Ankerberg Show

John Ankerberg: Welcome. Every one of us will face difficult seasons in life. Some of you have lost someone you loved. Maybe you've received a diagnosis you never expected. Perhaps your marriage is struggling. Finances have been turned upside down, or you've been treated unfairly by friends.

Some of you have been praying to God, waiting for an answer, and you're still waiting. When life hasn't gone the way we planned, we all ask the same questions. God, where are you? Do you see what I'm going through? Will you help me? Those are real questions, and the wonderful news is that God gives real answers in His word.

My guests today are Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright. They will assert that God will lead you through life's deepest struggles, and they will prove this by taking us through the remarkable story of Joseph. A man betrayed by his family, sexually tempted, a man who experienced injustice, disappointment, and years in prison waiting to be freed, relying on God's faithfulness every step of the way.

Further, Joseph couldn't see what God was doing, but God knew exactly where Joseph was at and He had a plan for his life. God knows exactly where you are today and has a plan for your life. To hear more, join us as we begin this edition of the Ankerberg Show.

Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg, and I have two special guests with me today that you've already heard about. Anne Graham Lotz is a well-known Christian evangelist who speaks around the world. She's written over 20 books. Right next to her is her beautiful daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright. She's an author, speaker, and Bible study teacher. She wrote the first draft of this book, "God Won't Leave You There," and it's probably one of their best books.

We're going to talk about the problems that you're facing. This is for you. Some of you, the floor has dropped out on you. You lost your job and your life has been turned upside down, inside out. Or maybe your mate left you and you got divorced. Maybe a child died. Maybe all of a sudden the doctor gave you some bad news and you're sitting in the hospital wondering what's going to happen to you. You don't know. Life's full of surprises.

We want to tell you that God is with you from the beginning of whatever you are suffering or whatever you experience. We're using a person in the Old Testament that's a great example. You might not know who it is, but it's Joseph. Rachel-Ruth, I'm going to ask you, tell me and tell our folks just a little bit about Joseph. Who was he?

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: The story of Joseph starts in Genesis 37. Joseph was a young 17-year-old boy who was handsome and the favorite son of Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons. Joseph was the 11th. Jacob favored Joseph, but you could see this budding character growing in Joseph right off the bat because his brothers are tending sheep and Joseph is with them and he sees them doing something wrong.

They must have been doing something to the sheep or not paying attention to them to the point that Joseph felt like he needed to tell his father. He tells his father and his brothers did not like that. You see this jealousy begin to develop in his brothers where they just hated Joseph.

Joseph was loved by his dad. His dad gives him this coat of many colors, and it's hard to believe that Joseph wore it in front of all of his brothers, just parading it around. You see a lack of humility at that beginning point in Joseph, which God's going to do an incredible work in his life through this whole story. There's this setup of this jealousy and hatred, and his brothers are so mad at Joseph. God even works in dysfunctional families. God is moving and setting things up exactly how He wants.

John Ankerberg: He made it worse by having a dream. I want you to tell the folks what that dream was, and then he told his brothers about this dream, and they hated him more. What was the dream?

Anne Graham Lotz: A 17-year-old kid, you never know what they're going to do. They can be arrogant and just having fun to press it home to his brothers, but basically that the moon and stars one day would bow down before him. He told it to his brothers, and that made them even madder.

The second dream was one where not only the moon and stars but his brothers and his mother and father would bow down to him. His mother and father didn't like that either, and the brothers were enraged. The interesting thing is that throughout his experience, all the way through all the things he went through, I think he went back to those dreams because in that day and time they didn't have a Bible.

They didn't have the Torah. They didn't have the law that came with Moses. God spoke to them through dreams and visions. That was God's word to Joseph. We can apply it that way. Before Joseph went through all of these terrible things, just a nightmare that was happening to him, he had God's word to wrap his faith around.

I think that's important for us. Don't wait until a crisis hits before you get God's word. Stay in God's word, asking Him to give you promises, give you something that can encourage you so that when the bad things hit, then you have His word and you can fall back on it. Rachel-Ruth and I both had that, so we can go ahead and tell what happened to Joseph.

