Ankerberg Show

Voiceover (Male): 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, your 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 John Ankerberg Show.

John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I'm John Ankerberg, and we're talking to you about where God is when you're suffering. God is actually watching you. God knows what you're feeling. God actually knows what you're thinking.

We want to talk about that today because I know a lot of you are suffering from different ailments. We have two experts on this who have suffered themselves. One is Anne Graham Lotz, and her daughter is Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright. You've already heard their credentials.

I want to get right down to the topic. We're using Joseph in the Old Testament to illustrate where God is when a person is suffering. Rachel-Ruth, you did a lot of study on this topic in writing this book. What did you notice about Joseph from where we left him off last week?

His brothers hated him so much they wanted to kill him. They threw him into a pit. Then from the pit, they thought, "Why don't we sell him and make some money?" So, slave traders came by and they took him to Egypt, put him on a slave block, and he was bought by Potiphar.

It was 300 miles away from where that pit was. Now he's among people where he doesn't know their language, their customs, or if he's got a future. He is a slave and he is all alone. You talk about suffering, this is where he's at. Take us from there.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: It's just an awesome point because on that 300-mile journey, being put on an auction block, Joseph could have been like, "Get me out of here! I am the son of a wealthy man back in Canaan. I should not be here."

Instead, you don't see any of that. I think it would have been put in the Bible. He received what God was doing in his life and he comes into this incredible city in Egypt and is sold to Potiphar. Right there, that was God's hand.

It could have been some evil taskmaster. He could have been a slave out in a field somewhere. Instead, he was put in Potiphar's house. God had a reason for that. Even though it was terrible that he was a slave, God had a reason because He needed him to learn the Egyptian language, learn how to run a household, learn how to manage the other servants, and how to keep the books.

The thing that sticks out to me the most is that he did not grow bitter. He did not turn on God. He did not tell God, "Forget you. You allowed this in my life and I had all these plans for my life." Instead, he just received it. Because he had that relationship already with God, he went to work. He didn't sabotage Potiphar's house or scream and yell at everybody with a bitter, angry, resentful attitude. He just received it and went to work. That is an example to all of us when we're suffering, when we're going through things, that we receive those things from the Lord.

John Ankerberg: It must have crossed your mind if that had happened to people in our audience. High school kids, college kids who had made a profession of faith in their church, or they at least gone to church and knew about God. Would that have been the choice they would have made?

This was a critical choice for Joseph. His whole life had changed and he didn't know what was going to happen to him. He didn't know if he had a future. He could have given up on God. He could have said, "God, why did you let this happen to me? I was a good kid back there in Canaan. I loved you. Why did all of this stuff happen to me? If this is the way you're going to treat me, I'm out of here."

A lot of our young people in church—we've got a lot of 22-year-olds who have left church. They say, "I don't like the morality of what God is saying. I don't like what I'm supposed to live like under Christ. So, I'm out of here." What do you say to them?

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: If you look at Joseph's life when he could have given up, he didn't. He made the choice that God has a plan in this. You have to believe in the goodness of God. All of us have hard things. Life is hard. It is just flat-out hard.

A lot of times you see people who come to Christ and you want everything to go well for them so they're happy in their relationship with the Lord. But a lot of times they get slammed. That's when we have to just trust in God. We have to choose to trust in the Lord no matter how hard life is, that God will work it out for us.

He knows what's going to hit us. He knows how hard things are, whether you're in college or trying to find a job or your finances have just gone out the roof. When you're suffering, you have to choose that God's going to walk you through this. Joseph did that. He chose to trust God through all that, and God poured His favor on Joseph.

Potiphar prospered, and everything was going great for Potiphar because Joseph chose to follow God. What we would miss out on if we choose bitterness and we choose to turn our backs on God! Then our lives would just become even more of a mess. But when we choose to follow God, even when life is hard, then God can just open up the Red Sea. He can do anything through us.

John Ankerberg: And the fact is the New York Times said that you are one of the five most influential Christian evangelists in the world. It didn't start that way. You were at home and you were afraid to even do a Bible study. You said, "Well, I'm going to try."

