1. You are my son/daughter. This states ownership on my part, and identity on theirs. It gives them a place to belong, in my family. This is the foundational statement on which the other two phrases are built.

2. I love you. This is one of those phrases I don’t think I can say enough. This tells my kids I accept them as they are. My boys are finally to the age where they randomly say to me, “I love you, dad”. I treasure those unprompted comments from them.

3. I am proud of you. My pride in them is not because of performance, but because they are mine. I regularly ask my oldest, “Do you know why I am proud of you?” He always looks me back in the eyes, smiles, and proudly says, “Because I’m your son.” Occasionally, he’ll say he doesn’t remember why I’m proud of him. I don’t mind when he does that. It’s his way of telling me he needs to hear it from me again.

Where did I get this? From the example God set for us as Father. At the baptism of Jesus, before He had done anything of significance in His earthly ministry, God says in Matthew 3:17: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

…God was claiming Him as His own. Because of his sonship, God loved him and was proud of him.

These words are powerful. Don’t believe me? Try them on your kids. Now remember, if you have gone some time without telling them this, you might feel weird or out of place. Let me encourage you to push through it. It’s worth it. (via Kevin East)

This is quite simply great advice and it will make a difference in your child’s life no matter how young or old they are. Don’t cheat them from knowing they are yours, that you love them, and that you are proud to be their parent.

“Jesus went up on a mountain and called out the ones he wanted to go with him. And they came to him. Then he appointed twelve of them and called them his apostles. They were to accompany him, and he would send them out to preach…” (Mark 3:13,14 NLT)

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus didn’t want everyone to go where he went? Textual clues in the narrative around these verses suggest that Jesus had a large and curious crowd wandering behind him. He also had a substantial subset within that crowd of more committed followers, willing to go anywhere. Out of that subset he chooses only a small group, twelve to be exact, to go with him and do what he did (preach the good news of the Kingdom and cast out demons).

Here’s my question: What did the committed subset do when he didn’t call them to go with him? And here’s my answer: Maybe they went home. This runs counter to our romantic thoughts about what it means to be a “real” disciple. I’m okay with that because I think we are oftentimes too romantic when we read the bible, thinking that we must be like the twelve in order to make a difference or be “real” disciples of Jesus. 

Consider though: were those who were not chosen to go preach and heal of no use to Jesus? Sounds crazy even to consider such a thing, doesn’t it? And it is when we stop and think about it. The truth is that those not called to go preach and teach were invaluable to the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in all the small little nooks and crannies of this world that they inhabited as part of their everyday and very ordinary life.

It’s passages like this (and like Mark 5:18-19) that help us see that Jesus doesn’t need or want everyone to be a preacher, or a missionary, or an aid worker. Rather, Jesus needs the bulk of us to continue traveling the well-worn paths we always have, and to do that as people who seek to manifest the Kingdom right where we are: in our homes with our family members, at school with our classmates, at work with our bosses, employees, or peers, and in our communities with people we love and those we struggle to love.

Jesus has an essential role for you to play in his Kingdom, even – or maybe especially – if he “only” calls you to be his child in your home and community instead of in some far off land preaching to and healing the masses. Let the Kingdom be manifest in small ways right where you are as you sow seeds of grace. Just perhaps those seeds that will grow into something bigger and better than anyone might expect (Mark 4:30ff)!

Imagine that God is light and that God is love. Now imagine that God’s Being is the lens through which the light of his love shines.

Last week I was talking with a friend about Jesus’ parable of the prodigal. It’s beautiful story (and if you’ve not read it, do so right now, you won’t be sorry) that captures the extravagant love of a father for his wayward sons. In the midst of the conversation it became apparent that there’s no indication that the father had to try to love his sons well, he just did it. And that got me thinking: why didn’t he have to try and why do I have to try so hard to love well (and yet fail so often in doing so)?

I don’t believe that God, represented as the father in Jesus’ parable, has to try to love us. He loves perfectly, all the time, without fail. His perfect love arises from who he is, rather than an effort of the will on his part. His love of his creation and his love of his children just comes naturally, even in the hardest of times like when Jesus does the loving thing even for those who happened to be crucifying him at the time.

The bible says that we are created in God’s image, that is, we are created to be the image-bearers of who he is, what he cares about, and how he acts in goodness and love. We are created in his likeness. When I hear this, I think of a lens and begin to imagine that we are the lenses through which God meant to project his light and love out into his creation. The problem is that we don’t do that too well. Try as we may we don’t love perfectly, or even close to it.

Why? Why can’t we be who we want and know we should be?

