Present and future compensations!
Verse for Today: Saturday, October 20, 2012
Genesis 41:51 – Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, “It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household.”
God gives us the right gifts at the right time to lift our sagging spirits up and fill us with His joy in the wake of severe trials and tribulations. These gifts come in the form of peace, contentment, sustenance and strength to accomplish greater things for Him. While these gifts are only a token, the greatest gifts await us at the Bema. He is gracious to compensate us for our losses here on earth in special ways which are not always tangible, but spiritual. Joseph was ill-treated and sold by his own household and thus separated him from his loving father. It has now been more than thirteen years since he lost touch with his family. It seemed as if he lost them and that they have lost him too. But God comes to compensate Joseph with a family of his own and presented him with a son who made him forget all his troubles of the past from his household. Through the birth of Manasseh, God spoke to Joseph that the son was God’s way to help Joseph forget all the troubles of his past thirteen years. Now it was time for him to praise God and forget his painful past. Manasseh was God’s token reward to Joseph because he endured all trials but still didn’t divert from God’s pathways. God didn’t stop there, but reassured Joseph through another gift of a son who was a token of enlargement and enrichment of his life in the land of his suffering through temptations, false accusations and long years of imprisonment. Where all hope seemed to elude him, God gave Joseph new hope again through the sign of fruitfulness in his second son Ephraim. Today Joseph has a new beginning in life with grace to forget the past and to enjoy the new fruitfulness that God permitted in his otherwise barren life in a prison cell. These two great new gifts seemed far greater to Joseph than the second spot he got in Egypt. The position in Egypt was to help sustain the Messianic lineage, but his two sons were to become the pillars of the New Jerusalem and will be carried by the High Priest of Heaven on His chest. We stand amazed at the way God treats His faithful servant and are challenged to take comfort in the way He treats all His faithful children in the wake of suffering injustice and ill-treatment.
Hello dear reader, are you sinking deep in agony because of the injustice that is done to you by those who are near and dear? Are you caught up in impatience because of the extent of sufferings? Do you feel like asking God as to why you are going through these sufferings and why God was not interfering to stop the ill-treatment? But what you might not realize is that your God is busy working behind the scene to set the stage for you to be exulted and compensated. When the stage is set, the curtain of darkness will be raised up for you to see the enrichment, enlargement and empowerment that God has prepared for you as a token of His greater gifts which await you at the Bema. The token gifts will make you forget the past tribulations and compensate you for what has been lost. As He helps you to forget your pains of the past, it is not time yet to rest, but to keep accomplishing greater tasks for Him. He has set the stage for that also which you will have to fulfill as you avail yourself of the opportunities that are spread before you. Let the gifts of the two sons of Joseph encourage us today to look forward for the future with brighter hope for greater things that God will accomplish through us as part of His eternal plan. Let the token gifts from God strengthen us and rekindle our sagging spirits to keep trusting God to go forward.
Romans 8:18 – I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Thought for Today
God enlarges, enriches and compensates His children as they persevere in tribulations and prepares them for greater glory ahead.
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