As we saw last week Joseph wasn't
really popular with his brothers. He tells tales about them to his
father and he is clearly more loved by their father than them.
Jacob made that perfectly clear when he gave a unique multi colored
tunic for Joseph and not for the rest of them. They hated Joseph
for that. And then something happened that made them hate him even
more. Joseph had dreams.
The first dream was:
"There we were binding sheaves
in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright;
and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my
sheaf." Genesis 37:7
His brothers hated Joseph even more
after this dream, and understandably so. I don't know what Joseph
expected after telling them that, but he didn't learn his lesson,
for when he had another dream he didn't hesitate to tell them:
"…this time, the sun, the moon,
and eleven stars bowed down to me." Genesis 37:9
Now I don't know about you, but I
don't know how I would react if someone told me something like
this. I would think them arrogant and boastful, definitely not
humble as the Bible requires. But I realize that Joseph was still
very young and immature. Maybe he wanted to get even with his
brothers for treating him badly by telling them the dreams, or
maybe he was just genuinely young and naïve, thinking that they
will respect him when he told them this. Whichever way, we can
definitely learn from this.
We should be very careful to boast
about things, especially if it is things that we believe that God
is doing in our lives. For example we shouldn't brag about how
quickly we got rid of the flu to someone who genuinely struggles to
feel better. We shouldn't brag about how well our child is doing in
school academically to someone who we know has a child who
struggles. We shouldn't brag about our child's sporting abilities
to someone whose child genuinely tries but just doesn't have the
talent. That is not testifying about God to other people, that is
pushing them away.
We had that experience now in
COVID. We own two coffeeshops in a hospital and needless to say it
has been a tough time for us since March 2020. Now God has looked
after us and provided for us, but we had a 60%+ decline in business
year on year. Then clients would come into our shop whose
businesses are in either telecoms or electronics or supermarkets.
Now these industries did extremely well during the pandemic. Then
they will say how much God has blessed them and that they are just
so glad that He has looked after them and they would go on and on.
Now they believe their testimony is great, but in fact it made us
feel worse. It made us feel as if they prayed and it went great for
them, but we prayed and it didn't. So what is wrong with us? Now I
realize most of them meant well, but we need to learn from it and
not do the same to people who are not strong in the faith.
Fortunately we are strong and we have learned many things from
Above during this time, but we all need to be very careful that our
'testimonies' do not cause damage to other people's faith.
God wants us to testify of His
goodness and grace, He does. But we need to be sensitive to the
leading of His Spirit so that we testify when we should. But also
that we rather keep our mouths shut and listen and support others
when it is not going that well for them. In supporting and
encouraging others when they are down in the dumps does much more
good than to 'brag' about all the blessings from God whilst we can
clearly see that it is not going that well with the person in front
of us. We need to use our God given emotional intelligence and
rather live as an example to God and support others where we
can.
I believe God gave these dreams to
Joseph to encourage him and give him strength in the difficult
times that lay ahead for him. I don't think it was dreams to share
with his brothers, especially when they already had a strained
relationship. His dreams did come true when his brothers bowed
before him in Egypt, but I truly believe that those dreams were the
forerunner to encourage Joseph and to show him the future. These
dreams helped him to see his gift with dreams and to enable him to
unveil to the Pharaoh his dream when the time came.
Father thank you for blessing us
with so much. Please help us to know when to share these blessings
with others as a testimony and when to rather keep quiet and help
others where they need it the most. Please give us the emotional
intelligence to know the difference. Amen