 All right, good morning, Radiant Church. Good to be with you. My name's John, I'm the campus pastor here in Richland, also one of the teaching pastors. So a huge honor for me to be with you on the last weekend of 2019, which is crazy. So, but the Lord said to pass out bonus points because you guys came to church on the last weekend. So they're yours now, redeem them at some point. Portage, good to see you. You get double bonus points because I know some of you heard I had some less than positive things to say about portage. A few weeks ago, but I repented, I'm sorry, it was righteous, non-chick-fil-a jealousy that just rose up in me. So we love you, glad you're here. People watching online, welcome. If you're in some warm state with sun, welcome. Okay, good to be with you. And I just wanna say real quick too, but praying for Pastor Lee and Jane, they're actually, may have just landed in the nation of Myanmar, which is near China. And they are visiting an orphanage there that a fantastic couple from our church started a few years ago and God has just been blessing, bringing in more and more children. They're actually doing some cleft palate surgeries and just really introducing these impoverished children to the good news of Jesus Christ. So they're there for I think the next 10 days or so. So be praying for them and you may or may not know this, if you give to Radiant Church, you help support the orphanage and what's happening there. So we're just excited about what God's doing around the earth, but also to be able to sow Pastor Lee and Jane for a season. So it is entering New Year's and I preach at this particular weekend a lot. I've done it for years. And so sometimes I share my own New Year's resolutions. I don't know if you have them, but I wasn't gonna do it this year because again, you guys have seen them and I kinda keep them the same, but people were like, John, please, please. It changed my life last year. When you shared your own journey that you were on. So I'm gonna give them to you real quick. If you don't make New Year's resolutions, but you want to, you should adopt mine because they're easy and they're obtainable and you can do them. So here are my five for 2020. I'm gonna start referring to my car keys as weight so I can lose them, okay? Sorry, these are really corny. Start exercising my right to eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's in one sitting. I already do that. How can you lower your bills? You bring them into the basement the moment that they arrive. I'm sorry, these are bad. My wife was cringing. I said, I have to do it, the people need me. Okay, next one. Start eating more fruit, snacks, okay. Dieting is hard, I get it. Last year I switched to unfrosted pop tarts and I lost 11 ounces. So don't talk to me about sacrifice. I know what it means. Okay, last one. Finish a chap stick every year. I put this on there. And then every year I ask the church, how many of you have actually finished a chap stick? Raise your hand. And I say, liar, portage, stop lying. Put your hands down. There's no way. I always lose mine. I put it through the wash or lately they've all been coming off in the cap. Do you feel my pain here? Okay, anyways. Anyway, you don't have to follow those but you can if you want. Let's pray, should we pray? Let's pray. Let's ask the Lord to just speak to our hearts and honestly, I am excited about what I feel like God wants to do in this message and I pray that it's a blessing to you. So let's just ask the Lord. I want you to ask the Lord as I pray to speak to your heart. So Father, we come as your people. We come into an environment that we've created with our praise that you said you would inhabit. And so God, we ask for you to literally by the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts. You know every circumstance. You know every person's heart and where they are in their journey. And I ask you Lord to just create an ability supernaturally in each of us to hear your voice, to sense your love. God, whatever it is that you need to do in us, we give you permission. And God, it's your word. It's the power of your word and your presence that moves us and marks us God. So let your word not return void but accomplish all that you've intended it to do in our hearts and lives today in Jesus' name. And everyone said amen. If you brought your Bibles, you can turn to Genesis chapter 37. If you don't know where Genesis is, then just go to Revelation and go back 65 books. Why am I doing this? Okay, Genesis is the first book of the Bible. And I've entitled this message, The Journey. And the reason is because I want to hopefully impart in us what I feel like God can do and create in us as we step into a new season. There is something special about starting a new year. You don't need a new year to make changes or to make resolutions, but every time the calendar changes there's something I feel in us that is just prone to want to see change, see God differently, have things in our lives altered for the better. And that's what I'm praying for today. And I called it Journey because that's really what our lives are like. Trips are like business trips or a weekend trip or a getaway trip and they're generally short just distances but a journey is not only longer but journeys are designed to have opportunities to discover things on your journey about yourself. And the Bible says in Hebrews 12 too that we're to run the race that God has set before us