Rachel-Ruth had a very similar experience, but God gave her His word. When my husband suddenly left, God gave me a word also that I could just cling to. There's nothing like God's word to wrap your faith around. You can tell me something encouraging. People I love can come up and put their arm around me. That's not the same thing as having God speak to me through His word. That's what gives me strength to go through some of the hard things that I've been through and through the things that Joseph went through.

John Ankerberg: He had these dreams and he told his brothers and then he told his mother and father, and they were all surprised that they were supposed to somewhere in the future bow down to this kid who was 17 years old. The brothers hated him. Jacob, his father, sent him out to take a look at his brothers and check out what they were doing with the sheep.

Joseph, happy-go-lucky, good-looking guy's going down a path that he knows. He's going to have a great day. He doesn't know that that day the floor's going to drop out from underneath him and it's going to be one of the worst days of his life. Tell me about what happened.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: It's just a dramatic scene because he's going off on this errand for his dad to go check on his brothers. Maybe it was a beautiful day and he's just eating a pomegranate or something and the clouds are going by. He gets to Shechem where he thinks his brothers are supposed to be tending to the sheep, and they're not there.

Right then, you just are like, no, because Joseph could have turned around, gone back, and said he looked and they weren't there. His dad would have been like, alright, we'll see them later when they come back. Instead, as God would have it, He brings another man up to him in that field in Shechem and said, "Hey, what are you doing?"

Joseph says, "I'm looking for my brothers." The guy said, "I overheard that they're down in Dothan." He takes off to go towards Dothan. If only he had just gone back. If only he had just gone back. God had him on a path because God needed to get him to Egypt. He goes to Dothan, sees his brothers ahead. The closer he got...

John Ankerberg: I want to stop you right there because the brothers saw him coming. This is what the Bible says. The brothers saw him in the distance, and before he arrived, it says they plotted to kill him. What happened?

Anne Graham Lotz: They seized him when he came. He wasn't expecting that at all. It's interesting how he could be so oblivious to the hatred and the jealousy from his older brothers. There are 10 older brothers. They seized him, they threw him into a pit, and they were plotting to kill him.

I think the point is that sometimes our lives can take a turn in a nanosecond of time. He wasn't expecting that at all. Both of us have had not just one, but several experiences where our lives changed in a moment.

John Ankerberg: Tell me about your heart problem because I've had heart problems too. When I heard what happened to you, tell the folks what you went through.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: It's one of those "if onlys." If only I hadn't gone for a stress test. I went in for a routine stress test where you run on a treadmill, they hook you up and look at your heart. It was a disastrous appointment and the person running it, the nurse that came in, it was an awful situation.

It caused a lot of stress when I was on the treadmill. I ended up passing out four times and left with chest pain. I thought, oh goodness, I was crying. I was like, I think I pulled a chest muscle or something's going on. For four days, I was in a lot of pain. On the fourth day, I was at the front row of a Carolina basketball game, and that is when I knew something was happening.

They rushed me to the hospital in an ambulance and sure enough, I was having SCAD, a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, where the inside of my arteries were shredding. I had two heart attacks. The second one I almost died from. It was supernatural that God allowed me to survive.

For three years after that, I was in a lot of pain and a lot was going on. God knew. I could say, "If only I hadn't gone to that appointment. If only I hadn't had that technician." God knew. He allowed me to go in that situation to see the power of His healing hand and to experience what it is to trust Him when you're in scary situations for three years and suffering from pain and fear and all that that's going to happen again. God is in charge of our lives. That's the glaring lesson in just this beginning part of Joseph's life and the whole life is that God has a plan and a purpose for everything that you face in life.

John Ankerberg: That artery on the back of your heart dissolved. It just shredded. The fact is, so you had the arteries that were still working were pumping into something that wasn't there. A doctor just happened to be there and put a stent in all the way straight down and connected them and you got blood back into the other parts of your heart and the fact is you lived. You could have died.

The reason we're saying this is that this is kind of like with Joseph. Joseph wasn't expecting to be thrown into a pit. When I think of a pit, it was a dry one. It was a cistern that was dry. I don't know if the walls were solid rock or if they were rock and hard mud, but it was, they say, 16 feet down. If you have 10 brothers that are ticked at you and they just threw you into this thing, how you land, you got to be bruised somewhere. You might have broken an arm, you might have broken a leg. It doesn't tell us, but the fact is he was down there.

