Character Matters / Hardships Develop Character // Pastor Josh Evans

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If you would like to learn more, please visit our website. Today is going to be a little bit of a different service in terms of the way that I like to preach a lot of times. So, just change it up just a little bit. But, we are continuing our series called Character Matters. In fact, look to your neighbor real quick and say, character matters. Character matters, and character matters in every single person's life. It's important that we recognize that our personal character, who we are, when nobody else is looking who we are behind closed doors, that person is the real you, and that person, it matters. Our character matters.

I said this last week that we've seen this play out in a lot of different places. Character matters whether you're in politics, whether you're in a church, whether you're at a job, and just in a career. We've seen people who are really good at what they do that might have got them to a certain position, but yet they don't hold that position any longer because of the lack of character.

So, it's been said that talent might get somebody to the top, but it's character that will keep them at the top. So, over these next couple of weeks, we've been looking at, or really last week and this week, we've been looking at this idea of personal godly character. If you're a young person in here today, you have your full life in front of you, and I really want you to lean in just a little bit because I think a message like this actually could be as applicable to you as anybody else in the room.

So, if you're young in here and you are here with your parents, or you kind of use this time just to text your friends or whatever you do during this hour, I want you to lean in just a little bit to what God has in store for you here today. But when we talk about character, I really want to define what that looks like, and especially not just character in general because character to our world can mean a lot of different things, but we're talking about godly character. And let me say this, that godly character is found in the nature of who Jesus is. Godly character is found in the nature of our creator. So, in other words, when we talk about godly character, when we talk about what that is, biblical character is simply this, it's reflecting Jesus with your life. Biblical godly character is reflecting Jesus with your life. Now, when we think about character, a lot of times we think about who we are when nobody else is looking, right? That's kind of how we've determined what character is.

You know, when nobody else is around, will you make the right decision? That determines if you have character or not. So, if we think about that, godly character is simply this, it's living and behaving in a way as if Jesus was physically right there with you. Think about that.

Think about that. Don't you think that if you really believed, and by the way, if you're a Christian in here today, he has promised to never leave you nor forsake you. His presence goes before you. So, if you're a follower of Jesus today, let me say this, that God is with you right now. He is with you.

He walks with you. When nobody else is physically around you, God is right there with you. But sometimes we live as though he is not right there in our presence.

Sometimes we make decisions like he is not right there with us. And as we talk about character, I thought who better to illustrate this idea of character and living like Jesus was right there with us than the Old Testament character of Joseph. Now, Joseph is such a fun story to preach from. It's such a great story to teach from.

In fact, we could do a whole series on Joseph. And Joseph is just like one of my favorite characters because his story is just so messed up in a lot of ways that it just reminds us that there's hope for every single one of our families. Do you ever feel sometimes like, man, there is no hope for my family. We are just a messed up household. Anybody ever feel like that or is that just me?

Am I the only one brave enough to admit that? And so sometimes I feel that way. Let me tell you this. If you think your household is a little crazy and you've got some crazy youngins around and you think there's no hope, you need to see Joseph's household. It's just wild. And so as we look at his story, we're going to actually back trace all of this to get to Genesis chapter 50.

So I want you to buckle up and listen because we're going to look at the back story. So when we look at Joseph's life, you see Joseph, he was Jacob's favorite son, remember? And Jacob had a favorite. He chose Joseph as his favorite. And so he showed Joseph a lot of partial treatment. You remember he gave him the coat of many colors.

You remember that? And so he gave him this coat of many colors while the rest of his brothers, they had to shop off the cheap places. Jacob gave Joseph this fancy coat because he was his favorite. Now we know as parents that's a terrible decision. You're not supposed to have favorites, right? Okay, parents, you're not supposed to have favorites.

You acted very unsure there, right? And if anybody should have known that this could create problems, it should have been Jacob. You remember even before that, Jacob and Esau and how there was some tension there about the favorite. If anybody should have known the damage and brokenness that having a favorite in the home should have caused, it should have been Jacob.

But yet he continues down that same path. So he made Joseph his favorite and he gave him this coat of many colors. And his brothers resented him for that, like you can only imagine.

And they hated him for that. Well, Joseph, when he was young, he was having these dreams. You remember his dreams.

He was out in the field and he was sheaving some wheat. And his sheaf of wheat actually grew bigger than all of his brothers so much that in this dream, all these other sheaves of wheat were bowing to his, right? And how many of you have weird dreams from time to time? That's a weird dream. Like if I woke up out of that dream, I'd be like, okay, where on earth did I come from?