with endurance. You don't need endurance for a sprint. You don't need endurance for a 50-yard dash. You need endurance for marathons, for long distances. And so there's so much about our lives that God is shaping and forming in the journey. And he says, but lay aside some things in Hebrews 12, the weights and the snares and keep your eyes, focus your eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. And the beautiful part of Christianity is that we are all on a journey but not everybody's journey is the same. Not everybody's path is exactly laid out the way someone else's is. So I really do pray that the Lord as we look at the life of Joseph today just begins to speak to you about your journey and about the path you're on. So Joseph we're gonna be introduced to you here in a minute is probably my favorite person in the Bible. He takes up a large section of Genesis chapter 37 all the way to the end, chapter 50. So if you've never read the entire account of Joseph's life, I would encourage you. I have to summarize it today unless you wanna stay till like, I don't know, 4.30. No, I'm just kidding, we'll be done. We're gonna go through it quickly but you could literally unpack Joseph for months and months and months. But the reason is because the journey God had him on is similar in many ways to the journey we're on today. And so I wanna highlight some of the things about his life, some of the things about the journey he was on and some of the ways that he operated in the calling of God that we can adopt as we step into 2020. So Genesis 37 we're introduced to Joseph. It's gonna come up on the screen. You can follow along. It says this, Jacob lived in the land of his fathers, sojournings in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being 17 years old was pastoring the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah as his fathers wise and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Verse three, now Israel or Jacob loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age and he made him a robe of many colors. If you grew up in church and Sunday school you know the coat of many colors that Joseph had. And when his brothers verse four saw that their father loved him more than everyone else, they hated him. And they could not speak peacefully to him. So in those four verses we're introduced to Joseph for the first time and you can tell that there's some dysfunction in the Joseph household. And I think that that's encouraging in some ways because Joseph was the son of Jacob or Israel. He was the grandson of Isaac and he was the great grandson of Abraham, the father of our faith. So you would think with that lineage, with that sort of family tree there would be like no issues but there are serious issues in the family of Joseph. Starting with the home that he grew up in. So his dad, Jacob was married to two wives, Leah and Rachel and they were sisters. And at one point they both became barren so they said, Jacob we want you to have our maid servants and you can have more children with them. So how many of you know having two wives is a bad idea? Having two wives that are sisters, worse idea. Having two wives that are sisters that say here take our maid servants so they can be surrogate. Children bearers is a Jerry Springer show and that's what we're introduced to in just four verses in the life of Joseph. It's crazy, there's a lot going on. So then just four wives and 12 children later we learn that Joseph who's the youngest is by far his dad's favorite. And we know this because his dad made him or purchased him a Versace jacket off the internet actually. And none of his other brothers had that. They had Walmart clearance clothes and Joseph had all the best things. And it wasn't a secret. Everybody knew it. Jacob didn't even try to hide it. Like literally he's my favorite. What's your name again? Whatever, where's Joseph? That's the home that we're growing up in, okay? And his brothers hated him for it. And then it says in verse five, now Joseph had a dream. And when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. Cause he said to them, hey, listen to this dream I dreamed. We were all binding sheaves in the field and behold my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaves. And his brother said to him, amen bro, let it be. No, they said, are you gonna reign over us? Are you what? You're gonna rule over us. So they hated him even more for his dreams and his words. Verse nine, then he dreamed another dream. And he said, you know what? I bet my brothers wanna hear about this. Come here guys, behold, I dreamed another dream. And this time the sun, the moon and 11 stars were all bowing down to me. But when he told it to his father and to his brothers his father rebuked him and said, what is this dream you've dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous but his father kept the sayings in mind. So here we have 17 year old Joseph who's growing up in a dysfunctional home. How many know you can't pick your family? They're your family. You might have an uncle Eddie. There's nothing you can do about that. And Joseph is growing up in this environment and he's his dad's favorite and he has these dreams. And God shows him at 17 years old some of the things that are going to happen in his life. And what I wanna start out saying to us today as we head into 2020 is that just like God had a dream for Joseph's life, God has a dream for your life and he wants to reveal