Does Your Past Haunt Your Present

[Ramez5]

And Joseph called the firstborn Manasseh [making to forget], For God, said he, has made me forget all my toil and hardship and all my father’s house. And the second he called Ephraim [to be fruitful], For [he said] God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction. Gen 41:51-53

Years ago, a pastor's wife used to joyfully chatter to me about the 'sovereignty of God' and how wonderful it was.. and how happy she was to be one of 'the chosen'.. God's elect. I was still having a very very hard time trying to grasp the fact that God was even trustworthy. To be joyful about the fact that he 'chose' suffering for me was even harder to do.

God's sovereignty didn't quite mean the same thing to me that it did to her.

Why? Simple.. because, like Joseph, God's chosen path was suffering rather than comfort and happiness. Our home was more a place of trial and anguish, and conflict than a haven. There was a lot of pain.. a lot of damage...things I have described before. God's sovereignty for me.. meant suffering, abuse, a feeling of never really belonging to anyone. I was not the 'favored' child. Like many of us, our family was broken and there were children from two different marriages which brought along some inherent difficulties..

God's sovereignty also meant a wonderful step-mom who was my 'cheer-leader' for years and whose steady head was like a warm haven in the midst of that emotional storm... and a grandmother and aunt who loved us and blessed us as much as they possibly could. Still, it was not a pretty picture. I didn't really have any idea what a 'normal' home life was like then.

I have two natural sisters by my father and first mother, a step-sister, and then two half-sisters and a half brother. Like Jacob's family, there were tensions, conflict, and difficulties and feelings of not being loved or belonging. My parents tried very very hard--especially my stepmother. My dad however, made a lot of terrible mistakes.. one being not allowing us to speak to our birth mother.. whom as an eight year old, I loved dearly. I could hardly understand why, nor could my sister Lisa.

My step-mother, Mary, was wonderful and she is 'mom' to me, because she loved me, yet part of me longed to have a close relationship with Donna, my natural mother too. and we tried. I still pray that we will some day be closer.

But she has a second family to whom she is much more attached. Somehow the cords could never quite be retied.. though with at least one sister that seems to be more repaired than for me.

I don't in any way blame anyone...and I feel all our parents tried their best to make the best of a broken and difficult situation. The consequences however, have been far reaching.

It took me years and years to get over the pain of my past..
but to say 'God chose that' for me .. isn't He great?'
was not really a natural response.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. I Peter 2:9

Yes He is wonderful and we are indeed chosen. Now I love God and understand his 'plan', but I can promise you I did not see God's hand at work during that 17 years of suffering--the most important years of my life.

I ran away from home at 17, because I just couldn't bear the pain of rejection, being the 'unlovely' child, the one who couldn't do anything right. I often stood up to my Dad because of things he was doing to us kids and that never went well.

Most people would assume that there was no hope for our family to ever be repaired or 'normal' again. When my father died, I grieved over the anguish of my sisters, who still bear that heavy pain of a family life gone awry. I prayed even this morning for continued healing for them.

Some would say, "What a cruel God to allow so much suffering! How dare he!

But I would not be in that crowd.

Though it has taken years to 'see' what God's purposes were in allowing the tangled mess that was our home life, it is a glorious purpose now to me.

The Lord put in my heart.. just an overflowing compassion for the hurting, the broken, the oppressed.
If you feel compelled to help people in the worst situations, it sure helps if you have suffered in similar ways. It's hard to be told.. you must repent, and obey.. regardless of your past wounds, by someone whose never been wounded.

By God's grace and sovereign provision and healing, I can give others the 'good news' of a God who can heal the sin patterns of the past.

Like Joseph, and even the Lord himself, I can understand their pain and have been tempted to despair or live a life of sinful indulgence or rebellion against God, but by His amazing grace have overcome!

Sin is a fact.. but God so loved the world.. that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever believed in him would not perish but have eternal life.
God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world
but that the world, through him might be saved. John 3:16

Jesus suffered just as Joseph did. Joseph suffered for the nation of Israel.. and Jesus, for the whole entire world...me for the few hurting souls that God puts in my path.
The greatest privilege in the world for me.. is when I can comfort someone who is hopelessly bound by their past.. and help them by God's grace to break free of those chains.. and come to live a life of genuine happiness and moral freedom. I would suffer a thousand more childhoods just like mine.. for that privilege.

Your past need not haunt your present!

God has a purpose in our pain and if we will turn to him for help, and believe in Him for redemption and restoration, healing and sanctification, we can be used as Joseph did, for the healing of others.
We are assured and know that all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.

For those whom He foreknew [of whom He was ]aware and loved beforehand], He also destined from the beginning to be molded into the image of His Son [and share inwardly His likeness], that He might become the firstborn among many brethren.

And those whom He thus foreordained, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified (acquitted, made righteous, putting them into right standing with Himself). And those whom He justified, He also glorified [raising them to a heavenly dignity and condition or state of being].

What then shall we say to [all] this? If God is for us, who [can be] against us? [Who can be our foe, if God is on our side?]
He who did not withhold or spare [even] His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all [other] things? Rom 8:28-34

Getting fixed is not the goal--the goal is to love the Lord with all our heart and to walk with him, but in doing so, when we completely surrender the reigns of our life, and live a life of faith, trusting that all will indeed work out for the best, then He is free to work in us and through us.

The just shall live by faith.. and that is what Joseph did.
That is what we must do too.

The Lord comforted him for all the suffering of his convoluted family background. God healed the relationship between him and his brothers.. completely and he can do the same for you.
What a beautiful restoration we will read about tomorrow. He knows God is going to do this in His time.

But for now, though kept from his father, whom he loved dearly, because of the jealously and hatred of his brothers, Joseph finds happiness in a new life.