From a Christian perspective, the problem comes down to the belief that God’s image in us, the lens through which he wishes to shine the light of his love into his creation, is damaged. It’s scratched up, it’s spider-webbed, it’s broken into pieces; any projection through it – any effort to shine the his love through our being – will be distorted; the light of love just can’t shine through cracked lenses without distortion. And so, I believe this is the reason we can’t love God, others, ourselves, or creation except in a sometimes less, sometimes more, distorted fashion.

So what’s the hope?

The only hope for a lens that projects imperfectly is for that lens to be repaired and restored. If that could be fully restored then we would love naturally like the father in the parable and like the God who loves us. As I read the bible, the initial repair work on that image comes as we entrust our lens to the master lens-maker, and as we draw nearer and nearer to him, he reshapes his image-bearers to project his character, his love, his desires, better and better over time (1 Corinthians 3:16-18).

Yet, we still don’t project all that well right now, do we? And so God uses other tools around us, if we let him. The truth is that while we sense that we are broken image-bearers, we are too close to the problem and too inept to know how to fix our own lens. So we need to receive the corrective the input of his word to us regularly. We need to be open to what the natural consequences of our choices might teach us. We need the best input of others and what they see to help us, too.

Together, all three of these tools help us realize when we cast a distorted attempt at love and goodness into the world and onto others, ourselves, or God. But even more than that, if we cooperate with the Lord in his use of these tools, the broken lens of our being might just be polished here and there, or angled just a little differently now and then, or be pieced together a little better every once in a while, so in the end we grow better able to be a vehicle for the love God desires to shine into the world. And as we let that happen, perhaps we’ll have to try less and less to love better and better because we are being reshaped in his image, the image we were meant to reveal all along.

“I contend that to be saved is to be renewed in the true image of God as women and men in Christ, to have our relationality restored so that our sinful selves, hopelessly incurvatus in se [turned in on themselves], are set free to be new creations in true divine and human koinnia.” Cherith Fee Nordling via A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology

Lord, help me to cooperate fully with your efforts to restore your image in me. Help me be open to the work of your Son, my Savior, and the Holy Spirit toward this end. Help me also to read and receive your word and to be open to the insights of those in the Body of Christ about my brokenness. Please, let your work be done through this so that I can better reveal your love and goodness in the world.

Wright is careful in his examination of this question. For him
respecting the authority of scripture is not about saying “Well, we
just believe the bible and so we must of course be respecting it’s authority.” A
statement like this is too easy because a person might possibly
believe the bible in any number of ways, many of which might actually
fail to respect it’s structure (which is key for him) or do injustice to its core message, let alone honor
what the phrase “the authority of scripture” is really shorthand for.

What does that phrase make you think of? What does it mean to you when you think
about honoring the authority of scripture? As you think about your
response, consider what I read when I first began studying this
subject on my own as a new Christian, 25 years ago. The bottom line of
that research endeavor can be summed up in this equation:

No errors (scientific + theological + historical) + trustworthy
manuscripts = authoritative scripture

In other words, I learned that one could trust the bible – that the
bible was authoritative in the Christian’s life – because the copies
we had accurately represented the original documents and because the
original documents were without error of any kind.

That worked for me for a few years but eventually came crumbling down.
For starters, our copies aren’t perfect.  Just go to your bible and
read the last chapter of Mark and you’ll see that there is a debate as
to which copies to use for the end of his gospel. Beyond this, pick up
a Greek New Testament like the NA27, look at the associated apparatus, and you’ll see that there are
(mostly) minor manuscript alternatives (i.e. textual variants) on every page.
Upon discovering such things I no longer had confidence that our
copies were perfect. As a result, there began an erosion of the authority of the
bible in my mind about 20 years ago. In retrospect, this wasn’t because something authoritative was altogether absent, rather, it was that I was looking for authority in the wrong place.

There was, of course, a way forward for me or I wouldn’t be a pastor now. The solution came to me slowly, over the
course of a few years, and once it did I would never think of
scripture in the same way, let alone ever be the same person.

What happened? To summarize a long story, I transitioned from faith in the bible (e.g., “I can trust the bible because some equation holds”) to faith in God.
To put it more precisely, I came to believe that the Lord was able to
speak to his people through his scripture even if the bible we had in hand wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the bible that spoke, it was Him, through the bible!