it to you. Jacob or Joseph is not unique in the sense that God only has a dream for a few people or God only reveals his plans and purposes to a select few. There is not a person on this planet who God does not have a plan, a dream and a purpose for long before you were a person you had a purpose. And that's the beauty of a relationship with God. There's no other religion that is like Christianity where God says in Psalm 139, look, before you were even born, I knit you together. I know your inward parts, you're fearfully and wonderfully made in Jeremiah 1.5. He says to Jeremiah, before you were in your mother's womb, I knew you and I called you and I set you apart to be a mouthpiece, to be a prophet to the nations. There is nobody on planet earth who doesn't have a God-ordained dream and purpose that's available to them as they reach out to God, as they accept the call and dream of God into their lives. But how many of you know, if you don't accept the dream of God into your life, Satan will produce a counterfeit quickly for you. And so many people guys today live their lives unaware that God has a plan and a purpose for them. Knowing that, knowing that God loves you, that God's for you, that he has a plan for you, it keeps you, it draws you towards your destiny and it keeps you in times of trials, in times of the dips and valleys of life. It's a constant and it's a source of encouragement, but today we have so many people who are unaware that God knows them that intimately, that God has a plan for their lives. So what do we do? We look to other sources. The Bible says that God is living water. He's a fountain of life and all who come to him can drink and be satisfied. But what we live in as a generation where so many people are going to other sources and we drink and we drink, but we're still thirsty and we're left unsatisfied. And as someone who didn't give his heart to Jesus till he was 24 years old, I see it. And young people that turn to drugs, that turn to partying, that turn to relationships or sometimes it's not even bad things. It's work or it's academics or it's friendships or it's something that becomes your purpose. But then if those things don't come to fruition like you hoped, then your dreams are crushed and they're dashed and you're broken and you don't know where to go from there because you've not adopted the actual plan and purpose that God has for you. So I wanna just encourage you today. It's okay as you walk into 2020 to believe God for a dream in your life. Don't be satisfied with status quo. Don't go through life just bouncing around. The Bible says where there's no vision, people perish, they cast off restraint. Oh, it doesn't matter. Oh, we're teaching kids in school. You're just a product of evolution. You have no purpose. You're part of a big bang. You don't matter and people adopt that. But the truth is God knew you and he formed you and he has a distinct plan and purpose for your life just like he did for Joseph. But what we see in Joseph and what many of us see in our own lives is that you spend a lot of your life discovering and developing the dream that God has for you. Dreams come in seed form. God doesn't give you the entire picture immediately. God doesn't take you from A to Z in a straight line. He doesn't show you everything. He gives you glimpses. And so I have people who will say, how do I know? They'll ask me, how do I know what God's dream is for me? I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't understand what God's calling me to do. And what I would start by saying is it's never gonna come in a full picture immediately. You step into it. If you're under 30 years old in here, you might not know this, but there was a time that we didn't have cell phones. Phones were attached to the wall and they didn't move. And if you were lucky or maybe wealthy, you had a very long cord where you could at least go into like a closet or the bathroom for some privacy. And you actually had to like dial. It took 17 years to call your friends when I was child, right? So we didn't have phones and so we didn't have pictures or at least we didn't have pictures immediately. You had to use these things. They're called cameras. And you would take pictures, but then you didn't know what they look like. If you were lucky, you live next to like a one hour photo mat or something like that. But it could take days before you even knew what it looked like. If someone just fainted in the back, young lady, it's okay, it's okay. But there were no, I'm just kidding. There were no filters. There was no changing. There was no getting wrinkled. There was none of that until the like invention or at least introduction in my life of the Polaroid. And now I guess they're making a comeback. But when I first saw that, I mean, I was filled with awe and wonder because you take a picture, right? And then what happens? It spits out the actual picture. But if you look at it right then, you still can't really see a lot. It's dark, there's no detail. It has to develop. It takes time. What do you have to do? You have to shake it. Shake it. Shake it like a Polaroid. Okay, never mind. But over time, it develops. And you go, oh yeah, there it is. Oh yeah, okay, there's him and her and her. And you start to see it come to fruition and dreams that God gives you are just like that. They're not instantaneous. And so people will say, what do I need to do to walk in the calling that God has for me? And