Guarding Our Hearts From the Three “R’s”

“Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!  And now, 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 not be 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.”

 Genesis 45:4-7

I closed yesterdays’ blog with these thoughts:

“How have you handled rejection in the past?

Let’s look together this week at how it should be handled.

If your past handling of rejection is less than honorable, we can learn how to surrender it to God for His use and His purposes.

Are you ready?” 

So our ‘how-to’ today needs to start with a warning.

We must learn to guard our hearts from resentment, retaliation and revenge.  

If anybody had reason to ‘get even’ it was Joseph.

He was sold into slavery by his own brothers.

That was only as a concession because their original intent was to murder him!

How easy it would have been for Joseph to count the days until he could pay them back for their evil to him.

But a resentful heart, bent on retaliation and revenge, would have kept Joseph in a personal prison far longer than the prison stay he endured after being falsely accused by Potiphars’ wife.     

There is a high price we pay for taking vengeance into our own hands.

We yield to our desires but in the process God’s purposes in the rejection we suffered are lost.

How tragic.

It becomes a ‘fruitless rejection’ when Gods’ will is not worked through it!

We used to speak of formal education at the primary levels consisting of the:

 “Three R’s” – Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic.  

Perhaps we can remember today’s’ point, i.e., that we handle Gods’ rejection properly by guarding our hearts from the:

“Three R’s” – Resentment, Retaliation and Revenge.