Whatever I ate the night before, I'm not eating that again, right? And so he had this strange dream. And so one day, you know, he has this dream one day and God, you know, he would reveal these dreams to him. Well, one day he's sitting there with his brothers and he said, guys, you will never believe this. You know, these brothers already hated him.

And you know, there were tension already in their household and this wasn't going to make matters better. He said, guys, you'll never believe this. I had the weirdest dream the other night. It was crazy. And we were out in the field doing our thing. And all of a sudden, you know, my wheat, you know, was standing. It just grew so high, my sheaf of wheat that all of yours just kept bowing down to it. And here's what that means.

I'm determined that this is what it means that one day every single one of you are going to bow down to me one day. How crazy is that, right? You can imagine the hatred that already exists in the household, how it started to grow as Joseph continued to be this favorite. So one time they were out in the field and his brothers were working and Jacob sends Joseph to check in on them. He probably let Jacob stay or Joseph stay home and play video games or something while the rest of his brothers are out working in the field. So he sent them. You don't think that they had video games back then?

I don't know. It could have. And so he sent him, sent Joseph, he said, hey, go check in on your brother. So he did. And they saw him coming. And remember, they hated him. So they decided, hey, we're going to kidnap him.

We're going to throw him into a pit. Listen, I have a sister. And listen, we've had our share of disagreements over the years and we didn't get along too much. In fact, I still wonder if she was the favorite.

How many of you think that your parents had a favorite? Right. A few of you. You know what I'm talking about.

And are they in the room? Some of you are like nudging the people next to you. Well, I felt that way about myself. So we fought all the time.

But I'll tell you this, like even though we had disagreements, I never thought, hmm, it should I kidnap her and throw her into a pit? And and so that's what the brothers did. We know the story. They throw them into this pit and they decide what are we going to do with them? So they decided, hey, we're going to sell him into slavery. So they sold him to these slave traders as they came roaming through the the town. And and and then they ended up taking his coat and and they killed an animal and put blood all over it and went back to his dad. Said he must have got killed by a wild animal. I mean, this was a messed up family and this was God's chosen people.

How crazy is that? And they were they were messed up. And so they sell him into slavery and he goes and when he's there, Potiphar end up purchases Joseph, purchases Joseph. And and and he begins to work for for Joseph. And we learn actually during that time period in Genesis chapter thirty nine, the first phrase that is mentioned there in verse two. And the Lord was with Joseph. You see, Joseph, through every situation is about 17 when all this started transpiring, when he got sent to Egypt.

And I was about 17 years old and all this was happening to him that really was just terrible situations were happening into his life. But he firmly believed that God was with him through it all. You see, I think you and I would make a lot different choices, a lot better decisions with your life if we actually believed at all times that God was truly with us. Sometimes we live as if God is not not with us. But Joseph knew that even in the best of times, but even in the worst of times, even on the mountaintop, but even in the valley, God is always with me. So I'm going to make a decision as if he is physically right in front of me.

I want to make a decision that's pleasing in his sight. So God was with Joseph, Potiphar, he knew that God was with Joseph, Genesis 39, three and four. He saw that God was with Joseph and how everything Joseph touched, God seemed to prosper. So he made him ruler over the house. Joseph ended up being ruler over everything there in Potiphar's house.

Well, we know the story Potiphar's wife. She she comes on to Joseph and and begs him to sleep with her. And he refuses in his integrity in his character.

He declines and he just runs out the door. Well, Potiphar's wife goes back to Potiphar and says, hey, you will never believe what Joseph did. And she accused him wrongfully. And and Potiphar, obviously, as any other husband would have done, got angry thinking this this was the truth and goes and orders Joseph to go to prison. Now, think about this. Joseph didn't deserve any of this.

Right. All these terrible things are happening in his life and he didn't deserve any of it. And now he finds himself in prison for something that he did not even do.

He was punished for doing the right thing. While in prison, we know the story to affair of servants get thrown into prison. And by the way, if this does not teach you about the sovereignty of God throughout this story, you're missing something.

This is just an amazing story. Two of Pharaoh's servants get thrown into prison. They were having issues.

The baker and and the butler. So they get thrown into prison, happened to be there right by by Joseph. And they end up having a dream and they have this this dream about the butler serving Pharaoh and the and and the baker brings everything he was serving in the birds eat it.

