Joseph: The Power of Forgiveness

Most people can probably identify a time in their lives when they felt that a dream or calling wasn’t happening—or at least wasn’t rolling out the way that they thought it would.

What do we do when our dream doesn’t seem to be happening? Do we respond by thinking that we must have gotten it wrong? Or do we trust that God is working everything together for a bigger plan that we can’t yet understand?

No one understands these frustrations more than Joseph. As a young man, Joseph had several dreams that, ultimately, God would fulfill much later than he expected. But there were many, many years of enduring not just the wait but pain, injustice, and hardship.

There are many lessons in the story of Joseph that I will mention today: calling, integrity, delayed authority, and more. But I want to focus on one crucial piece to the trajectory of Joseph’s family: the power of forgiveness. In the wait, injustice, pain, and hardship, God was working something out in Joseph so that he could eventually forgive his family and ultimately, be used to redeem them.