(Clip) Why God Will Not Shield You from Every Sorrow

So let me try to illustrate when I say every child of God, that's our story. I'll use my experience and then we'll close with the experience of Jesus, which is a million times more important than mine. When I say that the story of Joseph is the story of your life as a Christian, what I mean is something like this. It comes in answering the question, why do we so often pray, say at the beginning of the day, that such and such won't happen? Breakdown of a car, getting sick with the disease, that some bad thing won't happen. Why do we so often pray that some bad thing won't happen? And then in the afternoon it happens. And as it happens, we see that in the very way it is happening, the hand of God, the good hand of God. In other words, it seems to me that pretty normal Christian experience is that God answers prayers inside non-answers. That make sense? Here's the big non-answer. I didn't want this to happen this afternoon. I ask you that it would not happen. It happened. And as it happens, I see your hand all over it for good and for grace. How many times have you heard people talk like this? Maybe it's just because I'm a pastor that I've heard it so often. Pray for safety in the morning. Pray that some terrible accident won't happen. Well, the accident happens in the afternoon. And as I hear them telling me this story, they say things like, if his head had been a millimeter to the right, he'd be dead. And God didn't let it happen. The woman walking by on the sidewalk was a nurse. The ambulance came just like that. It was like three minutes. In the hospital, they had an ample supply of his unusual blood type. Never before would they have such a supply. You hear that, right? What in the world? What in the world is that? Because if I didn't know the story of Joseph, I would be inclined to say, if God's sovereign hand is all over this, why didn't he just prevent it? Why the big non-answer? And then inside the non-answer, all these glorious answers. Why didn't God prevent Joseph from being sold into Egypt? Why didn't he prevent the slander of Potiphar's wife? Why didn't he prevent the cot bearer from forgetting Joseph for two more years? Answer. This is the Bible's answer. Because God's way is to bring his people into peril. For his wise purposes, all the while planning through the peril, their God-exalting rescue.