When Abuse and Suffering Occur
(Post released on March 15, 2025)
When we have been cheated and abused, the Lord has a plan to release us from our suffering by redeeming the pain we have experienced. It may take longer than we thought to reach a final resolution, but the waiting is worth the outcome.
One of the most dishonoring people in Scripture was a man named Laban. Jacob was sent on a journey to find a wife and was introduced to Laban. Laban was the father of Rachel and Leah. After Jacob met Rachel, he fell in love with her. Laban arranged, by deception, to have Jacob marry his older daughter Leah by an act of trickery. Laban's trickery and dishonesty caused Jacob to labor for twenty years to gain both women's hands and accumulate an immense herd of livestock.
After twenty years of laboring under the conditions of Laban's deception, it was finally time for Jacob to escape the control of Laban. Jacob told Rachel and Leah to meet him in a field to let them know his plan of escape: "You know that I've worked for your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However, God has not allowed him to harm me" (Genesis 31:6–7 NIV).
When the time came to escape Laban's control, Jacob gathered all his flocks, his two wives, and his children, and began his journey home. When Laban learned what Jacob had done, he became enraged and began to pursue Jacob. In a dream, the Lord appeared to Laban and said, "I am warning you—leave Jacob alone!" (Genesis 31:24 NLT).
When Laban caught up with Jacob, they aired their grievances. Jacob told Laban, "It was like this for the twenty years I was in your household. I worked for you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But God has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night He rebuked you" (Genesis 31:41–42 NIV). (Photo via Unsplash)
Jacob built a memorial of stones, establishing a boundary line between both men so that neither would cross to harm the other. They parted ways, with both men returning to their homes. "Early the next morning Laban kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then he left and returned home" (Genesis 31:55 NIV).
The story of Jacob and Laban reveals several things to us. The Lord will protect us in our place of suffering. Jacob said, "God has not allowed him to harm me." Jacob was still abused, but his faithfulness to God prevented a deeper harm from taking place.
The Purpose of a Difficult Place
(Post released on March 20, 2025)
Sometimes, we are led into a difficult place that appears to have no hope. It is in that desperate place where the Lord will reveal the reasons why He allowed such things to happen.
Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, and that slavery was used by God to reveal his gifts to those who held him captive. In that revelation, each slave owner that Joseph served saw his worth. Joseph was advanced by the Lord to become the ruler of each domain where his gifts were revealed. God's intended destination for Joseph was to serve the Pharaoh as his second in command.
After many years, as the pain and loss of a famine had overcome the land, Jacob (Joseph's father) told his sons to go to Egypt to buy food. Through a process of testing his brothers, it was now time for Joseph to reveal his true identity to them. It would become a very emotional moment for Joseph and his brothers.
As Joseph addressed his brothers, he began to weep loudly as he told them that he was Joseph, the son his father Jacob had thought was long dead.
"'Please, come closer,' he said to them. So, they came closer. And he said again, 'I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt. But don't be upset, and don't be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives'" (Genesis 45:4–5 NLT).
Joseph explained in detail what happened to him over the years of their separation:
"God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors. So it was God who sent me here, not you! And He is the one who made me an adviser to Pharaoh—the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt" (Genesis 45:7–8 NLT). (Photo via Pexels)
At last, when all was said, "Then Joseph kissed each of his brothers and wept over them, and after that they began talking freely with him" (Genesis 45:15 NLT).
The restoration of Joseph's family was so complete that he gave his brothers this instruction: "Don't quarrel about all this along the way!" (Genesis 45:24 NLT). It would have been easy for his brothers to argue amongst each other about who was blame, but the time for blame had passed.
When the brothers returned home and told their father what had happened and how all his sons were still alive, "their father's spirits revived" (Genesis 45:27 NLT).
It is too easy to be so surrounded by "the difficulties of life" that we cannot see the hand of God at work in our circumstances. Both the innocent and the guilty in these situations can miss God's greater purposes at work. God does not waste these seasons of personal difficulty. It is in these difficult times that He reveals His plan of redemption that can save a family, even using His plan of restoration to save a nation.
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Garris Elkins, Author and Prophetic Minister
Prophetic Horizons
Email:Â garriselkins@gmail.com
Website:Â www.garriselkins.com
Garris Elkins and his wife, Jan, are a spiritual father and mother to many, both in the United States and abroad. Garris' ministry, Prophetic Horizons, is a ministry of teaching, writing, and prophecy committed to raising up a prophetic generation to speak to the cultures of our world with the empowered voice of Heaven. Garris and Jan live in southern Oregon.
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