Does God care about the details in our lives? Where is God when we find ourselves in the midst of suffering? In this video, Pastor David Platt explains that God is always orchestrating the details of our lives, but often through someone else. Pastor Platt uses the story of Joseph to illustrate the plan that God had for him. Instead of immediately promoting Joseph in Egypt, God proved his sovereignty through a complex series of events in Joseph’s life. When we suffer and feel like God is distant, we can trust that God is near and is working in us and others.
- Trusting God
- The World Does Not Revolve Around Us
Watch Full Message of Our Suffering and God’s Sovereignty: The Life of Joseph
Turning Evil into Good
Don’t you sometimes wonder, “Does God see this? Is God aware of what’s happening right now?” We begin to wonder if God sees or if God cares, if God is overlooking some of the details in our lives. This is where I want to remind you, brothers and sisters, for all who trust in God, God is ever orchestrating all of the details in your life.
Again, not in some way that people aren’t responsible for sin, that’s not what we’re seeing in this story. Instead of what we’re seeing is the God who is working behind the scenes at every second, and think of it, I use this language intentionally here, God is orchestrating a variety of circumstances.
God is Good
You think about Joseph’s life, you could take any one of a number of incidents that happened to him and you could write tragedy over the top of them. But when you put them all together, you see a beautiful picture of what God was doing in it all. Think about Joseph in prison. He tells the cupbearer what his dream means, and he says, “Please don’t forget me.” And the cupbearer totally forgets him. Well, praise God he forgot Joseph so that at just the right time, when Pharaoh needs a dream interpreted, the cupbearer just happens to be standing there at that moment and says, “I know a guy who can help you interpret that dream.” You don’t plan that. God has this thing rigged.
God is orchestrating a variety of circumstances in a variety of people. Do we realize today that your life or my life is not the only life God is working in? Who can imagine the world does not revolve around us? So to go back to the cupbearer situation, the only reason that cupbearer was in prison is because he had apparently done something minor that had upset Pharaoh. So God used a bad mood one day in Pharaoh’s life to send a cupbearer to prison so he could have a dream one night, look confused the next morning, see Joseph walked by at that moment. This is not just God working in Joseph’s life. This is God working in everybody’s life.
So realize this, when you or I ask, “God, what are you doing in my life?” The answer may be what God is doing in somebody else’s life.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