As I would read in Wright’s book 20+ years later,

…the phrase ‘the authority of scripture’ can make Christian sense only if it is shorthand for ‘the authority of the triune God, exercised somehow through scripture… All authority is from God… scripture itself points away from itself and to the fact that final and true authority belongs to God. (p. 21)

What this means to Wright, and how it worked out in actuality in my life, is that we must see

the role of scripture not simply as being to provide true information about, or even an accurate running commentary upon, the work of God in salvation and new creation, but as taking part within that ongoing purpose… Scripture is a means of God’s action in and through us – which will include, but go far beyond, the mere conveying of information… God is continually revealing himself… (p. 27)

Here’s the point of all this: God speaks! Notice the tense there. He speaks today. It strikes me that the equation on which I relied two decades ago was an attempt to prove that God once spoke (notice the tense!) and that we had a reliable record of that. I have no such need to prove that God spoke yesterday (though I do, without question, believe that he did) because God speaks to me through his word today! As he speaks to me through scripture, he nurtures my growth, challenges my bent heart and mind, convicts me of my need for Christ, and comforts me with his undeniable love.

I’ve got some more thoughts on this topic, but that will suffice for now. In my next post I’ll be highlighting Wright’s thoughts on how to read this bible through which God speaks to us today.

Traveling with you,
Reed

Hebrews 1:1-2 in Greek with English interlinear from NA26

N.T. Wright is one of my favorite writers for two reasons. First, he makes me think about my faith in new and sometimes challenging ways. Second, because he exemplifies the pastor-teacher role to which I myself feel called (only he does it with a rigor and a reach that I will never be able to match). 

My recent foray into his thought has me reading a non-technical work on the bible called “Scripture and the Authority of God.” It’s a fun and rewarding read for me. Fun, because he takes the reader on a journey across centuries of biblical understanding (and misunderstanding). Rewarding, because he has helped me discover new ways to see an issue that I’ve been thinking about for a couple of decades: the continuity and discontinuity between the testaments in the bible. 

He writes… 

“{The early Christians} firmly believed that the Old Testament was, and remained, the book which God had given to his people – the covenant people who had spearheaded God’s purposes for the world and from whom the Messiah, Jesus, had come. But from the very beginning they read the ancient scriptures in a new way. This new way resulted in their recognizing that some parts of the scriptures were no longer relevant for their ongoing life – not, we must stress, because those parts were bad, or not God-given, or less inspired – but because they belonged with earlier parts of the story which had now reached it’s climax.” (p. 53)

He goes on to suggest, unsurprisingly, that this climax was found in Jesus.  The earliest Christians were therefore (because of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ) “quickly forced into thinking through the question of continuity and discontinuity (of the Old Testament as it related to the fledgling Christian community).” (p. 54) 

What continuities did they find? Things like “…God’s sovereign duty and promise to deal with evil; the covenant with Abraham as the framework by which God would achieve this universal aim… etc…” As for discontinuities things like “the ancient Jewish purity laws… the Temple in Jerusalem…and the sacrifices that took place there…” as well as circumcision came to the forefront (p. 55). 

He wraps up his discussion on this theme with a great illustration: “When travelers sail a vast ocean and finally arrive on the distant shore, they leave the ship behind  and continue over land, not because the ship was no good, or because their voyage had been misguided, but precisely because both ship and voyage had accomplished their purpose.” 

This illustration has it’s problems. For instance, unlike the ship, which was altogether left behind, relevant parts of the Old Testament are carried along for our journey in The Way (perhaps the illustration could be amended to say that while the ship is left behind the supplies that were held within the ship were taken along for the journey). That said, the line of thinking that this illustration represents is a great way to start to re-envision the way we are to respond to the authority of scripture in our lives.  While we accept that all scripture is inspired, what do we take along to provision our journey forward and how do we honor all of scripture while we do this? 

More thoughts on this subject to come…

Traveling with you,
Reed

One (and only one) way is described in this verse: Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. (Acts 16:25 NLT)

The full story here is that Paul and Silas were in the deepest part of the prison after having been thrown there for nothing more than freeing a girl from that which held her captive. In other words, they did the right thing and as a result were arrested, beaten severely, and chained in a dungeon. So how did they share the good news here? They simply attested to the faithfulness of the Lord, through their prayers and hymns, even in the midst of their unjust circumstance. As they did this, people listened and God moved.

One of the things I’m learning is that holding to and sharing about the faithfulness of God to when your life isn’t going well is something that people pay attention to. We all go through tough times. We all wonder why certain things are happening to us that seem unjust, or at the very least sad to the full. In the midst of this we must remember: no matter what, God is faithful. Remember that, share from that, and you will have people wondering about this God who is with you in your circumstance. Perhaps the most powerful time we have to share our faith is when the world is crashing down around us. It is at that time that a faithful witness to God’s faithfulness is something that people will listen to.

If you’re having a rough go of it right now, remember that you’re not alone: God is with you and many, many others who trust in him have been in troubled times as well. In these times, we have the unique opportunity to trust more deeply, and share of that trust with those who need to know the One in whom we find comfort.

