LOSING YOUR LIFE FOR HIS PURPOSE

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life for Me will save it." - Luke 9:24

When the time came for God to fulfill Joseph's dreams, Joseph himself
had virtually no interest at all in it. Jesus said, "For whoever wants
to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will
save it" (Lk. 9:24). God wants to teach us a different set of values so
that the kind of thing we start out wanting becomes secondary. God has
something in mind for us that is far greater than the interest we began
with.
Joseph's day of exaltation had arrived. Yet, through it all, a very
real humiliation had to take place. We know about the humiliation Joseph had
experienced for 13 years after being sold by his brothers into slavery,
then taken to Egypt. We know how he was falsely accused and cast into
prison.
Then came a different situation. Joseph had had a triumph and was given
an exaltation, but the kind he really never asked for. He did not
appear to be all that interested in what was about to happen. He watched as
the Pharaoh took his ring off his finger and put it on Joseph's finger.
Joseph never asked for that. All he wanted was to go home. He longed to
go back to Canaan, to see his father, and to have his dreams fulfilled.
Therefore, here we find an extraordinary incongruity: a humiliation in
the heart of vindication. A triumph that was the opposite of everything
he, himself, could have envisaged. Joseph wanted to go home, but a
one-way ticket to Canaan wasn't available. Before he knew it, he had
Egypt in his hip pocket. He had never prayed for that. But God wanted
Egypt. What God wanted is what Joseph got.
Joseph was given something that he could be trusted with because it
didn't mean that much to him.