“Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”
—Winston Churchill
I have done some checking with friends in the counseling business and have come to the following conclusion: no one ever comes in and requests counseling because everything is fine. For some unexplained reason, it seems that no one needs help dealing with positive circumstances. Seriously, in twenty years of ministry, I can count on one hand the number of times that people have scheduled a meeting with me just to let me know that things were going great in their life.
The truth is that none of us have any trouble handling life when things are going our way, right? Our default setting as humans seems to be “doing great!”
But we all know that those good times don’t last. One hundred percent of us will deal with difficulties, challenges, problems, and obstacles during our lives. Even Jesus Himself warns us, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). This is like Jesus’ seven-day forecast for our life: trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble . . . “Get ready,” He warns. “It’s coming.”
So why do tough times always seem to surprise us? Why is it that when we are walking through a season in the valleys of life, we wonder what is wrong, what we’ve done to deserve this, or why we’ve been singled out for such trouble?
The Whole Story
Never forget that you don’t know the whole story about other people. Some of the most successful people you can imagine have also dealt with the most devastating failures you can imagine.
Take, for example, Michael Jordan. Here’s a guy who is almost the personification of success when looking at his basketball career. After fifteen seasons in the NBA, he is hailed on the league’s website as “the greatest basketball player of all time.”1 One of the most electrifying players on a Chicago Bulls team that won six NBA championships during his tenure, Jordan was named the league’s MVP five times, was on the All-NBA First Team ten times, owns three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, and other honors. Although he retired from the NBA in 2003, Jordan still holds the record for the highest regular-season scoring average and highest career play-off scoring average. In 1999, ESPN named him the greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century. He has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame two times.2 And don’t even get me started about the success of his licensing and endorsement operations.
Yet here’s how Jordan characterizes his career: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”3
Looking at Michael Jordan, would you have ever guessed that he failed so often? Most of us wouldn’t.
Oprah Winfrey was sexually abused as a very young girl. She gave birth to a son when she was fourteen years old, and the child died soon after birth. She contemplated suicide. But she finished high school, was a debate champion, and was chosen as one of two high school students in Tennessee to attend a White House conference on youth. After graduating from college and getting her first job as a TV coanchor in Baltimore, Winfrey was fired, told she was “unfit for TV.”4 In 2013, Winfrey, by this time the head of a billion-dollar media empire, told the graduating class of Harvard that “failure is just life trying to move you in a different direction.”5
One more story. Here’s some text from a letter received by some hopeful young musicians back in 1979:
Thank you for submitting your tape of “U2” to RSO. We have listened with careful consideration, but feel it is not suitable for us at present.
We wish you luck with your future career.
Yours sincerely,
Alexander Sinclair
RSO Records (U.K.) Limited6
In case you didn’t already know it: “Mr. Hewson” refers to Paul David Hewson, the band’s lead singer. You probably know him as Bono.
Now, the point I’m making is not tied to the celebrity or financial success of these examples. The main message here is that you cannot, simply by looking at people, conclude anything about the challenges they have faced in the past or are facing in the present. Remember, we’re all like icebergs. We’ve all got troubles, even if nobody else can see them.
Meet Joseph
I love the story of Joseph, in the Old Testament, mainly because his story is so similar to the way we often experience life today. If you charted Joseph’s circumstances on a line graph, it would look a lot like the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the last several decades: the overall trajectory was upward, but man, did Joseph’s life take some serious downturns!
Joseph started out as the favored son of Jacob, a wealthy herdsman and farmer of Canaan, in what is now Israel. Joseph was a dreamer, in both the literal and figurative senses. Later in his life, his talent with dreams and their interpretations would come in very handy; but as a youngster still living at home, that talent nearly got him killed.
On one occasion, Joseph reported a dream he had in which he and his brothers were binding sheaves of grain. Suddenly, Joseph’s sheaf stood upright, and the brothers’ sheaves came and bowed down to it. You can imagine how well that went over. But Joseph didn’t seem to get the message, because soon he had another dream in which the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to him, and he not only shared this with his brothers, but with his father as well. Even Jacob was taken aback by his youngest son’s audacity.