God loved those brothers too! They no doubt struggled with such hate and envy either because they were the sons of an unloved mother or by the perceived rejection of their father, since they were not 'the favorite'. There were plenty of valid reasons for their hatred, though their actions were inexcusable.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Two sons were born to Joseph during the seven years of plenty. "Menasseh." God made him forget his toil and his father's house. Neither absolutely. He remembered his toils in the very utterance of this sentence. And he tenderly and intensely remembered his father's house. But he is grateful to God, who builds him a home, with all its soothing joys, even in the land of his exile. His heart again responds to long untasted joys. "Fruitful in the land of my affliction." It is still, we perceive, the land of his affliction.

But why does no message go from Joseph to his mourning father? For many reasons. First, he does not know the state of things at home. Secondly, he may not wish to open up the dark and bloody treachery of his brothers to his aged parent.

But, thirdly, he bears in mind those early dreams of his childhood. All his subsequent experience has confirmed him in the belief that they will one day be fulfilled. But that fulfillment implies the submission not only of his brothers, but of his father. This is too delicate a matter for him to interfere in. He will leave it entirely to the all-wise providence of his God to bring about that strange issue.

Joseph, therefore, is true to his life-long character. He leaves all in the hand of God, and awaits in anxious, but silent hope, the days when he will see his father and his brethren.

One thing I really loved about this passage was the verse describing God's tender relationship with Joseph, even though God himself orchestrated or allowed this suffering. (I'm not enough of a theologian to explain that part.) However, He was close to Joseph's heart and cared for his affliction and was with him all the way!

Gen. 39:21 But the Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy an loving-kindness and gave him favor in the sight of the warden of the prison.

I have never been in prison, but I remember the divorce court and trial. I remember spending the night in foster homes and finally being placed in the orphanage home. The nuns (not to pay any disrespect to them) scared me. I'd never seen ladies dressed as they were and many were severe, though not all of course.

I was in 2nd grade and suddenly living in a room full of strangers.. with a tiny bed and a little metal ugly green cabinet (think retro). The day I entered that home is the most striking one of my whole life. I will never forget it. I was given a little toy dog in a basket from Donna, my mom, and the nuns took it away saying I couldn't have 'personal possessions'. How I wept!

I think most of them were very kind but there were a few that were just very harsh.. one who slapped me across the head repeatedly with a plastic milk jug one day in the hall. I don't even know why.. or what I did.

I spent at least two years there. They were years of loneliness, fear, undue care for my youngest sister who wouldn't eat unless I fed her, and a feeling of heavy responsibility for my sisters.. as if I must be the mom. I don't know why.. it just was that way. The nuns made me responsible for her. I felt that way for years for my sisters even when we had a wonderful step-mom to 'mother' us.

My sisters and I, sadly, were in a home full of children from broken homes or bad situations. I won't go into details.. but suffice it to say that older boys and girls took advantage of us both. I knew nothing of the idea that I could 'just say no' or that it was safe to report it.

But I was not alone in this lonely place and dark time! To this day, I am amazed at the sovereign power of an almighty God, who inspired my Dad to 'get me saved' before being sent by the divorce courts into a catholic run orphanage for 'wards of the state'. He gave me a tiny white bible and underlined John 3:16 in red. I could read so I did. That bible was my treasure!

He led both me and my sister Lisa through 'the sinner's prayer'.. and then we were baptized.. and then we had to leave home. We might have gotten to see our father twice during those years.. and never our mother. I didn't see her again till I was 18. We only got to speak to her a couple of times on the phone.

You see, I can indeed related to Joseph, as no doubt, some of you reading this can too. In many ways, I was in prison too.

I can remember at the age of eight, asking the nuns to please let me skip nap time as I needed time to read my bible and pray to God. Can you imagine sending your children off to 'stand alone' for their faith and then them actually doing it? I know those Nuns loved God, but my father had scared me into being afraid of the catholic practices and beliefs and charged me NOT to take communion no matter what. And I never did. The nuns graciously did not press me. I was determined to be true to my 'faith and standards'.

Jesus became my best friend. Through the years of difficulty...and my own emotional struggles.. no doubt my psyche had been affected badly, I had a best friend.. and how I prayed! I prayed constantly, and cried out to God to 'change my father' who understood God in a legalistic sense but who hurt us due to his own gaping family wounds.

There is no point saying any more. But I will say that my faith was so strong! God seemed often to be right there with me. Eventually, as an older teen, I felt God must despise me as it seemed my father did.. but Jesus became my secret best friend who I talked to often and poured out my pain and fears. I was 'weird' in behavior and it seemed that he was the only friend I had.

Now that is all over and like Joseph.. God has comforted me in all my affliction.. and made me fruitful too. He can do the same for you. I promise!

Yes we have sinful patterns and habits from our past, but they don't have to 'take over' in your present. This whole blog.. and my last year, is a testimony of how God has fixed so much faulty thinking, and living and feeling.. that was set in motion by my past and my own sinful human nature.

We are not victims.. just sinners who can be saved and redeemed and gloriously sanctified!

Don't let the enemy of your soul tell you you are trapped or that your present circumstances are hopeless. They are not.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. John 16:33

Jesus came expressly to set the wounded, oppressed, and captive free.
He (Jesus) stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”


Dear Lord,

Some things that you allow in our lives are hard to explain. Sometimes we get chained by those things and can't see our way through to genuine freedom and a healthy 'normal' life, but thank goodness you came to save the hurt and lost and captive. Please fill my readers with hope today. May they turn to you and be set free. You are the only one who can bring them out of darkness into your marvelous light.

In your precious name I pray,
Amen

[Mary Naeem]

Thanks Ramez