The Spirit instructs us through the reading and exposition of the scriptures. The same Spirit who created the holy scriptures as he inspired its writers (2 Peter 1:20-21) illuminates its meaning and significance through its exposition (Romans 7:7; 1 Corinthians 2:12-14). Obviously this includes the meaning of a biblical text in its original context. Limiting his role to textual interpretation ignores two issues. First, any honest student of the scriptures quickly sees that those without the Spirit may reconstruct the literal-grammatical-historical meaning of the text just as well as those with the Spirit can. Secondly, New Testament references to “meat†and “milk†(1 Corinthians 3:1-23; Hebrews 5:11-6:12; 1 Peter 2:1-3) have less to do with the meaning of the scriptures than with their application. These suggest that illumination has more do with application than exegetical understanding. The Spirit directs our acts toward his goals of holiness and unity in community. He convicts us where we fail to live up to what we already possess. He enriches our worship according to his larger design for God’s sanctuary on the earth.

Ralston in The Spirit’s Role in Corporate Worship

A good many people nowadays say, “I believe in a God, but not in a personal God.” They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.

Again, some people think that after this life, or perhaps after several lives, human souls will be “absorbed” into God. But when they try to explain what they mean, they seem to be thinking of our being absorbed into God as one material thing is absorbed into another. They say it is like a drop of water slipping into the sea. But of course that is the end of the drop. If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the same as ceasing to exist. It is only the Christians who have any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves—in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before.

How this happens, how God as one being/three persons, can lead us to love, salvation, and worship will be the focus of the next three messages in this series. If Lewis is right, then we must get serious about our study of the Trinity. And of course, to study the Trinity you’ll need to learn about God. How does this knowledge of God as super-personal, as triune, come into human awareness; even more, how did it come to be a central doctrine of the Christian faith?

It was received through the content of the revelation that the Church has held dear for nearly 2000 years. It wasn’t thought up, but accepted as truth revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. Remember, we know what we know about God in his essence because he reveals it to us (link).

What we observe in the biblical record is that God has revealed a little more of himself to us at the threshold of every major covenant or promise that he made to humankind. At his covenant with Abraham, he revealed himself not as God-Almighty (Genesis 17:1). At the covenant with the people of Israel, he names himself “I am†or YHWH (Exodus 3:14; Exodus 6:3). When the Christ comes to this earth to initiate God’s promise of salvation for all, his very name reveals God as the “The Lord Who Saves†(Matthew 1:21). And then, at the apex of God’s work of redemption in the world, at the very peak of his faithful promise-giving, the pattern remains consistent. God reveals himself to us further as the new covenant is offered to us, and he reveals to us his name: ¹⁸Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:18-19 (NIV)[1]

The… “phrasing is…remarkable. It does not say, “In the names (plural) of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghostâ€; nor yet (what might be taken to be equivalent to that), “In the name of the Father, and in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Ghost,†as if we had to deal with three separate Beings. Nor, on the other hand does it say, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,†as if “the Father, Son and Holy Ghost†might be taken as merely three designations of a single person. With stately impressiveness it asserts the unity of the three by combining them all within the bounds of the single Name; and then throws up into emphasis the distinctness of each by introducing them in turn with the repeated article: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (the King James Version). These three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, each stand in some clear sense over against the others in distinct personality: these three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, all unite in some profound sense in the common participation of the one Name.[2]

Outside of the manner in which God names himself, the Lord has also revealed several other truths about his essence:

• First, God has revealed himself as One and only One God.
  
  Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV) This verse is the beginning of one of the most important prayers in the Jewish faith, the Shema, which grounds them, and us, in the belief that the they have a special relationship with their God, YHWH, and that he is One, rather than many gods, as the nations around them believed. Essentially, both Jews and Christians look to this verse, among many, and find in it the declaration that God is One. Interestingly, the word echad in Hebrew can imply a unity in diversity (the word for one and only one, i.e., unique, is more often rendered as yachid).^[1]

  Then in Isaiah 43:10, the Lord says this of himself (and his people): ¹⁰“You are my witnesses,†declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. ¹¹I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.

  And finally, consider again in Isaiah what he says: ⁵I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, Isaiah 45:5 (NIV)

  So what does this mean? What do these verses, which are simply a few examples from Scripture, say? This: To believe in God as he has revealed himself to the world through his word is to be a monotheist, believing in one God, not two or three or thousands. There is one God and only one God. Anything else goes against God’s self-revelation, the sharing of his knowledge of himself with us.