if you don't hear anything else that I say today, listen to this and maybe like two other things. Okay, but this for sure. The way that you walk out and the way that you discover and develop God's plan for you is by being faithful and by being obedient where God has you right now. That is the secret. It's not a magic pill. It's not visions of grandeur. It's not people who say, well someday I'm gonna, and once this happens and eventually I'm gonna, no, not if you're not being faithful where you are right now. Obedience in the small things. Luke 16 principle, are you being faithful in what is little and are you being faithful in what is someone else's? If you're not being faithful at your job, if you're not working as unto the Lord, don't expect promotion in your life. If you're not doing what God's asking you to do right now, don't expect for God to reveal more of the dream that he has for you. Faithfulness and obedience are the keys that unlock destiny and dreams in your life. And I'm telling you, it's all throughout scripture. You look at the life of David, he defeated Goliath and he rescued Israel from the giant, but the only reason he did that is because when his dad asked him to bring bread and cheese to his brothers, he said, okay, I'll do it. He could have said, look dad, I was anointed king not that long ago. So find another cheese boy because I don't deliver. And that's beneath me. And I have bigger things that God has planned for my life, dad, but he didn't. He took it and when he went there, all of a sudden he's in the proximity of a miracle and it was his obedience and being a servant and obedience and small, seemingly meaningless and menial tasks that created the opportunity for greatness in his life. So many people say, well, I don't know what God wants me to do. And I'll say to them, then do what you already know. It's not always knowing what to do. It's doing what you already know. Being faithful in the small things. But then the second thing is this, a journey to the fulfilling of your dream, the path that God has you on, how many of you it rarely is easy and it never looks the way that you thought that it would. It's never a straight line. It's never from A to Z immediately. And we're gonna discover that that's exactly what happened in Joseph's life. He has this dream, but he has some major issues that happen along the way. So he's 17 years old, he gets this dream and his brothers already don't like him. So you see a little bit of Joseph's immaturity here and maybe some of his own self-absorption. Like you already know, dude, that your brothers don't like you. You already know that they think your dad's favorite. So why, why when you're the youngest, would you tell your brothers, hey, I had this awesome dream. All of you were bowing down to me. I'm the youngest of five and I've been hung over a banister before. So I understand to be scared for your life of your own siblings, right? And so he didn't get it. And then he knows they hate him and he's like, but wait, I had another dream. Let me tell you guys, you're gonna love this one. And he tells them the other dream. And so they don't like him. And his dad says, I want you to go bring your brothers this and tell me how they're doing. And it says that the brothers see Joseph from far away. Why can they see him from far away? Cause he has his Versace coat on. And it stirs up anger in them already. And they're like, we hate Joseph. And literally they're like, let's just kill him. We'll kill him. And then we'll bring his robe back to dad after we dip it in blood of an animal and say, we don't know what happened, sorry. So that's their plan. Reuben the oldest is like, okay, wait, wait, wait. Let's just put him in this pit. And Reuben's thinking, I'll come back later and I'll save Joseph. But while Reuben's gone, his brothers see a traveling caravan of some Ishmaelite people and they're like, wait, let's not kill him because then his blood's on our hand. Let's just sell him as a slave. So they got 20 shekels of silver for their brother. And there goes Joseph on his way to Egypt as a 17 year old young man. But the Bible says that when he's in Egypt, God chose him favor. God is with him. God blesses him. And he ends up in the home of a man named Potiphar, who was a high ranking government official. And yes, he's a slave, but Potiphar notices that everything Joseph does is good. He has wisdom that's almost supernatural. So Potiphar just says, look, man, you can run this whole house. Like you don't have to answer to me. You don't have to ask me, is this okay? Whatever you feel like is gonna be a win, just do it. And so Joseph is given favor. But then unfortunately Potiphar's wife is in the first season of desperate Egyptian housewives. Sorry, but she is. And so she starts coming on to Joseph. And Joseph's like, no, no, no, no, I can't. I'm not gonna have anything to do with you. Your husband has given me position and authority in this home. Plus I'm not gonna sin against God. So every day she keeps coming on to him and coming on to him until finally she just grabs him. And that's a whole another message about how sexual sin gets more and more aggressive, but we won't go there. But she finally grabs him and she's like, lie with me. And Joseph's like, you don't want me to tell the truth with you? What are you, no, I'm just kidding. He says, no, he runs. He leaves his shirt in her hands and literally runs. So listen, he does the right thing. He