By this time, Joseph’s brothers had a belly full of his grandiose dreams. One day, when they were a good distance from home, grazing their flocks, Jacob sent Joseph to check on them. They were plotting to kill him, but one of the brothers persuaded his siblings to toss Joseph into a dry cistern instead. Some traveling traders came along, and the brothers decided to sell Joseph to the traders.
The traders took Joseph with them to Egypt. They sold Joseph as a slave to an official in the Egyptian court, a man by the name of Potiphar.
But Joseph, the Bible tells us, had not been abandoned by God. In fact, Genesis 39 says:
The LORD was with Joseph so that he prospered. . . . When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did . . . Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to [Joseph’s] care everything he owned. (vv. 2–4)
Potiphar benefited greatly because of Joseph’s favor with God—so much so that the Bible tells us that before long, “with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate” (v. 6). These were good days at the headquarters of Potiphar, Inc. Profits were up, shareholders were happy, and life was easy.
But matters were about to take another downturn. You see, Joseph was a good-looking boy, and Potiphar’s wife was apparently a lonely woman. Mrs. Potiphar soon began to make her desires known to Joseph. But Joseph remained loyal to his master: “My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (v. 9) he asked her.
As a poet once famously said, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”7 One day, Mrs. Potiphar grabbed Joseph and tried to have her way with him, but he pulled away, leaving part of his clothing in her hand as he ran out the door. She called in her other household servants and accused the young Hebrew of trying to rape her—and Joseph ended up in an Egyptian prison.
But once again the Bible reports that:
While Joseph was there in the prison, the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison. . . . The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the LORD was with Joseph. (Genesis 39:20–23)
The pattern is starting to sound familiar, isn’t it?
Not long after Joseph becomes head trustee in the prison, Pharaoh’s cupbearer and the royal baker are incarcerated because they have displeased Pharaoh. One night, both of these men have disturbing dreams.
Joseph knows that God, if He chooses, can make plain the meaning of the dreams, and he encourages the two officials to explain what they saw as they slept. They tell him, and Joseph gives them the meaning of their dreams.
In both cases, Joseph tells them their circumstances are going to change dramatically within three days. However, things are going to work out much better for the cupbearer than for the baker. The cupbearer will be restored to his position in Pharaoh’s court, but the baker will be executed. I guess you can’t win them all.
Events prove Joseph’s interpretations accurate. Three days later, the cupbearer is back in Pharaoh’s good graces, and the baker is dead. Joseph had asked the cupbearer to put in a good word for him when he returned to the palace, and as he watched the cupbearer being escorted out of the prison by the royal guards, he must have thought that his fortunes were about to regain an upward trend. He just needed this one break.
But Genesis 40:23 says, “The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph.” The cupbearer, no doubt dizzy with relief at being back on the job and not ending up like the baker, forgot all about Joseph. Joseph was stuck in prison—alone and forgotten. That is, until two years later, when Pharaoh had a dream of his own.
The king of Egypt had a night vision of seven fat cows and seven skinny cows; the skinny cows swallowed up the fat cows! Next, Pharaoh dreamed of seven healthy, full heads of grain and seven thin, drought-stricken heads, and once again, the poor specimens devoured the good ones.
The next day, the king started asking all his officials about the meaning of his dream. This caused the cupbearer to finally recall Joseph. Before long, Joseph was standing in front of Pharaoh, who asked him to give the meaning of the troubling dream.
I love Joseph’s answer. “ ‘I cannot do it,’ Joseph replied to Pharaoh, ‘but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires’ ” (Genesis 41:16). Joseph explained to Pharaoh that God had sent him a message in his dreams. The seven fat cows and the seven healthy heads of grain symbolized seven years of good crops. But these would be followed by seven years of famine, symbolized by the skinny cows and the shriveled heads of grain.
Joseph advised Pharaoh to appoint someone of wisdom and discernment to go throughout Egypt and set aside a fifth of each of the next seven years’ harvests, storing it up against the famine that was surely approaching. You can probably see where this is headed.
Pharaoh asked his officials, “Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?” (Genesis 41:38). Therefore, as you’ve likely already guessed, he appointed Joseph as the second-in-command of all of Egypt and asked him to head up the brand-new National Famine Readiness Program.