From a nice sunny day, walking to see his brothers, he ends up in a pit. Then he hears them. They're saying they really wanted to kill him, but then one said, "No, why don't we sell him?" There were some slave traders coming along and they said, "Let's sell him and we'll make some money on this thing." They sold him for 20 silver coins. All of a sudden he found himself on the way to Egypt. All in one day. One day.

Think of how he felt. Some of you folks out there, the world has kind of unraveled for you too, and you might feel like Joseph, that you don't know what happened. You might have lost your job. You have no money. You don't know where you're going to get it. You've got bills to pay. You've got a family to take care of, and you are lost. You don't know what in the world you're going to do.

Well, think of Joseph. He's on his way and he ends up in a place where he doesn't know the language, he doesn't know the customs of the people, he doesn't know anything about where he's at, but he's actually in Egypt and he is put on the slave trading block and he is sold to a guy by the name of Potiphar, who was related to the Pharaoh, he was the captain of the guard. He was a high-up, rich man, and he saw this Hebrew boy standing there and he says, "I want that boy." He grabbed him. Joseph ends up in Egypt a slave to Potiphar. Take it from there, Anne.

Anne Graham Lotz: I'd like to go back if I can because when he was thrown into the pit, he was down there, and it said his brothers sat down to eat supper. He could hear them talking, laughing. You know he was calling out, "Reuben, I'm your brother, save me," or "Judah, help me." His brothers were up there just as though it was a normal evening and they had kept their sheep and now they're eating, and Joseph is down there.

They had plotted to kill him and instead, one intervened and said, "No, let's sell him so we wouldn't have his blood on our hands." The interesting thing, John, is they sold him to the Ishmaelites. The Ishmaelites were his cousins, his distant cousins. His brothers betrayed him and his extended family betrayed him.

I know there are people out there that have been betrayed by a family member, betrayed by a spouse who's walked out, betrayed by an employer, betrayed by somebody who worked with them that stole their promotion or the credit for something that they did. That is a very painful thing.

I don't know that Joseph at that moment was remembering the dreams, but I know that Rachel-Ruth when she went through all that, God gave her a promise that He would see her through, that she wouldn't experience this again. I went through a similar experience when I'd been the caregiver for my husband for about 10 years, but three years full-time. I got off the road and I was taking care of my husband and it was while I was at home supposedly taking care of him that he went into the pool and next thing I know I found him unresponsive.

We rushed him to the hospital and put him on life support, but three days later we released him and he went to heaven. I know what Joseph might have thought, what Rachel-Ruth thought, what I thought. If only I had been more attentive. If only I hadn't been at my computer that afternoon. If only I had... the "if onlys" can absolutely send you into a spiral of depression and the agony of thinking, if only I hadn't done that. If only I hadn't gone the extra mile to Dothan. If only I hadn't had that stress test.

Joseph surely was thinking if only I hadn't gone the extra mile or if only I'd picked up on their jealousy, if only I'd known how angry they were. When Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites, and the Bible indicates that he was in shackles and chains, so I'm assuming they put him there. I don't know if he walked to Egypt or if they put him on a cart.

You wonder as he's going to Egypt, is he thinking, well, the brothers were playing a joke, they just wanted to give me a rude lesson, and now the joke's over, will they come get me? Did he think Jacob would chase and come? To go mile after mile, get farther and farther away from home, closer and closer to Egypt, and nobody was coming to get him. He was enslaved. He was a prince of the desert. Jacob was Abraham's grandson, so he was very wealthy like a Bedouin king. Joseph was his favorite son. He would be a wealthy, spoiled 17-year-old kid who had everything in front of him, and all of a sudden, now he's in shackles going farther and farther away from home.

Two things. One is all of a sudden Joseph found himself all alone in a foreign country. There are people out there, you've found yourself in a situation and you're all alone. We're talking about God knows where you're at. We're going to have a word for you in just a minute. Second thing is the brothers covered up because they had to tell the father something.