makes the right decision. He honors God and what happens? Potiphar gets home, wife's mad. She's got his shirt and she makes up a lie and says, yeah, that Hebrew boy you brought here, he tried to attack me and I screamed and he ran and I have his shirt. And Potiphar throws Joseph into prison. So he goes from a pit to Potiphar's house, does the right thing and now he's sitting in prison. But again, the Bible says God shows him favor and becomes sort of like the manager of the prison and he's in charge and suddenly up comes the Pharaoh's cupbearer and Pharaoh's baker. And Pharaoh gets mad at them and he throws them into prison. And so Joseph's almost mentoring these guys and then they have crazy dreams and they look all distraught. And so Joseph says, what's the matter? What's going on? And they said, oh man, we both had crazy dreams. We don't know what they mean. And Joseph says this, do not interpretations come from God, tell me your dreams. And so the cupbearer goes first and he tells him his dream and Joseph says, oh man, now here's what that means. You're gonna be restored back to the castle. Pharaoh's gonna come and he's gonna show mercy to you and you're gonna be restored back to your position and it's gonna go well for you in three days. But bro, when you get there, can you please just put in a good word for me to Pharaoh? Because for real, I'm not supposed to be here. I know everybody says they're innocent in here, but literally I am innocent. And so he says that to the cupbearer and then the baker's like, oh sweet, that went well. And so the baker tells Joseph his dream and Joseph says, yeah, you're gonna be dead in three days. Sorry, not quite as good a dream. And both those things came true, but then the cupbearer gets restored and he forgets all about Joseph. So it's two more years that Joseph's sitting in prison until finally Pharaoh has a dream. He can't understand what it means. And the cupbearer's like, oh yeah, when I was in prison with the baker, there was a guy, a young kid, who could interpret dreams. Super smart, I bet he's still in there. They clean Joseph up, they bring him before Pharaoh. And Pharaoh tells him the dreams. And he says, look, these seven big fat cows came up out of the Nile while I was sleeping. And then seven skinny ugly cows came out too and ate the fat cows, but the skinny cows still stayed skinny. And Joseph says, look, I don't interpret dreams, only the Lord does, but here's what that means. There's gonna be seven years of abundance in the kingdom. There's gonna be seven years of increase. And then it's gonna be followed by seven years of massive famine like the world has never seen. So here's what you need to do, Pharaoh. In these seven years of increase, you need to start saving, you need to start putting some grain away so that when the seven years of famine come, you'll have enough. And literally the whole world is gonna end up coming to Egypt to be sustained. And Pharaoh's like, that's amazing, I'm promoting you. You're gonna be second in command. The Bible says when Joseph goes down the street, people are like bow down to Joseph. So literally the dream that God gave him is starting to finally come into fruition. The things that God showed him are happening in his life, but the journey to get there is what I want to focus on for the next few minutes. What did it look like for Joseph to go from dreams to destiny? And what are some of the things we can take from Joseph's journey and apply to ourselves? Okay, so the first one is this, is that Joseph let trials produce perseverance in his life instead of discouragement. Trials, the things that happened, Joseph maintained an attitude where he said, I'm going to believe that God's for me, believe that God's with me, and I'm going to let these trials produce something in my life besides bitterness, and besides jadedness, and besides complaining. And that's exactly what the Bible says in James chapter one. James says, count it joy when you fall into various trials, when you go through difficult things. Why would you count that joy? And James goes on to say, because when that happens, you can be assured that God is producing something in you, perseverance, steadfastness, that there's a character that's being developed in you that would not be possible if you weren't going through trials. That's why you counted joy. It's not that you have to be happy that something bad happened, but you have to be able to interpret that as even though this is an ideal, I believe God is with me, and God is for me, and God is developing something in me as I go through these trials. And that's what Joseph understood. And if you read Genesis 37 through chapter 42, you see seven times that exact phrase, but the Lord was with Joseph. But wait, I'm in a pit, but the Lord was with Joseph. But wait, I'm in prison, but the Lord was with Joseph. The presence of God never left Joseph, even in the midst of his darkest moments and his most difficult trials. But too often as Christians, and I'm speaking for myself too, we go through difficult trials, we go through seasons that are hard, we go through timelines that aren't being met and the expectations we hoped they would, and we see that as a sign that God is not with us, that God has maybe abandoned us or forgotten about us, or God has somehow moved on from us, and our purpose and the dreams that God has for us aren't going to come to pass. And I want to remind you, every single trial