As the famine tightened its grip in that part of the world, Joseph’s father and brothers were feeling the pinch up in Canaan, along with everybody else. But Egypt had food to spare. So, Joseph’s brothers headed south to see if they could buy enough grain to keep the wolf away from the door.
Imagine the emotions that must have coursed through Joseph as he saw his brothers come into the palace at Egypt. Just as in the dream that had gotten him in so much trouble many years earlier, here were the eleven, bowing down to this one they did not recognize as the brother they had sold into slavery.
Joseph messed with their heads a bit, but ultimately, there is a big family reunion as he brings his brothers, his father, and all their households down to Egypt to wait out the famine in comfort. And once again, I love what he says when he makes himself known to his brothers:
Do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. (Genesis 45:5–8)
Later on, Joseph said to his brothers, “Don’t be afraid. . . . You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:19–20).
Joseph is seeing clearly! Despite all the ups and downs of his life, he can look back along the journey and realize that, all along, God had a plan. Even his misfortunes and suffering ultimately served the greater purpose of saving the lives of not only the people of Egypt but also his own family.
Clarity Comes Through Trust
That type of clear vision comes only with trusting God. And this brings up a point we will come back to several times in this book: Joseph’s clarity was only in hindsight! When Joseph was lying at the bottom of the cistern, when he was trussed up on the back of one of the traders’ camels, or even when he was imprisoned because of Mrs. Potiphar’s accusations, I would bet that he had a hard time seeing anything positive on the horizon.
Only because Joseph was willing to keep on trusting God—despite his circumstances and despite the lack of all visible evidence of the possibility of a good outcome—was he able to reach the day when he could say to his brothers, “You meant it for harm, but God meant it for good.”
Joseph’s journey is, in many ways, a common journey. And it is certain that complete clarity only comes in retrospect and, even then, only after trusting God for all that we can’t see.
There is a great story related by Brennan Manning concerning Mother Teresa. He tells how the renowned ethicist, Jack Kavanaugh, journeyed to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa in her ministry to the dying. When he got there, he asked her to pray for him.
She asked what he wanted her to pray for, and he said, “Clarity.” But Mother Teresa refused. She made the wise observation that Kavanaugh was clinging to clarity and that he must release it. He questioned her, saying that she had always seemed to have tremendous clarity.
She laughed. “I have never had clarity. What I have had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”8
Interesting, isn’t it? I’d be willing to bet that some of you are praying for clarity these days.
God, how much longer is this going to go on?
God, when will things get better?
God, give me a sign of what we should do.
But, maybe you don’t need more clarity. Maybe what you need is more trust.
Living with Faith in an Imperfect World
Now, the cynic might view this situation and ask, “What kind of God would toy with his creatures like that, exposing them to fear and conflict just so they can learn to rely on Him?”
My answer to that is God cares more about what we are becoming than He does about our circumstances. As Max Lucado has written:
God loves us right where we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay there.9
We are most often focused on what is happening to us, but God is more concerned about what is happening in us. In my own life I have to realize each day that there is a God . . . and I am not him. We can see this illustrated in the time Jesus spent with His disciples. Right up until the end of Jesus’ life—and even for three days afterward—most of the disciples were convinced that Jesus was going to rally the nation of Israel to kick out the Romans and institute a new kingdom that would reestablish the Davidic monarchy. But that wasn’t what Jesus was interested in, not what He came to do. What was so clear to the disciples was not even on Jesus’ radar.
Everyday Courage
I sometimes think we’ve turned the life of faith into some kind of religious X Games. When we think of people of great faith, we think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, or Corrie ten Boom, who sheltered Jews and was ultimately imprisoned in the concentration camps during World War II; or maybe we even think of someone we’re acquainted with who has made a radical life change in order to enter a mission field or work in inner-city ministry.
As inspiring and even intimidating as these examples are, I think we need to remember that God can also use acts of everyday courage and day-to-day faith. He honors the person who decides to love someone who others find unlovable. He exalts the individual who commits to being honest, no matter the personal consequences. He loves those who trust Him with their finances, even when things are tight and the future is unclear. He takes joy in the single mom who goes to one more job interview, even though she’s already heard “no” over and over again, because she is determined to improve her situation in life. These, too, are acts of faith that delight the heart of our Creator.
