10-28-12 PM Sermon - In God's Waiting Room

Click here (or right click and select "save as") to download "In God's Waiting Room"

Click here to watch the service


In God’s Waiting Room

Genesis 39:19 - 40:23

Three ways Joseph COULD have responded.

1. Anger and bitterness.

 He CHOSE to trust God and believe in His plan and His goodness to him.

2. Manipulate his situation for his own good.

3. Forsake God.The people who trust God’s plan sees affliction and suffering as a time of spiritual growth. And this growth is because of a deep confidence in God and what He’s doing to them and thru them.

Good character rarely grows in an atmosphere of priviledge,  it primarily develops in the dark “waiting rooms” of pain and suffering.

So how did Joseph respond?

1. Joseph trusted God’s character. (39:21-23, 40:8)

Hebrews 13:5.” I will never leave you, nor will I ever desert you.

What did Joseph do in response to God‘s good character?

A. He responded with faithfulness.

Character is built when faithfulness grows.

B. He responded by serving others.

When you learn to trust in God’s character, your character will grow as well.

“When christians avoid suffering, they never develop character“. So how did Joseph respond?

2. Joseph remembered God’s promise. (40:8)

Joseph’s confidence in God was based in God’s divine revelation.

God is not slow, in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness (2 Peter 3:9).

The watchword for us when we’re hurting, or just waiting, isn’t escape, it’s Endurance.

James 1 says, the testing of our faith produces endurance. Hebrews 12:11 says, all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

James 1 says, the testing of our faith produces endurance. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

3. Joseph recognized God’s hand. (40:1-4, 8, 14, 15)God uses adversity as a tool to chisel away the areas of our lives that don’t reflect his holy character that he desired for us to show. He is intent on developing  your character, and not leaving you to stay the way he found you.