• Second, the One God, who is One Being, has revealed himself as Three Persons who are all co-equally and co-eternally God.That God has revealed himself as the Father, is evident throughout the new testament. In fact, the phrase, God the Father, occurs in the New Testament 18 times. For example, Jesus himself calls God the Father in ²⁷Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.†John 6:27 (NIV)

  But the Father isn’t the only one who is called God. Jesus is also. You see this in Thomas’ confession in John 20 where he falls before Jesus and calls him “my Lord and my God.†But perhaps most clearly we see that Jesus is God in John 1:1,14, where he is referred to as the Word in the passage: ¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… ¹⁴The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1,14 (NIV)

  So we see so far from just a few verses that God is revealing something to us. He is revealing that he is one God and that he is God the Father and God the Son. And beyond that, God reveals to us that the Holy Spirit is God as well.  See if you can pick up the implication here in this account from Acts where someone lied: ³Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? ⁴Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing?†Now where does that say that the Holy Spirit is God? So far, it doesn’t. But I stopped short, didn’t I? Because Peter continues: You have not lied to men but to God.†Acts 5:3-4 (NIV)

  Taken together, these passages reveal to us a God who says he is one being, indivisible, eternal and that there are no other gods, and that this one God, this one being above all, is three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. Not one or the other, but all three.

• Finally, we see that these three persons are distinct, not just different appearances or manifestations of the same God changing costumes. We can see this in Jesus’ call for us to be baptized into the Name of the true God: Father, Son and Spirit (Matthew 28:18-19). It would be silly to do so if they were simply masks that the real God behind the name wore. It would also be silly for Paul to write what he does in 2 Corinthians 13:14 if God was simply changing masks instead of one real being and three real persons: ¹⁴May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

  One more example is from Matthew 3:16-17 where we can see all three working in harmony in the baptism of God the Son: ¹⁶As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.â€

• The Doctrine of the Trinity
  
  When taken altogether, these (and many other biblical) observations have led the Church across the ages to the doctrine of the Trinity and the proclamation that God has revealed himself as the Holy Trinity: one Being who eternally exists as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—who are each eternally, fully and equally God.

  This, as we’ll come to see in the rest of the series, is the very foundation of love, salvation, the Christian life, and worship.

[1] Letham, Robert. (2004). The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship, p. 411.

[2] Orr, J., M.A., D.D. (1999). The International standard Bible encyclopedia (J. Orr, Ed.). Albany, OR: Ages Software.

^[3]In the famous Shema of Deut 6:4, “Hear, O Israel … the LORD is one,†the question of diversity within unity has theological implications. Some scholars have felt that, though “one†is singular, the usage of the word allows for the doctrine of the Trinity.  Harris, R. L., Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., & Waltke, B. K. (1999, c1980). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed.) (030). Chicago: Moody Press.

16Joseph answered Pharaoh, “It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.†…38And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?†39Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. 40You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you.†Genesis 41:38-40 (ESV)

Genesis 37-50 tells the story of Joseph, who after having been sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, eventually rose to great power in the Egyptian government. Of course, his route to this place wasn’t easy. Along the way he was met by difficult circumstances galore (like being sold into slavery by jealous brothers, falsly accused of impropriety, unjustly imprisoned, and forgotten by those he’d helped). In spite of all of this, or perhaps because of it, Joseph became the man he was because he knew the limitations of his own ability and the limitless power of God.

His statement in v16 is not artificially self-deprecating, rather it is an accurate observation that God is the one with the power and the answers. It is a lesson I need to realize because it is true. It is not the smartest, the best connected or the most ambitious who is of greatest benefit to his world, rather, it is the one who is humbly connected to his God that brings the best good to others! We can see this in Pharoah’s response v38. Notice that while “all the Pharaoh’s horses and all the Pharaoh’s men” weren’t up to the task, the one who was listening to God’s lead was.

What provided the foundation from which Joseph would be part of saving a nation from famine (and the consequences of it, like poverty, crime, illness, and death)? It wasn’t striving for himself and it wasn’t proclaiming his own smarts. Instead, it was waiting upon God to provide the answer, who used even the evil in Joseph’s past experiences to place him where he needed to be at just the right time and with just the right heart.

I need to be like Joseph. I need to remember that I will bring the best good for those near to me, those for whom I’m accountable, if I humbly submit to God’s lead and his word to me/us. Then, and only then, can I truly be shown what I need to see… to bring lasting good into this world.

Father, keep me in the mindset that Joseph was in. Keep me in the place he was at. Joseph was a man who humbly knew that all true wisdom and knowledge comes from you. I pray that my attitude would be his so that I might possibly be used to save others. It is the one who is connected humbly to you that brings the best good to those near to them… help me to be that!