“But,” someone may ask, “How do you know when you’re supposed to keep hanging on and when you’re supposed to give up and move on to something else?”
That’s a legitimate question, and I can’t give an absolute, one-size-fits-all answer. I will suggest, though, that based on my observation, most of us give up too easily and too early. So, my bias would be on the side of persevering, rather than throwing in the towel.
My other comment is that, as a pastor and advisor, it is not usually my job to help you figure out your limits or to define your reality. Instead, I believe it is more often my task to help you see all the possibilities God is placing before you.
One of those possibilities is considering all that God may be doing in you and through you, even in the midst of your struggle and uncertainty. Yes, you are facing uncertain times, but is it possible that God is using your steadfastness amid difficulty to inspire someone else’s flagging faith? Yes, you have heard “no” over and over again, but is it possible God is preparing you for a new opportunity you would never have considered if you had already gotten your “yes”?
I’ll admit it’s hard to see all the possibilities when you’re worried about being able to hang on until tomorrow. It takes a very special type of heart to keep believing during the hard times. But it helps to remember that God specializes in the unexpected. He is into the unpredictable, the unlooked-for. He is the original author of the surprise ending.
Joshua: A Longing to Know God
I would like to introduce you to another one of my faith heroes. Joshua was one of Moses’ protégés, along with Caleb, one of the few who were able to catch a glimpse of the great leader’s vision of God and follow that vision, no matter where it led or how crazy it seemed at the moment.
Joshua had the unique ability to keep believing God was getting ready to do something big. When he was chosen as one of the twelve spies to sneak into the Promised Land and check out the lay of the country, he and Caleb were able to see that God had prepared for His people an abundant homeland, a place “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). However, the other ten spies could see only the problems.
What made the difference? All twelve spies saw the same land, the same people, the same opportunities, and the same risks. Yet Joshua and Caleb came away believing God could deliver the land to His people while the other ten spies were ready to surrender before the battle had even begun.
I believe we get a clue in Exodus 33. This is where the Bible tells about the Tent of Meeting, the place Moses set up outside the main camp of the Israelites, where he would go to meet with God. It was an awe-inspiring place. The Bible says that when Moses went there to inquire of God, “the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the LORD spoke with Moses. Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped” (Exodus 33:9–10). The Bible goes on to say, “The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp” (Exodus 33:11).
But here is the part I love, at the very end of verse 11, just after Moses leaves to return to the camp: “But his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.” Joshua wanted more than anything to be in God’s presence at the Tent of Meeting. He had a longing to know God that was even stronger than his desire to be with Moses, the man he admired so much. I believe that is why he and Caleb saw opportunity where everybody else saw only danger. Joshua spent time with God. He had a deep longing to be as well acquainted as possible with his Creator.
Joshua knew God—knew His character, His nature, and His purposes. That’s why he and Caleb had such confidence. Their knowledge of God did not permit them to believe God would bring His people all the way to the Promised Land, only to abandon them. They had an unshakable confidence that God would complete everything He had promised.
To accomplish anything of consequence in our lives, it is essential that we spend time with God. After all, if we don’t know the One who has promised to watch over us, how can we trust in His provision?
Even little babies know this. The first time you are introduced to a baby, you can stand and grin and coo and hold out your hands invitingly as much as you want, but that child is not going to go to you until his or her parent gives assurance, by word or by touch, that it’s okay. Why? Because the child knows and trusts the parent implicitly. The parent and the child have spent time together; the child knows the parent will not willingly bring danger into the environment. It has been proven over and over.
This is true of just about any relationship you can think of. The deepest trust comes as a result of the greatest investment of time together. In a marriage, in parenting, in a work relationship, in church leadership, in friendship, on a team, in a musical group—you name it. You learn to trust people by spending lots of time with them, by getting to know them.
In the same way, in order to develop a deep and lasting trust in God, you have to spend time with Him. You have to spend time reading His word and conversing with Him in prayer.
If you want to live a life of confidence and purpose, you have to find ways to stay connected with Jesus, day to day and moment to moment. You need to build into your daily routine times of intimacy with Christ, breathing His spirit deeply into your being.
