Stewardship of God’s Gift of Affliction: The Fruitfulness of Affliction

Passage: Genesis 41:46-54

In the first chapter of James we read every good and perfect gift comes down to us from our Father in heaven, everything we have and are, our lives and all the gifts that come with life.  Apart from Him we are nothing and we have nothing.

Because all we have is not ours but from God, that makes us stewards of all His gifts.  We have been reflecting on a number of those gifts and how we are to be stewards of them, protectors of them, how to use them and not abuse or neglect them.

So far we have considered the gifts of retirement, children, marriage, sex and technology.

We have all had the experience of receiving a gift from someone they thought was a gift, but we didn’t see it that way.  Well-meaning perhaps, well-intentioned, but missed the mark.  That’s when we say it was the thought that counts.

So it is with adversity, with affliction, with trials and troubles and disappointments in life.  These are the sorts of gifts that lead us to say, “Why?”  “Why me?”  “What are you doing, Lord?”

The hardest questions all of us have to face in life have to do with suffering and affliction, the problem of evil and sin in our world.  It is interesting to notice the longest single story in the Bible and the longest story in the book of Genesis have to do with God answering the hardest questions.  The Book of Job and the story of Joseph, fourteen chapters in Genesis.

Romans 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

God wants us to know Him and His ways.  He has given us these stories for our hope, for the strengthening of our faith, preparing us how to endure the trials that come.

The story of Joseph is especially instructive and a great encouragement to build our hope.