And it was just another one of those crazy dreams that that we have from time to time. So they were saying this to to Joseph one time. And Joseph says, hey, listen, here's what what that means, which would have been terrifying to actually say what it really meant. And he said, listen, here's what's going to happen. The butler, you're going to, you know, get out of prison and you're going to actually serve and be the leader over some of Pharaoh's house. And but the baker, you're going to actually lose your life and the birds are going to eat your flesh.

What a terrible thing to ever say. Listen, if I ever have a weird dream, I pray that nobody says, here's what I think your dream means. You know, you're going to be killed and the birds are going to eat your eat your flesh. Well, sure enough, after a few days, it all comes comes to pass. You know, the baker and the butler get out. Butler goes to work for Pharaoh and the baker loses his life. And Joseph, as they were getting released, he tells the butler, hey, listen, remember me, remember me.

So he gets out. And you know what the scripture says? Remember, God is with Joseph. God is with him. He believes that he's walking with him and his life just has trial after trial after trial after trial. And God was with him. And when he got out, you know what happens?

The butler completely forgets about it. Yeah. Joseph was probably thinking, this is my moment. Finally, Lord, you you made it.

This is it. He's going to get out. And then God completely wipes Joseph out of the memory of the of the butler. Two years later, Joseph still chilling in prison for something that he did not do. And Pharaoh has a dream. Pharaoh has a dream about these these cows.

The swine are coming out of the out of the water and they're skinny cows, fat cows. We're not going to go into all of it. But but he has this crazy dream and nobody can interpret. And all of a sudden, God puts it into the butler's mind about this guy in prison.

I remember a couple of years ago, there was a man in prison who told us her dream. So obviously, Pharaoh goes to Joseph and we know the story goes to Joseph and Joseph says, here's what that dream means. And by the way, when Pharaoh came to him and said, can you interpret it? He looked at Pharaoh and said, no, I cannot. But God can. He wasn't taking any of the pride, even in the midst of that, through all of these terrible situations. He could have come out and said, man, yeah, I can.

You know, I'm pretty good at this thing. And taking some of the credit by all of this. No, he was still trusting in God and believing that God was with him. So he interprets it as there's a famine that's going to come into the into the area of Egypt and it's going to cover throughout the whole world. And so he predicts this crazy famine and people are going to come and and they're going to come to Egypt to get get help. Almost 10 years later or during that, Joseph gets promoted and he's leading, you know, all of Egypt.

He's probably over Potiphar, which had to be an interesting reunion between the two of them. And he's over everybody except for Pharaoh. And 10 years later, the famine comes and this famine comes. And and it's obviously going all the way to Israel. And so Jacob tells his brothers, remember the brothers who sold him into Joseph into slavery, tells his brothers. He said, hey, listen, I've heard that there is food over in Egypt.

I need you guys to go and and get some food and to make that long story short of how that that happens, that reunion. They come and they stand before Joseph and they are reunited in that moment. And can you imagine the fear? It says that they feared Joseph. They feared being in his presence because of everything that they had done.

And you know what Joseph did in the middle of that? He forgave them. And he elevated them. He helped them. And he treated them a lot different than you or I probably would have treated them. Let's just be honest. We know how we would have handled that.

Right. You get put in that position and all of a sudden the people that sold you into slavery, that that led your life through all these terrible things, one after another, bad things were happening in Joseph's life. And all of a sudden he finally gets elevated in Pharaoh's house and he's over everything. And here comes these guys that he knew were his brothers.

He would have, I would have probably sent them away and said no, or I'd have had them killed because I had all the authority to do any of that. But even in the midst of that difficulty, you know what? Joseph had character. Joseph had character. Through every situation in his life, Joseph remained faithful and reflected who God is in everything.

He lived every single moment as if God was right there with him. Think about your life. Think about your life. Think about the decisions that you make when no one else is around.

When you think I can get away with something or when you think that, you know, you can look at something and nobody else know or you think you can manipulate something and nobody else is going to find out and you think you can kind of wiggle your way in, you know, that's really the real us. You see, Joseph, even in those moments, it didn't matter what kind of adversity was coming before him. Joseph remained faithful because he lived every single moment as if God was with him. So we come to Genesis chapter number 50. This is really the end of his life, Joseph's life. And he's talking, he's having this conversation with his brothers. And this is, you know, after he had revealed himself to them. And he'd already done all of that and he'd blessed them and he'd seen his dad and all of this has already transpired.

