Back to the future...3 - Joseph

Joseph was born at a time when his father Israel was very old, so Israel loved him more than he loved his other sons. Jacob gave him a special coat, which was long and very beautiful.^”               Gen.37:3 (ERV)

Joseph said to his brothers:  "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done..." 
                               Gen.50:19 (NIV)

Last month I celebrated forty-five years of knowing the Lord in my life.  There are many champions of faith in the Bible who show us to hold on to the Lord despite our circumstances. It is at those times we have to choose to walk with Him in the belief good will come through that.  This is my testimony of that truth.

For eleven years I worshipped in a lively Church of England and was taught by many well-known Bible teachers.  Then the Lord revealed I had a good grasp of the vertical of the cross in being rooted in His word, and interceding with the Holy Spirit, but had little knowledge of the horizontal aspect of open arms and sharing life with others. Within months He reconnected my husband to University friends within a growing fellowship, and a year later we'd joined and moved to an area where seventy members lived. 

I thought I was heading towards my 1980 vision for the future.  It soon became apparent that wasn’t the case when I naively shared my vision and relationship with the Lord to those in the new church.  Like Joseph they thought at best I was arrogant and at worst deceived.  Puzzled by peoples’ reaction I fled to a nearby field to ask Him what was happening.  His answer was I’d built my life on a firm foundation, the walls of my spiritual house were strong, but He’d pulled out the carpets to destroy those things within me not of Him.  I was to clear those out and put them on the fire of His love.  For several hours I sat in shocked silence. Could I really have got it all so wrong?  Yet as I asked, I felt assured of His love and my salvation. Over the months I realised my prayer from Romans 12 to transform me by the renewing of my mind was being answered. The end result would be the promise I’d be able ‘to test and approve what was God’s good, pleasing and perfect will’.

Conversations became stunted as the alienation grew and any help I offered often refused.  I pressed into worshipping the Lord.  He led me to Isa.30:15-26 bringing again the understanding once through this it would end well, so I asked Him not to stop until He’d completed the work!  The first thing He pointed out was I’d gossiped and what that felt like.  It was two years before the Lord began vindicating me from the false assumptions and tales told, but spiritually I felt imprisoned for the next  21 years.  As Dickens wrote: “It was the worst of times, but the best of times” as my relationship with the Lord deepened and strengthened.  I daily wrote letters, journaling His replies. And looked forward to friends visits to share our faith in the Lord.  Then came nine years of a wonderful secular job which paid well.  That only ended when the door to my rehabilitation in the Lord opened and gradually I was drawn back to those who loved and walked daily in the Holy Spirit. 

                                                                                                                        Ruth Johnson