February 7, 2009 … Swindoll’s Topic for Today: Innovative Planning
Passage of the Day: Genesis 47: 1 – 26 … Please go to this link …
My Journal for Today: Today we have a longer segment of Joseph’s story. I hope you read it; because it illustrates how Joseph productively used his administrative gifting, with innovation and creativity for God’s glory and for the good of those in his sphere of influence. He not only kept his family alive and well in a land hostile to the Hebrew people; but he kept all of Egypt well during the horrible times of famine which had been visited on these lands at the time.
He did things and took actions which had never been taken before. Joseph not only thought and made decisions “out-of-the-box,” to use a modern day buzz phrase; he broke the box apart and reassembled it. And Chuck Swindoll likens this “wild-n-crazy” plan of action to God’s plan, explained in Phil. 2: 6-11, where God activated a “way out” plan to save all of mankind who would buy into and receive his plan. God Almighty set aside his majesty, came as a babe, walked in love among man, died on a cross, and was raised again from the dead; and he did all of this out of his mercy and grace to give me, a sinner deserving nothing by death, an opportunity to be saved and to dwell with my Lord in heaven for eternity.
Joseph’s was a plan to save the people which had never been done before; and only those who bought into the plan and “got with the program” of Joseph, the designated “master,” would those people so receiving Joseph’s mercy be saved. And this is a life picture from history as to what was to come when the Godhead activated a plan, with Jesus as THE MASTER, … a plan which was, and will always be, the most innovative plan of salvation ever. And I am one (and I pray you, too) who has bought into the latter plan. I gave up all my life to become the indentured slave of this Master Planner. Jesus is my LORD and my SAVIOR. He, like Joseph’s plan, requires only that I give Him the first fruits of what He provides for me; and as it says in Matt. 6: 33, all I have to do is put my Lord first in my life; and I will be given all I need for this life and the next.
That’s quite a plan; don’t you think – the greatest deal ever offered?! And I hope that when I run up against the walls of this life, I can simply put aside my own agenda, grab hold of the circumstances of life, and follow My Lord’s way of doing things. That was “the plan” for discipleship laid out by THE MASTER PLANNER (read it in Luke 9: 23); and all those who use this plan will have their needs met, just as did those in Egypt in the tough times we read about in today’s life lesson from God’s word.
Live and learn from God!
My Prayer for Today: Lord, help me to do nothing in life but to seek after Your plans and to follow Your ways … during this life as preparation for the next. Amen
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