Understanding the Outcome.

OUR LIFE EXPERIENCES can be grouped into three: the experience we have when someone makes us a promise.

The second is what we experience while waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, and the final one is how we feel when the outcome is realized.

However, the fulfilment of a promise or a prophecy is more meaningful when you see God in the process.

ABRAHAM saw God in the process and told his son that God would provide a lamb himself for the burnt offering, and God did. (Genesis 22:8-9)

He knew that if he sacrificed his son, God could wake him up.

PAUL saw God in everything and said, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts of the Apostles 17:28)

And when he was stuck on a ship facing a shipwreck, he said to the men, “I urge you to keep up your courage and be in good spirits, because there will be no loss of life among you, but only loss of the ship.

For this very night, an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood before me. ( Acts of the Apostles 27:22-23)

STEPHEN looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. (Acts of the Apostles 7:50-60)

He saw God in his situation just before the Sanhedrin dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death.

God in your life will cushion the blows of adversity, and in the midst of temptation, he will make a way of escape.

’God will cushion the blows of adversity’

GOD saved Peter from prison when he sent his angel to open the gates so he could walk free. (Acts of the Apostles 12:5-17)

He made a way of escape for Daniel when he shut the lions’ mouths.

And when Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace, he joined them in the fire to prove his point. (Daniel 6:16-23; 3:8-25)

GOD will save you.

He has promised that when you pass through the waters, he will be with you and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you.

When you walk through fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. (Isaiah 43:2)

IF YOU TRULY know the ways of God, you'll understand that you have no point to prove; it is not the mind of God.

And putting yourself on social media to get back at people who have belittled you in the past misses God’s point.

JOSEPH understood he had no point to prove when he testified to God’s goodness. (Genesis 45:5)

David knew he had no point to prove, and he did not lay his hands on Saul, God’s anointed. (1Samuel 24:10)

Let God prove his point in your life.

Outcome

PERHAPS the reason you find it difficult to forgive is that you've not seen God in the process. If you do, you'll let it go.

The older brother of the prodigal son did not see God in the process and refused to forgive his brother. (Luke 15:11-32)

However, Joseph forgave because he knew that authority rested on the ability to forgive. He knew that forgiveness was a defence.

Forgiveness is a defence’

He understood there was so much to learn from the outcome, and much more to give.

My prayer for you is that you'll be a living, breathing, walking testimony—a proof of what God has done —and that no one will be able to take away your story.

Joseph did not need to say much; he let his testimony speak for itself. So his brothers saw God.

I pray that God will open your eyes to see the things he wants you to take away from your outcome and help you see that your testimony is pain that has been reassigned.