Response Not Event

How do you keep life from taking you for a ride? The life of Joseph teaches us various principles on how to achieve this goal so this week let’s look at a second principle.

        The second principle is Response Not Event. It is so easy to wonder when events don’t go the way we want them to “How could God allow this to happen? Doesn’t He know what this is doing to me?” At those times we are wrestling with God’s role in the event for as the all-knowing and powerful God of the universe we expect Him to do better. But if we truly believe God to have all of these attributes our focus should really be on our response to the event.

        You see, God desires for us to look at every situation as an opportunity to trust Him and show how much we believe Him to be God. We note this in the story of Joseph as the often repeated truth “the Lord was with Joseph” (39:3, 5, 21, 23) is matched by Joseph’s evident trust of God in his response in various situations—“How then could I do this great evil, and sin against God?” (39:9); “it was not you who sent me here, but God” (45:3, 5, 7, 8, 9). We also note this truth continually being taught by Jesus to His disciples. One such example of this is Jesus’ rebuke of His disciples for not expecting Him to provide food for 4,000 after He has already provided food for 5,000—

“And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces you picked up?’ They said to Him, ‘Twelve.’ ‘And when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many large baskets full of broken pieces did you pick up?’ And they said to Him ‘Seven.’ And He was saying to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’” (Mark 8:17-21).

        We were never made to be God. A truth we know, but one that is hard to live out when we are faced by events that are not to our liking. Let us focus on our response (our responsibility) and trust God that He has focused on bringing the right events into our lives (His responsibility). A great way to keep the right focus is to work on training ourselves to ask ‘what?’ (‘What would you have me to learn or do in this situation Lord?’) when things don’t go the way we want them to instead of ‘why?’ (‘Why did this to happen to me Lord?’).  The first question keeps our focus on determining our right response while the second question puts the focus on the event and our obtaining right answers. We may never get answers so let us focus on that for which we are responsible—our actions.

“Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; In Thy presence is fullness of joy; In Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.”  Psalm 16:11