serves a purpose in your life. And that just like God was with Joseph, God will be with you, even in the difficult seasons, even when it's hard. The reality is this, Joseph could have got very bitter. Joseph could have got angry. Joseph could have complained, God, I did the right thing. Okay, maybe I was a little immature, but I didn't deserve to be put in a pit, and then I did the right thing with Potiphar's wife, and I'm put in prison, and then I helped those guys, and nobody remembers me. And I'm not saying that we can't have some moments where we're vulnerable or even angry with God. I think he can handle that. But at the end of the day, Joseph had to recognize these trials are not an indicator that God isn't with me. These trials are an indicator that God is building something in me. He's building something in us when we go through trials. Because listen, God knew if I let Joseph come to the fruition of his dreams, right when he was 17 years old, it was gonna crush him. He wasn't ready. He was immature, and so he had to go through these trials. He had to grow because I'm telling you, there are places where your gifting can take you that your character can't sustain you. There's places where I'm gifted or I have this talent or I have this thing that I can do, and God's saying, okay, okay, okay, I gave those to you, but there has to be a development. There has to be a process. You're not ready to walk into that. And that's why we go through trials, and that's why we can count it joy because God is still with us. Listen, there's a dangerous theology in the church that says Christians should never have to suffer. But oh, Jesus suffered so that I won't have to suffer. No, that's just not true. Life includes suffering. And I know that's not popular. Grandmas don't crochet that so it can go on the refrigerator with a magnet, but it's true. Life is not entirely suffering. Life is a gift. Life is something precious that God gave us, but it includes suffering. The reason, as followers of Jesus, we can rejoice and we can have joy isn't because we escape suffering. It's because our suffering is redeemed because of Christ's suffering. That's the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, we're gonna go through things. Yes, there's gonna be difficult seasons, but I don't have to do it alone. I don't have to do it wondering where is God? He's here. I may walk through some valleys. There may be some shadows of death, but I don't have to fear evil. David said, why? Because God is with me. And his rod and staff, they comfort me. So trials can produce perseverance in our lives. The second thing is Joseph surrendered to God's timing. It took a long time. He was 17 years old when he had the dream. He was 30 years old when he finally stood before Pharaoh. 13 years of pits and of prisons and of development. And that is common throughout the Bible. David was annoying a king. It took 15 years before he was king over Judah and Israel together as a kingdom. And in that time, for most of it, the existing king Saul was trying to kill him. But there was a waiting. Some of us in this room are probably like, well, those are young kids. You know, I wish I was 30, I'm with you. Raise my hand. Moses, 40 years old, gets in an altercation, kills an Egyptian man, runs to his father-in-law, Jeff Rose, and starts taking care of sheep for 40 years. And at 80 years old, God shows up and says I want you to be the deliverer of my people. A 40-year process that Moses had to go through. And the reason I'm bringing this up, and I've said this before and I've preached on it before, is because we are terrible at waiting. We're terrible at waiting. Nobody likes to wait. Our culture is literally doing everything we can to eliminate ever having to wait. It's why you don't wake up and go praise God. I have to go to the secretary of state today. I'm thrilled. Joy, the joy of the Lord is my strength. I hope it takes seven hours, right? No one does that. We create restaurants where you don't have to go in. I don't have time for that. I need to drive through. I need this to be quicker. And then we go, well, I'm still waiting too long. Maybe, maybe by an act of God, there could be two lanes in one, look at God. Two lanes in one McDonald's. Faster, faster, quicker. No one likes to, it used to be everybody had to wait at Cedar Point for the ride. Oh no, not Mr. Gajillionaire who's got a fast pass. That can just walk by the rest of us peasants. Because no one likes to wait for anything. Everything is instant, instant potatoes, instant rice, instant noodles, instant pots. Everything, right away, right away, right away. I remember my mother used to make popcorn on the stove. On the stove. Who cares if the movie was over? You just dealt with it. And you ate the popcorn when it was ready. But this generation is, everything is super hyper speed, instant access, instant Google, instant everything, high speed internet. Used to be a time where if you wanted to be on the worldwide web, you had to make sure all the phones were hung up. And you had to listen to like 87 dolphin noises. Brrr, brrr, brrr. And then, but you didn't care. You were like, oh wait, look at this. I'm on the worldwide web. This is amazing. Now, your page doesn't load in like three seconds. You're like, this is crap. And you throw your computer. Because we've been conditioned to never have to wait. Get your furniture now, pay for it in 2097 or whatever the art van deal is. And I'm