Page 97 - Evidence of Things Unseen

I read these words with tears filling my eyes. I knew God was speaking directly to me.
At the very moment I had told Him I was discouraged He had sent me a word of
encouragement. The reproach I was encountering became bearable as I understood that
God had brought me to this place, and He was using these things to prepare me to one day
enter into the promised promotion that was ahead of me. As this word testified, He would
cause me to come into the calling and anointing He had chosen for me, but first he had to
prepare me to be able to bear these things.
I considered God’s preparation of that other Joseph so many years ago. He walked
faithfully even when he was in the midst of a great trial of his soul. Having been separated
from the father he loved, and sold as a slave into a foreign land, he remained faithful to God
and served with integrity in Potipher’s house. Despite his faithfulness he was accused as an
attempted rapist, and of being a sexually impure man. He had to bear this reproach for
many years, yet God used it to form a humility in him that would allow him to receive the
authority he would one day walk in.
As I considered it, I thought that it was more agreeable to me to be thought of as a
slacker, and an irresponsible fellow, than to be accused of sexual sins I had not committed.
Though I too was numbered among the transgressors, I saw the mercy of God in the
reproach He had chosen for me to bear. It was on August 27th, 2002 that my wife printed
out this word and handed it to me, and I have carried it in my Bible since. I have read it
many more times, for there was to be much more reproach I would have to bear. I needed
to remind myself frequently that God was ordering my steps and there was a great purpose
behind the sorrowful events in my life.
I have often asked God why He could not have chosen to let me suffer reproach for
some religious activity such as preaching against the sins of this present evil world. Why did
He choose for me to suffer for not being able to pay my bills on time, for there is nothing
noble in such a thing. Yet that is precisely why He has chosen this reproach, for it will lead
to humility, even as Joseph’s reproach did. In suffering for some overtly righteous activity
we can become prideful, even while enduring reproach, but it is much more humbling to
suffer shame as an evildoer. Christ was perfect in humility and He was accused of violating
the Law of God and being a blasphemer. He learned obedience by the things He suffered,
and God has chosen that His elect should do the same.
God could have chosen for His Son to only heal six days a week, and not to heal on the
Sabbath. The Father knew His Son would be accused of being a Sabbath breaker, a sin
punishable by death, if He led Him to heal on a Sabbath day. It was the Father’s will for His
Anointed One to suffer reproach that He might be perfected through suffering. If we would
also be perfect, we too must suffer. We will know reproaches, but they will only serve to
conform us more to the image of Christ if we receive them willingly, and do not despise
them.