One of the best ways to do this is to focus on prayer. An effective prayer life is an essential part of building trust with our Heavenly Father. It’s something we all desperately need, yet often neglect. In fact, Christians often feel guiltier about their prayer life—or lack of one—than almost any other aspect of their spiritual life.
How about you? Ever feel guilty about how little time you spend in prayer or about not being able to stay focused during your prayer time? Ever wonder if you’re praying the right way or worry that you should be doing something different?
John Ortberg talks about this in his book, The Me I Want to Be:
When I pray, I end up praying about things I think I should be concerned about: missionaries, world peace, and global warming. But my mind keeps wandering toward stuff I am genuinely concerned about. The way to let my talking flow into praying is this: I must pray what is in me, not what I wish were in me.10
I think Ortberg is onto an incredible breakthrough. The more I’ve started to pray what’s in me instead of what I wish were in me, the more I’ve been able to truly enjoy my time with God and connect with him more frequently.
This really gets into a deeper issue of prayer. I think many of us live with the idea that somehow God doesn’t hear or see certain things in our life. We actually think that we can fool God by praying about one thing, even though we’re thinking and focused on another.
Sometimes I have to laugh as I watch my three boys fight at dinner over who’s going to ask the blessing. It usually starts with my oldest, Jett, saying something like, “I think Gage should pray tonight.” Gage will respond, “No, I think Brewer should pray.” And then Brewer will pipe in, “No, I prayed last night. It’s Jett’s turn.”
Just a few nights ago I asked my son Gage if he would bless the food. He looked at me with these big puppy-dog eyes and said, “Dad, I want to. I really do. But I’m just way too hungry to pray tonight. Someone else is going to have to do it.”
The whole routine is not only funny, but quite ironic, because it apparently never crosses those boys’ minds that maybe God can actually hear them arguing about not wanting to pray. But no adult would ever think that way . . . right?
Sure we would. We do it all the time. In fact, this is exactly why people use a different voice when they pray! It’s why we think we have to close our eyes or be in a certain position with our hands held just right. It’s why we pray about stuff we think sounds spiritual instead of just saying what’s truly on our hearts and minds.
You will experience a breakthrough in your prayer life when you discover that you don’t have to pray anything other than what’s on your mind and in your heart. This is when you begin to discover that every moment and every thought is another opportunity to connect with your Father in heaven. This is when those moments, each and every one of them, become an opportunity to build that much-needed trust with God.
When you make time with God part of your way of living—when you learn, to use the phrase coined by the great monastic thinker Brother Lawrence, to “practice the presence of God”—you will begin to see that your vision is being continually corrected in its focus. You will begin to realize you are no longer surprised by conflict or adversity because your trust in God has placed Him, rather than your situation, at the center of your life.
Chapter Two in Review 
Key Ideas
1. Never forget that you don’t know the whole story about other people. Some of the most successful people you can imagine have also dealt with the most devastating failures you can imagine.
2. Only because Joseph was willing to keep on trusting God—despite his circumstances, and despite the lack of all visible evidence of the possibility of a good outcome—was he able to reach the day when he could say to his brothers, “You meant it for harm, but God meant it for good.”
3. We are most often focused on what is happening to us, but God is more concerned about what is happening in us.
4. Joshua knew God—knew His character, His nature, and His purposes. That’s why he and Caleb had such confidence. Their knowledge of God did not permit them to believe God would bring His people all the way to the Promised Land, only to abandon them. They had an unshakable confidence that God would complete everything He had promised to do.
5. The deepest trust comes as a result of the greatest investment of time together.
1. Why do you think we are willing to accept that we must do resistance training to strengthen our muscles but less willing to accept that our spiritual “muscles” need resistance training, too?
2. Have you ever looked at someone who seemed to be experiencing a perfect life or an easy time, only to discover later that the person was going through deep struggles? What effect did learning of their struggles have on you?
3. If you were making a movie about Joseph’s life, what would you title it?
4. Think of a friendship that you have lost because of spending little time together—either because of distance, changes in life direction, or other reasons. How long did it take before you began to realize the relationship was fading?
5. Have you ever had a dream that you believed contained a real-life message? What made you think this? What, if anything, did you do about it?
Talk to someone who, you believe, is “living the dream.” Ask that person to tell you about the toughest obstacle he or she has faced so far.