FAMILY IT! — Wednesday Family Devotional — “Roller Coaster Livin’ ”

Supplies: Bible

READ

Start your time together this week by reading Genesis 39 together.  If you have younger children, try reading from a good children’s Bible, or you can reword the PG section with Potiphar’s wife.

SHARE 

Joseph’s life story is often compared to a roller coaster.  He’s a child growing up, he becomes the favorite son, he gets a beautiful coat (up, up, up), theeeeeen life bottoms out and he’s sold into slavery by his brothers.  Crash!  Now he’s working hard for Potiphar, becomes head of the household, lots of responsibilities and trust (up, up, up), theeeeeen thrown into jail for a crime he didn’t commit.  Crash!  It’s almost hard to read: you see life going so well, but you know the fall is just around the corner.   

Part of what makes it so challenging to read, I think, is because it is so like our own life experience.  Life really can be a series of ups and downs.  Things are going great, everything’s peachy, then some random tragedy strikes. One of the most significant crash-moments for me happened in my senior year of high school.  It was just a few weeks until graduation, and life was goooood.  I had my acceptance letter to college, I was receiving a lot of honors for my various academic and extra-curricular achievements—I was at the top of my game.  Then CRASH—my dad was laid off.  A lot of the life I knew changed in that moment, and honestly, 20+ years later, I’m still feeling the effects from that experience.

What about you?  What’s your roller coaster experience?  Can you think of a time when life kind of bottomed out or got really hard really fast?  Share that with your family.  How did it feel?  What helped you get through that tough season?

THINK

So we’ve established that life can be unpredictable and, truthfully, kind of crummy at times.  Now go back to the scripture story and read verses 2-4.  Read it again.  God was with Joseph.  Yes, Joseph was a slave, Yes, he was separated from his father and everything that was precious to him.  But God was with him.  And not just in a “God is everywhere, so of course He was with Joseph” kind of way.  God was with Joseph so much that other people noticed!  God’s presence brought Joseph success and prosperity, even in slavery.  He blessed Joseph so much that Potiphar wanted as much of that prosperity to rub off on his own household as was humanly possible.  Jump down to verse 21 and you see the pattern repeated with the prison warden.  Joseph suffered incredible injustices, but through it all, the Lord was with him.

APPLY

Each of us will suffer through our own injustices in life.  Friends will betray you for no good reason.  Your company will downsize and you’ll be forced to move across country just to keep your job.  Because of the job move, someone else in the family will have to leave friends behind and start at a new school.  Financial struggles, health struggles, relationship struggles.  The question is never IF life will get challenging.  It will.  The only question is what form will it take and how will you handle it.  

Just like Joseph, the Lord is with you.  As one of His precious children, He has promised to never leave you or forsake you.  Even when the bottom drops out of life, He is right there with you.  When your life crashes, will you be able to let God’s presence shine through you?  Will you accept His love and companionship, His desire to show you kindness and favor, even in the middle of crummy circumstances?  It’s the difference between surviving life’s roller coaster and thriving in life’s roller coaster.  When we let God love us through the tough times in life, turning toward Him instead of away from Him, we are blessed by His presence AND we let that light shine through for others to see, just like Potiphar and the prison warden did.  

You may be in a tough season of life right now.  If not, you know one is out there somewhere in the future.  Pray and ask for God’s felt presence at the crash site.  If you’re in the middle of the struggle, try memorizing Genesis 39:2 as encouragement and a reminder that your God is right here with you through it all.  Always.

PRAY

Loving Father, thank you for being with us in all that happens.  It’s easy to see you when we’re riding the wave of blessing, but it’s harder to remember you’re there when things crash down around us.  Help us, God, to feel your presence in the middle of the crash site, and to let your glory shine through us even then so that others will see you, too.  In Your Name we pray, Amen.

REPLY

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