Chapter Six

The Presence of Detours

In the last chapter we looked at one way to discover if you are on a God-inspired detour or simply going through the consequences of bad choices. We saw how suffering for doing what is right is often a way God tests us. Joseph wound up in jail because he refused to dishonor God by accepting the advances of Potiphar’s wife.

Another way you can discern you are on a detour designed by God is that in the midst of your suffering for doing good, God shows you His presence. He shows you His favor. God joins you in the pit.

God didn’t keep Daniel from the lions’ den; He met him in it.

He didn’t keep Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace; He joined them in it.

He didn’t keep Joseph from being a slave to Potiphar; He gave him favor in it—to the point that Joseph wound up with authority over Potiphar’s home and all his possessions. Later, when Joseph was tossed onto another detour into prison, God went to the prison with him as well. It says in Genesis 39:21, “But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him. He granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.”

The second proof for knowing you are where God wants you to be in your detour is that God doesn’t deliver you from it but rather joins you in it. I know you may be praying, like Joseph may have himself, “Lord, get me out of this jail. Get me out of this detour!” But it may not be the right time to get you out. So if God is not ready to deliver you from it, look for Him in it.

Do you see His hand of favor on you? Do you see Him giving you favor to others around you? Can you experience His presence with you? Are you open to looking for it?

Look for Him to give you light in the midst of the darkness.

I recently spent some time with a large group of singles when they had an evening of fellowship on our church campus. I shared with them what Joseph’s secret was in being a successful single the years that he was. This secret is recorded for us in the book of Acts. We read, “The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt, but God was with him” (Acts 7:9). Joseph’s success was that God was with him. He was with him in the pit, in Potiphar’s house, and even in the prison.

The key to victory in whatever situation you are facing is not first where you are or what you are going through but rather who is with you while you’re there. In prison, “the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him.” We see how God’s presence and kindness showed up in the next few verses, “The warden put all the prisoners who were in the prison under Joseph’s authority, and he was responsible for everything that was done there. The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph’s authority, because the Lord was with him, and the Lord made everything that he did successful” (Gen. 39:22–23).

Joseph got a promotion in jail. God didn’t change the situation—Joseph was still in jail. But in the detour God promoted him.

The way God shows up isn’t always by delivering you from something—sometimes it is delivering you in it. If God is granting you favor in the midst of a trial, test, or detour, that may be a hint that He isn’t ready to deliver you from that detour just yet. You may be wondering how to tell if it really is God and not just circumstances. Let’s look at a pattern God often uses. If you’ll remember when Joseph was a slave in Potiphar’s house, Potiphar promoted him to make him head over everything. It says, “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, serving in the household of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything he did successful, Joseph found favor in his master’s sight and became his personal attendant. Potiphar also put him in charge of his household and placed all that he owned under his authority” (vv. 2–4).

Later when Joseph languished in jail, the same thing happened. The jailer took notice of him and, again, put him in charge. God showed up, not once, but twice in a similar way. Scripture often says that by “two or three witnesses” a matter will be confirmed.

When the Lord shows up twice in your life in a similar fashion, pay attention! He is talking. It’s not bad luck. It’s not good luck. It’s not chance. It is God confirming He is doing this on purpose because He is giving you a double witness.

When Gideon needed proof that he was really hearing from God, he put the animal skin out and asked for God to make it dry on one side and wet on the other. The next day he flipped it over and asked for the opposite. God will often reveal Himself in groups of two. Not always, but there is often a pattern you can see if you look through spiritual eyes. Look for how God might be speaking to you by doing or allowing something twice in your life. Ask Him for wisdom to discern His hand of favor and what it means. Sometimes it may mean no real change in your situation—you may still be in the pit. But just knowing you are not alone is enough to give you the strength to wait well.

Have you ever experienced a lot of turbulence on an airplane? I have. There have been occasions when the plane seems to be jumping all over the place. Grown men and women are screaming, buckling up their already tightened seatbelts. The looks on their faces show apparent nervousness.

But then you hear a voice come over the loudspeaker.

You recognize the voice of the captain. The captain explains that you are in a rough spot right now but that in another ten to fifteen minutes you will be out of it. Somehow just hearing that he knows what’s going on relieves the stress. Hearing the captain’s voice didn’t stop the turbulence or the bumps. But hearing his voice calmed you as the plane continued to maneuver through it.

God doesn’t always take us out of our detours, but knowing He is with us can produce calm amid the turbulence of life. When the financial, relational, health, employment, or whatever situation won’t seem to get restored in your life, listen for God’s voice. Do you recognize His presence? Can you feel His favor despite the adversities and pain around you?

God was with Joseph, in the pit and in the prison, because He had a plan.

Serving While Suffering

Another proof that you are on your way to your destiny when you are stuck on a detour is when God gives you a ministry to other people who are going through the same or similar things that you are. He gives you people to serve while you are suffering.

The next portion of Joseph’s story reveals this to us in his life:

After this, the Egyptian king’s cupbearer and baker offended their master, the king of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard in the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard assigned Joseph to them, and he became their personal attendant. And they were in custody for some time. (Gen. 40:1–4)

Two of Pharaoh’s most trusted servants, his cupbearer and his baker, got in some hot water themselves. Since they were under the sentence of death, they were probably seen as part of an assassination plot to Pharaoh. Landing in jail, they came under Joseph’s care. Later on in the story we will discover that these two jailbirds hold the key to Joseph’s destiny. But before God would ever use that key to unlock anything in Joseph’s life, he first wanted Joseph to help these two men. Joseph had to learn to look beyond his own misery and see how he could be used to help others before God would promote him to his ultimate kingdom assignment.

