“What is your relationship with the Bible?” was the “icebreaker” recently posed to a faith group I’m part of…..there were two women leading the group and they instantly laughed that they fought over what this icebreaker should be, as the other leader just wanted to know what our favorite road trip snacks are!! Because what a loaded question this is, and one that for me, at least, ebbs and flows.

I love a good devotional or sermon–something that is based on Scripture, sure, but the Scripture is more used as a launching pad before some additional motivation or catchy prompts add a bit more of a punch. But lately, I’m finding fault with this preference towards requiring anything added to the Word for it to really get my attention.

The fantastic book that my colleagues are currently reading through called “The Seven Laws of Teaching” discusses the difference between attracted attention vs. compelled attention. Attracted attention is when the teacher wears a funny hat or has a monkey on his shoulder or something to get the students’ attention for learning, whereas compelled attention comes down to interest in the content being taught in and of itself. We (teachers) need to train their attention to not need gimmicks. See where I’m going with this connection?

Compelled attention when it comes to the Word is what I know I need to be after.

And just in time, Genesis 39 appeared in my view–it demanded my focus and appreciation without any gimmicks or cute lists or motivational phrases. The story of Joseph is an incredible one that you must get to know, but to summarize what happened prior to Genesis 39, Joseph was one of Jacob’s 12 sons, and his father preferred him to his other sons and gave him a colored cloak. The brothers, who were seeing red over this, sold him into slavery and lied to their father that he had been devoured by animals. He was taken to Egypt and became the slave of Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s guard. He quickly found favor in his master’s eyes, and he was appointed head of the household; Potiphar entrusted to his care everything he owned. Things were looking up for him after some brutally unfair and unfortunate circumstances.

UNTIL Potiphar’s wife hit the scene. Her desire to be intimate with him was strong, and she flat-out asked him, day after day, to come to bed with her. He refused time and time again, saying, “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?” One day when no one was around, she actually tugged on his cloak to get to him, and he literally RAN from this temptation. She took advantage of having his cloak in hand and lied to her husband that he was the one trying to seduce her and naturally, he burned with anger and threw Joseph into prison!

How on earth would you make sense of this if you were Joseph? After all he has already been through, he was actually doing the right thing and resisting sin and yet he is falsely accused and pays a sentence he does not deserve (sounds like another story we know!  Jesus, people). What comes next blows me away:

“But 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.”

My attention–instantly compelled. How exactly is favor and kindness coming into play IN PRISON? But it’s written right there and it’s real. Haven’t you had times in your own walk with God, where there is a real beauty amidst the pain, a richness coinciding with brokenness, an unexplained calm that is beyond our understanding, a shift in perspective that suddenly appears? How is that so? Can we get to the bottom of this here and now? Is there something here in these verses about Joseph that is compelling your attention like it is mine? Is there something other than a “good” we tend to strive for that God desires for us? Because I don’t see the kind of good we seek in the unfolding of this story.

Northway Church recently did a sermon series called “Somehow God is Good” and I just scrolled back to find it and write down the weekly intro word for word that absolutely applies here, for it basically describes exactly what this part of Genesis illustrated for me:

“All things. God works all things together for our good. Not some, not just the easy parts, not just the parts we like to talk about. All things. We serve a God who is moving in our lives to bring about HIS purpose, yet so often we question just how good he really is. We forget it when we’re suffering, when we’re stuck in the waiting, when devastation comes, when disaster strikes, when it seems like everything is changing, when we get looked over, when the relationship fails, when the unthinkable happens. Life looks like nothing I thought it would. Face down, tears streaming, we scream, “God! How can this be good?
Good? Who defines good, us or God? OUR good, the one we decide for ourselves…..NEVER FULLY SATISFIED. What if there’s a new type of good to be found? Good that is grounded in the God whose very nature is ultimate good. Good that doesn’t sway with the changing of the times but remains steady and unwavering. What if instead, we began to see good from an eternal perspective? What would that mean for you, and for me?”

I want to close with another part of Scripture that recently stood out to me from the book of Job. Life as Job knew it was completely unraveling before his eyes and at first, his faith remained intact and he did not blame God, but he began wavering. His three friends showed up and offered the perspective that he must be doing something wrong, because God is just, He runs the world according to justice, and therefore Job must be blameworthy. Job’s assumption is that God is just, but also assumes himself to be blameless, so therefore, he began seeing God as unjust and incompetent at running the universe. So there exists a deeper assumption that Job holds that he has enough perspective to make such a claim.

Read God’s response. GAH, I love this!

God’s response deconstructs all of the above assumptions. I am going to quote “The Bible Project’s Book of Job Summary” here:

“It first of all shows that the universe is a vast, complex place, and that God has his eyes on all of it, every detail. Job, on the other hand, has only the small horizon of his life experience to draw from; his view of the world is very limited.  And so what looks like divine injustice, from Job’s point of view, needs to be seen in an infinitely larger context: Job is simply not in a position to make such a huge accusation about God. After the virtual tour, God asks Job if HE would like to micromanage the world for a day, according to the strict principle of justice that Job and his friends assume–punishing every evil deed of every person at every moment with precise retribution. The fact is that carrying out justice in a world like ours…it’s extremely complex, it’s never black and white like Job and the friends seem to think.”

Job’s response–fantastic!!

“I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more.”

“God doesn’t explain why [there is suffering]. What he says is that we live in an extremely complex, amazing world that at this stage, at least, is not designed to prevent suffering. And that’s God’s response. Job challenged God’s justice, God responds that Job doesn’t have sufficient knowledge about our universe to make such a claim, Job demanded a full explanation from God, and what God asked Job for is trust in his wisdom and character. And so Job responds with humility and repentance. He apologizes for accusing God and he acknowledges that he’s overstepped his bounds. Then all of a sudden, the book concludes with a short epilogue. First God says that the friends were wrong, that their ideas of about God’s justice were just too simple, not true to the complexity of the world or God’s wisdom. And then God says that Job has spoken rightly about Him. Now, this is surprising, because it can’t apply to everything that Job has said. I mean, we know Job drew hasty and wrong conclusions, but God still approves of Job’s wrestling: how Job came honestly before God with all of his emotion and pain and simply wanted to talk to God himself. And God says that is the right way to process through all of this–through the struggle of prayer.

The book concludes with Job having his health, his family, his wealth–all restored….not as a reward for good behavior, but simply as a generous gift from God. And that’s the end of the book.

So the book of Job….it doesn’t unlock the puzzle of why bad things happen to good people. Rather, it does invite us to trust God’s wisdom when we do encounter suffering, rather than try and figure out the reasons for it. When we search for reasons, we tend to either simplify God, like the friends, or like Job, accuse God, but based on limited evidence. And so the book is inviting us to honestly bring our pain and our grief to God, and to trust that God actually cares, and that He knows what He’s doing. And that is what the book of Job is all about.”

Now tell me. Is your attention compelled? Scripture SPEAKS, y’all!