Christian Devotional – October 12, 2018

The life of Joseph. Over the next several days, I am going to be looking more closely into the life of Joseph and how God worked through him. Taking a look back at his birth in Genesis 30:22-24 we see:

Then God remembered Rachel, and God gave heed to her and opened her womb. So she conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” She named him Joseph, saying, “May the Lord give me another son.”
Genesis 30:22‭-‬24 NASB
https://bible.com/bible/100/gen.30.22-24.NASB

To look back at the story, Rachel couldn’t have children.  Locked in a battle with her sister of who can have the most male children, she was trying everything she could think of to have a child. She begged her husband, she tried local remedies, and she used her servants as surrogates. But scripture never says that she prayed and asked God. Still, God was faithful and gave her a son. Even throughout this, she was focused on herself. After she had Joseph, she was glad that HER reproach had been taken away and her prayer was that God would give her another son. No thankfulness. No praising God.

How would having a mother that demonstrated this attitude impact Joseph’s early years? Children are inherently selfish anyway, would that have been increased, tolerated, encouraged? As the only son of the favorite wife, this would have just inflated his ego more.

How do we allow the influence of our upbringing to continue to impact our lives as we get older? Do we use it as an excuse or a crutch? Is it a motivation to overcome? We’ll look into how Joseph uses it in the days to come.