And as he's coming up to the end of his life, he's talking to his brothers. And this is so interesting and you can imagine this is just what I want you to understand here today, that God is working no matter what and he uses trials in our life to develop the character that is in our life. There's some times that you and I, we don't understand why we go through the trials that we do. I wish, I wish if you came to me and said, I don't understand why God is choosing to send my family through this. I wish that God would give me an exact answer and exact something. Well, here's why. It's because one day this is going to happen in your life.

Listen, I can't give you that. But here's what I want you to do in the midst of the adversity, in the midst of the trials that you face in life. I want you to remember that God is right there with you in the middle of it. And he's sending us through hardships and trials to develop character in your life. At the end of his life, he said this in verse 19.

He said, Joseph said unto them, Fear not, for I am in the place of God. But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good. Isn't that a good statement?

Isn't that such a good statement? And by the way, every single one of us at the end of our life, there might not be a whole lot of answers that you can give on this side of eternity, but the end of your life. I want you to understand that there's going to be a moment where even the hardest of times are going to be worth every second for what you're going to experience one day. What God is trying to do in your life is more important than what you get in this life. We think that God, you know, serving God is going to be just this life that, you know, is just all on a bed of roses, and everything's going to be great and easy, and it's going to be the easy path, and that he's never going to give us any challenges because we said yes to serving him, and we said yes to his call upon salvation, and all this kind of stuff. And we forget that sometimes serving God is going to take us through some very difficult moments of your life. And what I want you to remember about the trials of life is that they are placed in your life to develop character in your life, to do something in your life.

So don't miss what God is trying to do in you because you're so busy looking at what is happening around you. Joseph, he said at the end of his life, as he kind of surveyed this really messed up, terrible life that he has been living, and he said this, he thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass as it is this day to save much people alive. Verse 21, now therefore fear ye not, I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted them and he spake kindly unto them.

He comforted them and spake kindly unto them. You see, Joseph understood that every trial, tribulation, temptation, he understood what James 1-3 says, that the trying of our faith worketh patience. Now this is not something that we like, right, because the trying of our faith is difficult.

It's hard, it's not fun. But if I can get you to remember anything, it's this, that trials are placed into our lives to develop our character. Trials are placed into our lives to develop our character. You know what God is interested more than anything else about your life, other than your salvation and saying yes to him? God is trying to do something in your life.

God is trying to mold you into looking more and more like Jesus. That's the purpose for our life. You see, when we get saved, the purpose for your life is to look as much like Jesus and to give as much glory to Jesus as you possibly can. That's the purpose for your life right now if you're a follower, if you're a child of God here in this room and you've said yes to Jesus. So let me remind you, your full purpose right now is to give him glory and to reflect him in the way that you live and the way that you behave in everything. That's our purpose in life. It's not to make money, it's not to make a name for ourselves, it's not to be really good at a career.

All those things are important and I'm not saying you should not work really hard at those things. But that's not our purpose. Our purpose is to reflect Jesus in everything that we are doing. You see, God is trying to do something in you.

He's trying to do something in me. And sometimes the best way to do his work in your life is to send you through a difficult time. I know that's probably not the answer, that's not the sermon that you wanted to hear today.

But I think that's probably the most beneficial thing you can learn about what scripture says about your character is sometimes we go through trials because God is trying to develop something in us. So the question is this, how do you stay focused on what God is doing in you instead of focusing on the circumstances around you? You see, Joseph, he stayed focused. He wasn't worried about prison. He wasn't worried about being falsely accused. He wasn't worried about being thrown into a pit. He wasn't worried as he was riding, as he was in slavery. He wasn't worried about any of those things. You know what he was worried about more than anything else? Was living his life to please God above anything else.

That's what he wanted to do. And so it didn't matter if he was in a pit. It didn't matter if he was heading to Egypt as a slave.

It didn't matter if he was in prison. None of those things mattered because he was focused on what God was doing in him, not focused on the circumstances around you. So if you want to stay focused so that you can build character in your life, what do you need to do? The first thing is this, what Joseph did. You need to remain faithful in every circumstance. I can't say this again, you need to remain faithful in every circumstance. Joseph, if you look throughout his life in the book of Genesis, which his life takes up as much time in the book of Genesis as anyone else, and Joseph remained faithful through so many different things, being hated by his brothers, being sold into slavery, being wrongfully accused and thrown into prison, elevated circumstances like being over Egypt, the good, the bad, everything about it.