telling you the truth. It's funny, but it has made it difficult for Christians to really, truly wait on God. It's made it really hard. And God is not into microwaving. God's into marinating. And it takes a long time sometimes for God to do what he needs to do in us. And if you haven't recognized it yet, you will someday. God's never in a hurry. Never. It took thousands of years of history before he said, and at the appointed time, I sent my son, Jesus, into the world. There is an appointed time for you, but you have to be able to wait. And we're not good at it. We can quote the verse, Isaiah 40. You know, those who wait on the Lord rise up on wings like eagles and they'll walk and not grow weary. They'll run and not grow faint. That is crocheted. That is on pictures. That is on refrigerators, but it doesn't make it any easier to do. We don't like to wait. And what I'm asking and praying for myself and for us as a church is let 2020 be a year where you're listening for the voice of God and you're waiting for the promise of God to be revealed. It's hard to do. Joseph didn't do it perfectly. Remember he's in prison? He tells that cup bearer the dream. And then he's like, by the way, tell Pharaoh I've been down here a while. Will you please? And what did God do? God said, oh, okay, you wanna circumvent my process? You think freedom's gonna come from the cup bearer? Are two more years for you, bro? It's hard to do, but I'm telling you, our culture, social media has made it difficult to wait. What do we do? We just flip through, we flip through, we swipe through everything, instant, instant, instant. If you're a young person in here, listen to me, especially maybe young ladies, it's easy to see on the internet or on Instagram, all your friends are getting engaged, they're getting married, they got the new job, they're traveling, they're having babies, and there's a temptation to think I've done something wrong, something's not right with me, this should be happening and it's not. I just wanna encourage you. Their journey's not your journey. Wait on the Lord. It's not always easy, but if you'll trust God in those seasons, he'll prepare you, he'll bring the right person, don't settle, never settle for less than what God has for you. Someone else's life is not your life. All we see on the internet are highlights of people's lives, it's not always real. Nobody's kids behave like that all the time, it's just for the picture and then three seconds later they're biting each other, that's the real world that we live in, but don't be caught up and this has to happen, it's gotta go now because too many times we circumvent the plan and we end up with Ishmaels instead of Jacobs in our lives. Joseph had to wait, the third thing he had to do is he had to recognize that in the waiting God was working, that's my prayer for you. If this has been a tough year, if this has been a tough season, can we really believe Romans 828 that says God is working all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose and those seasons that are hard and those times that you don't understand, why is it taking so long? Why is it happening for them and not for me? Why is the timetable not like I thought it would be? Can you really trust that even in the pit and in the potter first house and in the prison there's a plan to the process? That's what I'm praying for us. Can we trust God? Joseph had to say, this isn't how I dialed it up. When I had that dream, this isn't how I thought it would go but I'm gonna trust that God's working and that I'm gonna be stronger on the other side of it. It's the Mr. Miyagi theology church. I hate to make everything so simple but it's true. Daniel's son, do you remember getting bullied? Wants to learn karate, finds Mr. Miyagi, great, man. Teach me how to punch, what does Mr. Miyagi say? No, you paint the fence, Daniel's son. Up, down, whole fence, Daniel's son, right? And so Daniel's son doesn't understand it. Okay, fine, dude, breathe out, breathe out. And then the next day he shows up, okay, now I'm gonna learn to fight, I got a punch, I got, I gotta get, no, no, no, you wax car, wax on, wax off, right? All cars, Daniel's son and so he's doing it all night. And the next day he shows up and he's like, look, man, I'm sick of being your chore guy, I wanna learn how to fight. And that's when Mr. Miyagi goes into his Jedi sensei mode, right? And he's like, paint fence. And so he's like, and he's like, pah, pah, are you guys into this? Okay, sorry, I'll wrap this up. But he's blocking it, remember? And now wax on, he's like, pah, pah, and he's blocking it. And suddenly it dawns on Daniel's son that even though he didn't understand what was happening in the process, Mr. Miyagi had a better plan. And God is smarter than Mr. Miyagi. He has a better plan. And you might be in a season where it doesn't make sense and it's not how it was supposed to be. And people let you down, but God will never leave you. He'll never forsake you. And Joseph had to recognize that. And it took time and there were trials, but he came out stronger on the other side and he ended up fulfilling every dream that God had. His brothers and his father, they all did come to him and they did need food because of the famine and they did bow down to him and he did provide for them. But it took a long time and it was a journey that was unique and God ordained for Joseph's life. And the same thing is true as you step into a new season in 