You were in a church. Your husband at that time was the chairman of the deacon board. You started doing one verse at a time, and you just had a handful of people. That grew to over 500 women coming to your Bible study to hear you teach the Bible one verse at a time.

You've gone on to preach to over 500,000 people overseas. You've had crusades all around the world and in our country. People know you, but the fact is it's not been easy. You had to make a choice way back there. Along the way, when you had all this success, other stuff was happening to you. Pick out one of them.

Anne Graham Lotz: Well, let me go back because I shared in our last session when I was a girl of maybe eight or nine, I knelt down and told God I was sorry for the wrong things I'd done. I asked Him to forgive me and to come into my heart.

But then it was later, when I was 16 years of age—and John, I don't remember what prompted it—but I remember being impacted by the thought that when I stood before God, I would give an account to Him for my life. I thought up until that time I could just tell Him what my father did, what my mother did, or my grandparents and I'd sort of coast on their coattails.

But I realized when I stood before God, I would give an account for my life and I would be alone before God. So, I got on my knees in that same room where I had asked Him to be my Savior and surrendered my life to Him. I gave Him my life so His plan for my life would become my plan.

In other words, I didn't have goals and dreams and things of my own. I just wanted Him to work out His will in my life. I think that's what Joseph did. Joseph didn't just receive what was given to him; he submitted to God knowing, as Rachel-Ruth said, that God is a good God.

God is a good, good Father. I want to tell you that God wants the best for you. If, like these 22-year-old kids, you throw it away and say, "I don't want that," then you're going to wind up with less than the best. If I had done that, John, and walked away from God for whatever reason, I look back at my life now—the wonderful thing about this age is I can look back and see the way God has led and moved.

You've mentioned some of the things. I would never have come up with that plan for my life if it had been up to me. I just surrendered to the Lord and let Him come up with the plan, which is what Joseph did. He surrendered to the Lord and let God come up with the plan.

God came up with a plan to put him in Potiphar's house. One of the things he learned there, Rachel-Ruth, was he learned to run the fields. Potiphar had many fields and Joseph had to know that later in life when Pharaoh appointed him in charge of all the fields of Egypt. He had to understand agriculture in Egypt. He learned the language, he learned the culture, he learned the customs, he learned agriculture, he learned how to run a household, and he learned administration.

It was like going to college in Potiphar's house. God had a plan and purpose for him. I think sometimes in my life, and I know you've had this too, there are times when things get so hard you don't feel God's presence. I'm not talking about feeling God with me. I just know by faith God is with me because He promised when I received Him by faith, He would never leave me, never forsake me.

If people out there feel abandoned by God, it's okay, but you're not abandoned. Don't go on your feelings; you go on your faith, which is why I think we need to put our faith down in the Word of God.

John Ankerberg: Both of you in your book had the word "faithfulness." It is not a passive word. It requires action. When Joseph was faced with the worst circumstances and unimaginable suffering, he humbly embraced his new life. He said, "Lord, I will follow you," even when he was behind bars.

Anne Graham Lotz: It's amazing, and those are choices that we make. Every choice he made—I don't know that he ever made a wrong choice—every choice he made, he made in surrender to the Lord.

It had to have come from his heart. He had to have first of all surrendered and submitted to God's plan for his life, knowing from those dreams—I'll go back to those dreams, John—that God's plan for his life was going to be great. He just needed to surrender and submit.

In Potiphar's house, as you mentioned, he became the leader. Potiphar gave him everything. It was a glimpse of the dream being fulfilled. It wasn't his mother and his father and his brothers bowing down, but he was in a leadership role and in charge of a very important man's household and estate.

He was seeing the fulfillment in a partial way of God's word to him. God is with us through the good times and the bad times, but He's wanting your best. God is good, so you can just surrender your life knowing that whatever plan He has for your life is better than the one you could come up with for yourself.

John Ankerberg: Now, some of you folks say, "I've been following God's plan and I'm suffering." You've written a lot about this, and let's take the opposite side of the coin. The fact is that the people that hurt Joseph, they had to pay a price as well.