Joseph remained faithful because Joseph was more focused on what God was doing in him instead of the circumstances around him. You know, some of us focus on our circumstances too much, right? We're constantly focused at what's happening at work and what's happening in our family and what's happening in our church.

We're constantly focused at things we don't like and all of this kind of stuff and we're mad about the way things are around us and we're irritated about it and we're upset about it. And we need to stop asking God to just change all of the bad things in our life and we need to start asking Him to teach us and to do something in us as a result of all of those things. That's what we need to be doing, that's what Joseph did. He lived his life knowing God is going to do something in me and God is working a work in me and the same God that started something in me, He is going to see it through.

He is going to work it out in my life. We need to remain faithful in every single circumstance. Number two, we need to discipline ourselves in private.

We need to discipline ourselves in private. If you think about, you know, battles, you know, people that go and fight battles, they don't just walk out to the battle and just ready to fight it. No, there's a lot of things that lead up to that. If you think about David in the Old Testament, God used a bear and a lion to prepare him to fight Goliath, right? Well, if you look at any of the big battles that our nation has fought, there's boot camp and there's training and there's all of these different things. Many of you have gone through those trainings to get you prepared for the battle because I've never gone through those trainings. I'm the last person that you want actually showing up and fighting in the battle, right?

Because I've never been through all of those things. And here's the thing that I want you to understand about life, is that you don't just show up in the middle of a trial, in the middle of adversity, in the middle of hardship. You don't just show up in the middle of that ready to fight. It happens before the battle. That's when you prepare. That's when you prepare. When the times are fine, when you're young, if you're a young person in here, if you're going to prepare for the battles that you're going to face as your family in 20 years from now, it starts with preparation now. When you're a kid, when you're young, that's what happened in Joseph's life.

Joseph was young and he stayed true to exactly what God wanted because that is what helped him through everything that he was going to be faced with. You see, we prepare for the battles of life before the battle. That is what discipline is. You say, what exactly does that mean? If you want to face, and by the way, if life's good for you, I praise God for that.

I really do. But listen, somebody told me one time that you're either in the middle of a trial, you're coming out of a trial, or you're about to head straight into a trial. We all know that there's difficult moments in our life. When you are faced with a difficult moment and you go through a hardship in your life, if you want to be ready and you want to fight and you want to come through it just like Joseph did with your character, with your integrity intact, if you want to make it through the difficult times of life, you have to discipline yourself in private.

You say, what does that look like? Here's where it starts. You have to have a daily time with God's word. You have to. Let me say this, that if you're in here today and you do not have a daily time in the word of God, I'm not talking about church, not even talking about a sermon.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your daily time with God, where it's just you, God's word, it's just the two of you. If you don't have a time like that, you are not ready to face the difficult battles of life. Because I don't know how we can ever go through those difficult battles without the word of God.

You see, the word of God is there to sustain and comfort and help you in your life. So my challenge is this. If you are not in the book, you need to leave here and you need to start that.

Start today. Start small. Get in the word of God. Maybe your family. Maybe your family, you've never read the Bible together as a family.

Maybe that's where you start. If you have children, what better way to prepare your young kids for the battles and difficulties of life that they're going to face one day than getting them into the word of God right now to prepare them. That's their basic training for life, is getting them into the book. The second thing you have to have is you have to have a regular time of prayer. You see, God's word, that's how he speaks to us, but prayer is our time to talk back and communicate to him. We just did a series on prayer. I want you to know you are absolutely nothing without prayer.

I can't say that enough. I'm nothing without prayer. I can't pastor this church without prayer. I need you praying for me, but I need to be praying.

Let me say this. You can't lead your family without prayer. You can't show up to work and glorify Jesus at your job without prayer.

You need to be praying, getting on your face before God, and maybe that's where you need to tell God, God, I've been begging you to take away every bad thing in my life, and I'm missing what you're trying to do in me through the bad things in the bad times of life. You need to have, number three, community with other believers, fellowship with other believers. I believe this, that iron sharpeneth iron, and we have to have friends who are helping us go in the right direction.

We have to have friends around us that are pushing us to be more and more like Jesus in everything that you do and say. You have to give obediently. These are just some disciplines in life that we are called to do. If you want to be ready for the difficult hardships that are on the horizon in your life, you have to be consistent with the disciplines in your current right now in your life.

