An Iris Awaits: Meant for Good

There’s a contemporary worship song by Michael W. Smith that includes the following lyric: “Even what the enemy means for evil, you turn it for our good. You turn it for our good and for your glory.” This is a commonly expressed sentiment in Christian circles, and it finds its origin in two passages of Scripture—the life of Joseph in Genesis and the letter of Paul to the Romans. The idea seems straightforward enough. Our spiritual enemy attacks us on every side, but God takes even his most diabolical schemes and works them to our ultimate benefit. Not only the attacks of the enemy, but “all things” are used to produce good for those of us, as Paul explains, “who love God” and “who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, ESV).

The specific mention of evil intent comes from the Old Testament passage in Genesis. Joseph was sold into slavery as a young man by his jealous brothers. He ended up in Egypt where he became a respected servant before being thrown in jail after a false accusation of sexual assault. Once in jail, he also became respected among the prisoners and guards and eventually was released after God revealed to him interpretations of several dreams, one of which belonged to Pharaoh. In a dramatic turn of events, Joseph went straight from prison to being the #2 man in all of Egypt, tasked with overseeing the nation’s preparation during several bountiful years for the several years of famine that were about to come.

The famine was so widespread and severe that Joseph’s brothers journeyed from Canaan to Egypt to buy food, and eventually they discovered what had become of their younger brother. Joseph treated his brothers kindly, despite their sin against him, and moved his entire family to Egypt, including his aging father Jacob. Everything was well and good until Jacob died. Then Joseph’s brothers began to fear that Joseph would retaliate against them for selling him into slavery. And it is in Joseph’s response to his brothers that we see the idea of evil being turned into good.

“But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:19-20a, ESV). In other words, God used the malicious intent of Joseph’s brothers to produce a series of blessings instead. He’s pretty cool like that. But did you know Joseph’s words don’t stop there? There is more to verse 20 that often gets overlooked.

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20, ESV, emphasis added). Did you catch that? The good that Joseph was referring to was not the prosperity and reverence he enjoyed as second-in-command. It wasn’t his beautiful Egyptian wife or his two sons or his being able to be with his father in his final days. It was the saving of hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise would have perished from famine had Joseph not been in a position to provide food for them.

So often we think of God’s taking evil and turning it into good as if it has a very narrow application to our own lives. Even when we consider Joseph’s words in context, I think we tend to focus on the good that God brought about in Joseph’s life. In other words, we imagine him to have meant, “You intended to do me harm, but God meant it for good to raise me up and bless me with much prestige and possessions and power. See, you meant to sell me as a slave, but look at where I am now!” But that’s not what he says. In fact, he says nothing about his own position at all.

Instead, Joseph points to the good for many other people that his own misfortune ended up bringing about. Joseph’s journey wasn’t really that much about Joseph after all. It was about saving countless people from early death, including preservation of the line of Joseph’s brother Judah through which Jesus would come.

So what if we stopped looking so narrowly for the ways in which we think God will bless us individually through the hardships we face in life? Certainly, God does use trials to grow us in Christ-likeness, to bless us with the result of our becoming more reflective of His nature, and even sometimes to produce physical blessings as well. But what if sometimes our difficulties are meant first and foremost to be a conduit of blessing for others?

What if God uses your loss of job to move you to a different place where you will lead someone to know Jesus? What if God uses a death in your family to bring about reconciliation between estranged relatives? What if God uses an illness to drive you deeper into His Word and prepare you to teach others? What if God uses my prolonged separation from my fiancé and our delayed marriage to encourage others to be faithful in seasons of waiting?

It’s easy to want to grasp at hope of personal blessings when we’re enduring trials, but isn’t it so much more amazing to realize that God can exponentially increase the blessings to be had from our difficult circumstances? That He can take what was meant for evil against us and turn it into good for us and for others?

I encourage you the next time you find yourself in the middle of an undesirable, frustrating, or downright excruciating situation to turn your gaze to Jesus and trust that He is able to bring beauty from ashes—even if it takes years for us to see it, as it did in Joseph’s case. See, the event of Joseph’s being sold into slavery was a single point in time that set in motion a purposeful course of events to achieve the salvation of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people over a decade later.

Think of that! We know Joseph was seventeen years old when he told his brothers about his dreams (Gen. 37:2) and was still referred to as a “boy” when sold into slavery (Gen. 37:30). And we know that “Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Gen. 41:46a, ESV). That’s thirteen long years consisting first of servitude then imprisonment before finally seeing the good that God intended to work through it all.

Joseph’s testimony should give us great encouragement and remind us to hold fast during times of great trial. God’s sovereign purposes follow His timeline, not ours. And the good He brings about may come in unexpected ways and after decades of seeming delay. But God is powerful enough to bring good out of evil and to extend the reach of that good far and wide, using our own struggles not only to bear fruit in our lives but also to bless the lives of others, and that’s exactly what He does. Take comfort in that, my friend, and if you’re struggling to praise God in the midst of a trial, I encourage you to spend some time pondering the greatness and graciousness of a God that turns things meant for evil into things that are meant for good.

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