2020. The last thing I wanna close with is in Genesis 45. We see Joseph finally reveal himself to his brothers. And there's people in this room who you've had situations arise maybe in the past year, maybe it's been even longer than that where your dreams haven't come to pass. There's been people who have hurt you along the way, people who haven't been there, who said they would, people who should have helped, but didn't, people who talk bad about you. Just like what happened to Joseph. And now he's finally at a point where he has to determine in his heart, Joseph has to say, all these things happened to me. It's my brother's fault that I was in a pit and then I had to go to Potiphar's house and I had to go to prison. But how am I going to interpret what happened to me? And you see something so beautiful in the life of Joseph. It says Joseph in chapter 45 cannot control himself. So he stood by him and he cried out, make everyone go out for me so no one stayed with him. And Joseph made himself known to his brothers and he wept so much emotion so that the Egyptians heard it. The house of Pharaoh heard just Joseph releasing 13 years of pain and hurt. And Joseph said to his brothers, I'm Joseph. Is my father still alive? They didn't recognize him. And they were dismayed at his presence. They couldn't even answer him. So Joseph said, no, no, come here, look at me. And they came near and he said, I'm your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt. Look at verse five. And now this is his declaration over what happened in his life. Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here for God sent me before you to preserve life. It's a contradiction. He says to his brothers, you sold me. And then the very next verse he says, but God sent me. And as you look at your year, as you look at your past, there's gonna be some people and there's gonna be some times where you feel like you were sold into something. You were pushed in to a pit. People abandoned you. They weren't there for you. They hurt you. And Joseph isn't denying that. He says to them, look, I can't take it back. It hurt me. You shouldn't have done that. You said you'd be there. You were my brothers. You pushed me and you sold me. But at the same time God sent me and they're not two different events. It's Joseph's perception. It's Joseph's interpretation of what happened instead of wallowing and what they did instead of wallowing and pain and unforgiveness and bitterness. He decided to see it through the lens of no, you didn't just sell me, God also sent me. There was a purpose behind my pain. There was a reason that this happened and that's what I choose to focus on. One of the greatest gifts God will give you is the ability to see your situation through the lens of the goodness of God. Instead of seeing God's goodness through the lens of your situation. That's the temptation. God's not there. God forgot about me. They pushed me. They sold me. No, no, no. God sent me. And this might not have been the way that I planned but I'm not gonna step into 2020 and literally the rest of my future in my life holding on to the past, holding on to pains, reminding myself they sold me. They sold me. No, I'm gonna step into my future saying God, you're sending me into something that you uniquely designed for my life. You guys stand up with me. I wanna pray. With you and for you. And I really felt the Lord say there's people in this room who need to release someone or something in their lives. And so I just want you to close your eyes. And I want you to think about maybe it wasn't this year. Maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe you were a child. Words were said. Something happened. A divorce was finalized. A bankruptcy took place. The promotion wasn't promised. Whatever it is and you've held on to that, I pray that right now you release that, you give that to the Lord. You reconcile that and you say, yeah, they sold me but you know what, God, you're sending me. You're sending me into my purpose. You're sending me into the plans and destiny that you have. And I want right now for you to be able to step into a new season without bitterness and unforgiveness. Those are tools of the enemy. You don't have to deny what happened. Joseph said, you sold me, he didn't minimize it but he saw it through a different lens. He said, no, no, no, God also sent me. There's a reason that this happened and I believe God is working even when I don't see it and I don't know how. And that's my prayer for you as you step into this next year. So Father, as we, as your people, surrender our hearts to you. We ask you God, reveal, reveal the things that we need to let go of the people, the hurts, the pains. God, you said you bottle every single tear. You're intricately involved in our lives. Nothing escapes your gaze. So I pray, Father, for those that are hurting right now, for those that have been taken advantage of, for those God who feel like maybe their dreams will never come to pass, for those who have think that their past has somehow defined them. God, let the future, let the sending power of the Holy Spirit override every lie of the enemy, God. Nothing is greater, nothing is greater than the love of God that shed abroad in our hearts, God. Not our sin, not our past, not our failures, not what anyone's done to us or not done for us. We step into 2020 in full assurance that God is with us, God is for us, and God is always enough. In Jesus' name, amen.