You don't just start giving when times get hard. You give when times aren't hard, which disciplines you to start and continue and stay in faithful to give when times do get hard. You see, those things are just disciplines in your life. We call them spiritual disciplines. Those are things in our life that we are called to do by God that prepare us. That's our basic training for the difficulties of life. You see, trials develop your character. If you want to be ready for the trial and learn and see what God wants to do in you, you have to stay faithful and disciplined. Number three, you have to stay accountable for your decisions.

You have to stay accountable. Joseph, it amazes me that if I was Joseph, here's what I would have said. I would have gone to prison kicking and screaming. I would have gone kicking and screaming.

I didn't do that. I would have pitched to fit and I would have completely, but he didn't do any of that. He was responsible for his, luckily he made a lot of good decisions. But let me say this, we live, what I've seen as a young pastor, we live in a world where no one wants to take accountability for any decision that they make. Nobody wants to take responsibility for a decision that they make.

And we blame everybody else for what we decided to get into ourselves. And let me tell you this, Joseph, the reason God did this incredible thing in his life is because he was responsible for his decisions. And when he was young, he made a decision when he was 17 or younger, he made a decision that he's going to make good decisions because the decisions that he made each and every moment determined the story that he's going to tell about his life the next day. And he made every decision as if God was right there with him, making those decisions with him. We need to realize that we are accountable for every decision that we make in life. And I'll tell you this, you know, I've been young in ministry, but I've heard far too long that the reason I've heard people say that the reason that they are where they are, it's because of the pastor's fault. I've heard this when I was a youth pastor.

This is the craziest thing ever. I heard people say, well, if that youth pastor had just visited my kid, they wouldn't be where they're at today. And I'm not harping on all of those things. All I'm saying is that we are so quick to place blame onto everybody else for the decisions that we make in life. We have to learn to take accountability. Let me remind you, if you're young in here, it is not always the teacher's fault. I used to say that growing up all the time. This is like sixth grade. I could teach this class better than they can.

Really? And now that I'm older, I realize, man, that was a stupid statement. But I'll tell you, when we're young, we learn that in parents, you have to teach your kids that, listen, they are responsible for the decisions that they make in life. Joseph understood that at the end of his life, he was responsible for the decisions that he made. So my question or my statement to you is this. Make decisions today as if you will answer for them tomorrow.

Make decisions today as if you will answer for them tomorrow. You see, Joseph, he was a man of character, a man of integrity. And even through every difficult moment of life, at the end of his life, he was able to look back and let's just be real.

There wasn't a whole lot of highlight moments. A lot of bad moments. And at the end of his life, he was able to say, you know what? All this. You thought it for evil, but God had a plan. God was doing something in me. He was doing something for me that I didn't even realize existed. And that made every trial, every hardship, every difficult moment of life. That made it all worth it because of what God was doing in me. He was developing me into a man of character. And so Joseph, at the end of his life, was able to say, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And he was able to comfort his brothers and still speak kindly unto them and forgive those who have hated and wrongfully used him.

So think about your life. Character is reflecting God. And when we think about character, one of the ways God wants to build as much character in your life as anything else is through the difficult moments of life. How do you respond when life doesn't go your way?

Are you focused on the circumstances? Are you focusing on maybe God is trying to do something in your life? Maybe he was trying to to win someone to Jesus as a result of this. Maybe he is trying to conform and mold and chisel your life so that it will look more and like more like Jesus as a result of it.

Because remember, Godly character is reflecting Jesus and living like Jesus in every area of your life. Would you bow your heads with me? I know tonight today was a little bit of a different message as we just looked at Joseph's life. But I want you nobody looking around. I want you just to pause for just a moment as the instruments will play here in a moment. And I want you to think about your life. Right where you're at. Listen, life is not always easy.

It's not. And sometimes we look at life and the trials and difficult moments of life, the storms of life. And we are so focused on the circumstances that we forget maybe God is trying to do something in me instead of something for me during those moments.

He's trying to make you look more like Jesus. Let's all stand, nobody looking around. I'm going to pray and then our altar is going to be open. Father, we love you. God, I pray that you would bless in this invitation time, bless in this response time. I believe that there's probably people in this room today, God, who are going through that difficult moment, that fire, that trial in their life, that hardship. And they're so focused on you removing that in their life. Maybe they need to come and say, God, I want to stop asking you to remove it.

But I want you to teach me something through it. I want you to do something in me through the difficulty blessing this invitation time for it's in your name. We pray. Amen. Nobody looking around. If God speaks to you, you come. The altar is open.