The tendency when you are suffering is to be self-absorbed. It’s a normal tendency in all of us. If you hear about other people with problems, you don’t care to help them because you want to spend all of your emotional energy on nursing your own wounds. But the key to overcoming your own suffering is actually the opposite. You are to look for people going through a similar thing as yourself and find a way to minister to them while you wait on God to minister to you. Joseph, noticing their sad faces, ministered to them (Gen. 40:6–8).

What many people do is get selfish in their suffering. But the righteous response to suffering is to help someone else. One of the ways God moves you through your detours is through your ministry. If you are unwilling to minister to someone else, you could be delaying your own destiny by increasing the length of your detour. Being self-centered may actually cause you to miss out on the blessing God has in store for you.

What many people do is get selfish in their suffering.

When the two men in jail needed someone to help them, Joseph was there. Joseph wasn’t so busy wallowing in his own self-pity that he didn’t have time for anyone else. The two men had a dream, and dreams were Joseph’s specialty. Interpreting both dreams for the men, he used the gift God had given him to help someone else. We’ll see later on how Joseph’s being willing to interpret their dreams actually got him out of the prison.

If you want to see God show up in your detour and take you to your destiny, look for other people to serve. You don’t have to be sophisticated about it; just use the gift God has given you when you see someone who may need it. God wants to use your detours to help others in theirs as well. Noah ministered while he waited for rain. Ruth ministered while she waited for God to change her situation. Rebecca drew water for a stranger’s camels while she waited for God to provide her with a mate. They all ministered in the midst of waiting—during the delay of their detour.

Be careful not to miss your ministry because of your misery. God uses ministry to recharge your spiritual batteries while you wait. As 2 Corinthians tells us, God has a reason for the comfort, favor, and kindness He gives us in the middle of our troubles. It says, “He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so through Christ our comfort also overflows” (1:4–5). God not only desires for us to connect vertically with Him. He also wants to use us to connect horizontally with each other. It needs to be both ways to fully live out the greatest and second greatest commandments, which are to love God first and love others as ourselves. If you are in a detour, find a way to encourage someone else who is in the same or similar situation that you are in. You rarely find someone alone on a detour. Typically, there is a line of cars being rerouted and moving slowly.

Stuck Too Long

Lastly, and probably the most discouraging of the four proofs that you are on a God-ordained detour, is when God postpones your release. He puts off your change. He pushes back your deliverance—which is exactly what happened to Joseph in jail.

After interpreting the two inmates’ dreams, he asked the cupbearer one thing. He asked him to remember him when he got out. Joseph said, “But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you. Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison. For I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing that they should put me in the dungeon” (Gen. 40:14–15).

Joseph simply asked to be remembered when the cupbearer got out. That’s all. That’s not a lot. No one would consider that asking too much of anyone. Joseph willingly interpreted his dream and gave him hope about his future. In return, all he asked for was a way out of his own prison situation. “Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him” (v. 23). The cupbearer went on his way, leaving Joseph in a seemingly unending delay.

Friend, you may not like what I am about to say, but I’ve seen it in Scripture, and I’ve seen it in people’s lives enough times to believe that it is a pattern of God. You are exactly where you are supposed to be when it looks like God has you on the precipice of disaster. When it looks like He is just about to come through for you in the most hopeless of times. When it looks like relief must be creeping up over the horizon . . . but then it ducks back down and disappears.

When God goes left and you needed a right, that is often proof positive that you are right where He wants you to be.

This is similar to when Martha and Mary lost their brother Lazarus when he was sick and then died. They asked Jesus why He delayed in coming to them while he was still alive. Christ’s answer to Martha and Mary is a similar answer to Joseph in jail and each of us when we face destiny’s detours—God has a specific reason for His delays. It is in order to show His hand all the more powerful and to deepen our faith.

Do you feel stuck? Do you feel like you are in a situation that just won’t end, despite all the prayers you have prayed and attempts at overcoming it yourself?

You feel like God has forgotten you even though you have tried to honor Him in your thoughts and actions. Then, He shows you little clues of His presence here or there. He uses you to minister to others in the midst of your pain. And just when it looks like He is about to deliver you—you’ve found the right person, the right job, your purpose, health or finances are about to turn around for good—you face yet another delay when it appears that God has slammed the door of opportunity and deliverance in your face. It is easiest to give up in times like those.

How must Joseph have felt when he saw his way out of a dungeon he didn’t deserve, but then day after day passed and there came no word? There came no call from up above. There came no key to deliverance. That’s enough to test any man’s faith—when you feel forgotten, especially after serving so well.

But remember—a delay does not mean a denial.

A delay occurs when God is continuing to prepare your destiny for you and you for your destiny in order to fulfill His greater kingdom purposes. God had a glorious purpose for Joseph to fulfill, but it would require a few more years in jail. Yes, years.

God’s timetable is rarely our own. His detours may last much longer than we want. But when you reach your destiny—as when Joseph finally reached his—you will look back with wonder and exclaim that God was right, and even kind, all along.