They got a little goat, they killed the goat, and they splattered the blood of the goat over Joseph's robe of many colors and they took that to Jacob. Jacob, he went into despair and he cried. He said, "I'm going right down to Sheol crying for my son." The brothers sinned by doing that.

A young kid, 17 years of age, is thrown into a pit, his brothers hate him, he's sold as a slave, he goes to Egypt, somebody buys him and he is a slave, he doesn't know the language, and now he's wondering what's going to happen. People say, "I don't know if I've got a future." Joseph did not know if he'd see tomorrow. He had no way of knowing. He was a slave, he did whatever he was told to do. Anne, I want to say a word to the people. I want you to say this word about the fact that there are people that are listening to us and saying, "I can relate to that." In some way, somebody's betrayed me, my kids ran away, or there's fighting inside the family and I'm tired of it, or I just divorced my mate, or I lost a kid, or I had an accident, or the doctor gave me bad news and I'm sitting here in a hospital and I don't know about the future. What does God want them to know?

Anne Graham Lotz: I think God wants them to know that you just said that Joseph was all alone in Egypt, but he wasn't, because it says again and again God was with him. I think going back to those dreams, I think he knew he had some sort of a future because God had promised him in those dreams that he would be a leader and he would be a leader over a lot of powerful people and he would be a leader over his family. He couldn't do that if he was dead in Egypt.

Deep down that was a little seed of hope that he had and his faith wrapped around that word, which is why I said it's important to be in God's word, to have a relationship with God. Don't wait until the crisis comes before you establish your relationship with God. Do that now. If you're in a crisis now, it's not too late to just come to God and say, "God help me." God will be with you.

It's important that we know that when Joseph got to Egypt, God was with him. Again and again, it said God was with him. If you feel all alone, and there have been times I know when I found my husband, I can tell you I felt all alone for quite a while still as a widow and I'm an orphan, but I'm not alone. I know God is with me.

I know He's with me because when I was a little girl, I saw a picture of Jesus on TV, a picture of His life, and it came to the scene of the cross and I knew He had died for me. I told Him I was sorry for the wrong things I'd done, asked Him to forgive me, to come into my heart. At that moment, I believe I was, as Jesus would say, born again into God's family.

I belong to God and Jesus came into me. I didn't understand, but He came into me in the person of His Holy Spirit. The Bible says the Holy Spirit will never leave me, never forsake me, and the same for you. It's important right now at the end of this session, make sure that you have a relationship with God that's personal. If you've never been to the cross or if you're not sure you have, just come to the cross by faith.

Dear God, I come to You and I want to establish a relationship with You now. I confess to You I've done wrong things and I'm sorry. I believe Jesus died on the cross for me. I ask You, dear God, please, would You cleanse me with His blood? Would You forgive me of all of my sin? I claim Him as my Savior. I believe Jesus rose up from the dead to give me eternal life.

Right now, I receive the eternal life He offers, which I understand is heaven when I die, but it's also that personal relationship with You right here and right now. I open up my heart and I invite Jesus to come into me. I understand He's a man up in heaven, He can't come into me, but He sends His spirit into me. The Holy Spirit is Jesus in me. I receive Him by faith and I surrender my life to His authority. From this day forward, I will walk one step at a time, day by day, month by month, year by year, all the way into heaven. I thank You for hearing my prayer, in Jesus' name.

If you prayed a prayer of something like that, I want to be the first to welcome you into God's family and now you're never alone. Do you hear me? You will never be alone. Whatever happens to you, God is with you and God will see you through. He won't leave you in that pit. He's going to take you home one day, but before then I pray He will release you from whatever it is that's happened to you.

John Ankerberg: That's absolutely true. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you called, He saved you. Now, I hope that you'll join us next week because we're going to talk about God is with you when you suffer. We've got Joseph. He was thrown into a pit. He was sold to slave traders. They took him and put him on the slave block in Egypt. He was sold to Potiphar, an Egyptian that was high up in Pharaoh's court. He didn't know what his future was going to be, and he stayed there for a long time and he suffered. Where is God when you're suffering? We're going to answer that question next week. I hope that you'll join us.