Grooming Hands!
Verse for Today: Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Psalms 105:17 – (God) sent a man before (His people) – Joseph, sold as a slave.
The ways of God are amazing and His plans are unfathomable. Long before our hours of need, God starts working in our lives to meet those needs. But He wants us to trust Him and go forward by faith whether we understand how and when He works in our lives or not. God wanted to protect Jacob and family during a famine which was to come two decades later. God planned provisions for them in neighboring Egypt during the famine. But Egypt was not ready to handle famine. So God groomed one of Jacob’s children to be the custodian of all the food in Egypt during the famine. God moved Joseph to Egypt and led the Pharaoh to make him in charge. In the process, Jacob had to experience bitter separation from his beloved son Joseph for over twenty years. Joseph had to be in the pit to wait for the traders to come to be sold to them as slave and he had to be in the house of Potiphar to make the move to prison to be in touch with Pharaoh’s cup bearer. We often wonder why God had to take such a long and rough route for Joseph to become the Prime Minister of Egypt! But Joseph had to learn the art of management and become efficient. He had to learn humility and holiness and prove faithfulness. In the process, he learned that God had sent him ahead of his family. We also go through such grooming of God as part of His agenda. The process of grooming under God’s hands is often long and painful, but it teaches us patience and faith and brings us to spiritual maturity. Today the loving hands which groomed Joseph are upon us to prepare us for greater usefulness for Him. His hands are full of grace, love and compassion. His hands will not hurt us, but will build us up for His glory.
Dear friend, are you going through tough times in life and wondering where God is taking you and what He is grooming you for? But God’s grooming hands are for your good as it was in the case of Joseph, David and Daniel when they had to go through tough experiences before God elevated up. The Psalms of David reveal how difficult it was for him to go through the grooming process. But those experiences prepared him to become the king of Israel and to face their enemies. Joseph had to go through uncertainty, slavery, false accusation and imprisonment and even had his feet bruised with shackles and his neck put in iron chains, apart from the cruelty of the brothers to put him in a pit, scheming to kill him, separate him from his beloved father and sell him like a commodity. But the years of his rule in Egypt and the way he became the savior of his family show us how God graciously groomed him. If you are going through similar situations and are made to suffer for no crime of yours, rest assured that the hand of God is taking you through it with a divine purpose. He is bending, breaking, reshaping and remolding you to fit the purpose. Unless you are tempered through the furnace of your circumstances, you won’t be ready and fit for His use. So when His grooming hands are upon you, it is important that you should recognize it and thank Him for it. You should ask for patience to hang in there until the process is over. But remember, His loving hands remold you lovingly and His compassionate fingers are on the controls of the furnace to make the heat bearable and the process short and sweet.
1 Peter 5:6 – Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.
Thought for Today
God’s remolding plan for us is a process to build us up and not to tear us down.
Prayer for Today
Dear Lord Jesus: Help me to joyfully praise You for Your loving hands even as I endure pain during the remolding process. Amen!
______________________________
______________________________
