use his position to hoard and accumulate things for himself. It is more likely that wealth and prosperity has the potential to pull us away from faith in God than does poverty and need. When you are in need you pray. How do you maintain that attitude that I am going to live my life confident that God is with me even when things go your way? Three perspectives help. First that God is a promise-keeping God. This is one of those "wow" moments I had in my study of Joseph. Part of the promise that God first made to Joseph’s great grandfather Abraham was that all the nations would be blessed through him. Joseph’s role in Egypt was the beginning of that promise to make Abraham’s descendants a blessing to all the nations. God keeps his promises.

Joseph also lived out the perspective all I have comes from God. All his prosperity, all the abilities that Joseph had came from God. I think Joseph knew that God didn’t bless him because of him or for him. When all of the funding came in to build the temple, King David was expressing his thanks to God when he said, "But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand…it comes from your hand and it all belongs to you…" My talents, my gifts, my abilities, my finances all come from God and belong to God. I am just a manager of all this and when I am absolutely confident that God is with I can leverage what I have for others.

A third perspective is that God promises to meet my needs. One of the promises in the Bible says, "And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." That is one of those promises from God that we can lean into and step out by faith in absolute confidence that God is with us, so we can give generously, we can boldly interview for that job, or boldly develop ourselves so that we can do the best job that we can in our work.

One last thing that Joseph does is that he found a way to memorialize his past. It is easy to forget where we came from. Joseph didn’t want to do that so this is what he did. He had two kids in Egypt and it says in verse 51, "Joseph named his first born Manasseh and said, ‘It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.’ The second son he named Ephraim and said, ‘It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.’"

His kids were a constant reminder of where he had been and where he was. It wasn’t: "Look what I have done, look what I have done!" These reminders were, "Look what God has done." We need to establish reminders of what God has done in our lives.

It is probably too late to name your kids, and I wouldn’t recommend renaming them. It may be a picture that you can display that can remind you where you have been and what God has brought you to. It may be a verse or phrase that sits on your desk. One pastor has a note on his keyboard that he typed up when he began his church. It says, "Lord this was not my idea. You got me into this; you must see me through." We can be forgetful, and we need these reminders to help us remember and to recognize God’s presence with us.

So what would someone in your circumstances do if they were absolutely confident that God was with them? They would establish physical reminders of where God has brought them from and where He has brought them to. They would leverage what they have—possessions, talents, abilities, and finances—for others. They would boldly step out in faith and look for ways, given who they are and their personalities to publicly declare, "It’s not me. It is God."