The brothers wanted to kill him and so they had to cover it up, and they hurt themselves. But they also really hurt their father, Jacob. Jacob was sad all the years that Joseph was gone.

People, if you are one of the folks that is hurting somebody else, there's a price to be paid for sin. Sin has its own consequences and you don't want to go that way because it's not a good way to go.

When people are thinking about this, what else can you say to them to persuade them? Don't pull the trigger and lose your temper. Don't lose your self-control when you might have lost your job or friends betrayed you or you heard somebody say something bad about you. Maybe a doctor said, "I think you've got this," and it's life-threatening, and all of a sudden you just go, "Goodness sakes." What are the consequences to people that try not to follow God and do it their own way?

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: We live in a me-centered society. Whatever makes you feel good, just if you're mad, let them know it. It's the opposite of how Joseph lived. When you see the ripple effect of what happened—because Jacob finds out, "Oh, the robe has got blood on it," and he's been fooled thinking that Joseph has been killed, so he rips his robes.

When Reuben finds out that they sold Joseph into slavery, he rips his robes. Then there's Joseph's robe dipped in blood. It just shows how sin, the consequences of sin, has a ripping effect through families, through businesses, through our lives, through countries and nations.

We have to know that whatever we do, we think, "Oh, I'm going to do this because it makes me feel good," but then it affects other people. Your sin affects other people and it can cause horrible consequences for years down the road.

When you walk the Christlike walk, when you are trying to live your life for the Lord no matter how hard your circumstances, no matter how hard you want to stand up and say, "That's wrong! You can't treat me like that! That's injustice, and I don't deserve this!"—instead you handle it in a Christlike way, filled with grace, filled with love.

Other people notice. You bring God glory. But those who choose not to do that, they might feel good for a second, letting somebody have it or falling for the temptation for a night. But then the aftereffect of the consequences—the bitterness, the anger, the sleepless nights, the unrest, the mental illness—all that can come from giving into the sinful nature.

John Ankerberg: I want to go back to the other side. With all that was against Joseph, he remained faithful to God and God was with him. He ended up on that block to be sold as a slave. Of all the people that bought him was Potiphar, who was the captain of the guard to Pharaoh.

He's a wealthy man. God sovereignly was watching out who picked him. He had a plan. Joseph didn't know what was going on, but he was picked out by Potiphar. He went into Potiphar's house and instead of moping and crying and making a mess of himself, he worked hard.

God blessed his work and Potiphar started putting him in charge of this, that, the other. Potiphar started telling him, "This is how you work my fields, here's how you take care of my servants, here's how you do our society." He was learning and God blessed him until He blessed him so much in Potiphar's house that Potiphar let him do everything. He took his hands off everything and Joseph thrived under what God was letting him do.

Anne Graham Lotz: If I can just inject, he was doing all of it right, embracing what God had for him, surrendered to the Lord, and things got worse. I was also going to say there's an old song we used to sing: "When you can't trace His hand, trust His heart."

We can trust the Lord and how He guides us. Yes, his situation was horrific. How does it get worse than being a slave, away from your family 300 miles and nobody's coming to get you and sleeping on a hard floor and eating whatever? It was very difficult and it did get worse.

He's in charge of everything, everything's thriving, he's following the Lord step by step, which is amazing to me. He walked with the Lord in the way that he lived his life and you would think, "Okay, well now God's going to bless him." Instead, things really, really get worse. Potiphar's wife was like, "He looks good." I mean, this guy is handsome.

John Ankerberg: We're going to get to that next week. But I want to stop here and say that he went up the ladder and the fact is that God blessed him. People that are finding themselves into circumstances where they lost their job, they lost a mate, they lost a child, they might have lost all their money, they might have had their friends betray them—if they will trust God, God is watching.

God is listening. In the meantime, with Joseph, he was going up the ladder and he was learning all of these things because God had a plan for his life. God's got a plan for every one of you in your life out there. The fact is just trust Him.

You might not see that plan; Joseph certainly didn't find that plan. And he wasn't done. God wasn't done with testing Joseph. That's what we're going to get into next week, which is God is with you when you are tempted. Potiphar let Joseph be in control of everything in his house but one thing—couldn't touch his wife. We're going to talk about that next week.

Anne, right now, we've got a lesson here. A lot of things had gone wrong in Joseph's life and so far he chose God. He did not say, "I'm giving up on you, God." He chose to stay faithful to God and God blessed him. He learned and the servants loved him and people followed him.

Then we're going to get into some of these other things that happened to him. God had a plan for his life and God's got a plan for people's lives. But right now they might be in the dumps. They might be at the point where Joseph was when he got sold to Potiphar. He didn't know what his future was going to be; he didn't know if he had a future. There's people out there, you don't know if you've got a future. You don't know what the future's going to bring. You don't know how you're going to make that next step. Can you trust God now? Talk to that.

Anne Graham Lotz: I think it's important when we're going through those hard times, don't waste them. Don't waste your enslavement. Don't waste the middle time when you don't exactly know what God's doing.

If you waste it because of self-pity, because of complaining, because of bitterness or unforgiveness or resentment, then you're wasting it. You're not going to be prepared when God calls you out. Joseph, while he's in Potiphar's house learning all of these things, he's learning. He's embracing where he is at the moment so that he's ready when the moment comes and God does call him out.

Of course, there's going to be an interim time so that when things do get worse, he's trusting God in that too. Trust knowing that God knows what He's doing. God is in the details of your life. He was in the details of Joseph's life. He's been in the details of our lives—the ups and downs, the pain, the suffering, the shock, those times when life throws you a curveball and your life is upended in a second.

God is with you and from the beginning all the way through every day. He knows what He's doing. He was orchestrating things in Joseph's life and I think even though Joseph may not have been aware of it at that moment, he trusted God. He just trusted that if God wanted to get him out, He could get him out; if God wanted to leave him there, He would leave him there. He had surrendered to the Lord. That's what we each have to do and not be so looking ahead or looking just desperate to escape. "God, if you'll get me out of Potiphar's house, then I can serve you. If you'll get me out of this, then I can go back to Canaan." Instead, he was just there in the moment.

John Ankerberg: I want you to say a prayer for Christians at this time. When your husband died just suddenly, it's like your world fell apart. You had a choice just like Joseph had a choice. You could have said, "I've been doing all this and this is what happens? I'm now a widow." You remember those feelings. There's people out there that have those kinds of feelings. They might have lost a job, they might have lost a mate, they might have lost kids, whatever it might be. Ask God to help them to keep on trusting that God's not done with them.

Anne Graham Lotz: If you're going through something like that and you're feeling like, "Ask God to give you a promise." That's what I'm going to pray for.

Lord Jesus, I just pray right now for that person who's watching and listening and they feel all alone and life has thrown them a curveball and has been turned upside down and perhaps they've been betrayed. They find themselves in a situation like Joseph did in Potiphar's house where things are going good but then maybe things take a sudden turn for the worse. They've been in a bad situation, now it's getting worse.

Lord, give them a promise. Would you bring a promise from your word whether it's through their own Bible reading, through something their pastor says, or something we talk about in this series? Give them your word that they would wrap their faith around it.

I'm asking now that you speak to their hearts. Dear Holy Spirit, just whisper to their hearts that they would know you see them, you know them, you're involved in the details, you're working out your plan and it's for their good and for your glory. They can trust you to know exactly what you're doing. You are able to rule our lives rightly.

So, we pray that you would give each one that sense of your presence and your purpose and your plan that is for their good and it's for your glory. One day, even though they're suffering today, you're going to bring them through. We ask this, please, in Jesus' name. Amen.

John Ankerberg: Amen. Now folks, next week I hope that you'll join us because we're going to talk about where is God, how does God help you when you are tempted? You say, "I would never be tempted." I got news for you: the devil's got a lot of ways of bringing temptation into you.

Some of you are right on the verge of being tempted or you're on the verge of giving in to that temptation or you've already started. I want you to join us next week because we're going to talk about how God can help you, forgive you, whatever you need. God is there and you don't want to blow up your life. So, I hope that you'll join us then, but stay tuned because I've got a personal word for you in just a minute.

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