Joseph, Paul, and the question every hurting believer eventually asks — why them, and why me?
You did it right. You prayed. You gave. You stayed faithful when it cost you. And the man down the street who has not thought about God in ten years just closed on a bigger house.
Nobody says this part out loud at church. But you have thought it: What exactly am I getting for this?
You are not the first. A worship leader named Asaph wrote it down three thousand years ago, and God left it in the Bible.
“But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.” (Psalm 73:2–3, 13, KJV)
In vain. That is a believer talking — in Scripture, with God’s permission. So the question is not unspiritual. It deserves an answer.
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You are grading the story in the middle
“Needless” is a verdict. And you are handing it down from the middle of the story.
Asaph did the same thing, and it nearly broke him — until one verse.
“When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me; Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.” (Psalm 73:16–17, KJV)
Nothing about his circumstances changed in that verse. His vantage point did. He stopped measuring by the middle and looked at the end.
God gives us two men who show what the middle feels like from the inside. One from each Testament.
Joseph: thirteen years that looked like nothing
Joseph was seventeen when his brothers sold him. He was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh. Thirteen years — slave, then falsely accused, then prisoner.
And notice what put him in prison. Doing right. He refused Potiphar’s wife and got a cell for it. Obedience made his life worse.
“And Joseph’s master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison. But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy.” (Genesis 39:20–21, KJV)
Read it twice. The LORD was with Joseph in the prison. Not out of it. Presence without release.
Then it got worse. He helped Pharaoh’s butler and asked one thing — remember me. “Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him” (Genesis 40:23). Two more full years.
Now watch whose hand opens the door. Not a prophet. Not a praying friend. A pagan king has a bad night’s sleep. Pharaoh did not know Joseph’s God — he was worshipped as a god himself. And God used that man’s dream, that man’s butler, and that man’s signet ring to put Joseph exactly where a starving world would need him.
Years later Joseph looked the brothers who sold him in the eye and said the sentence that explains his whole life.
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Genesis 50:20, KJV)
Two intentions in one event. They meant evil. God meant good. Not “God made the best of it afterward” — meant. The pit, the lie, and the forgotten years were not interruptions of the plan. They were the road. Psalm 105:17 says God “sent a man before them.” The brothers sold. God sent.
Lesson one: the place of your suffering may be the place of your assignment. Joseph could not save anyone from Canaan. He had to be in Egypt — and the only road to the palace ran through the prison where the king’s butler would be.
Paul: chains that carried the gospel to kings
On the day Paul was converted, God announced what his life would hold.
“He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.” (Acts 9:15–16, KJV)
Suffering was not a detour from Paul’s calling. It was written into it — in the same breath as “kings.”
So how does a traveling preacher get an audience with kings? In chains. Arrested in Jerusalem. Held two years in Caesarea by a governor who was hoping for a bribe (Acts 24:26–27). Two years that looked like waste. Then a new governor, Festus. Then King Agrippa, arriving “with great pomp” — and Paul, the prisoner, preaches Christ to the whole hall.
“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds.” (Acts 26:28–29, KJV)
Look at who is free in that room. The king in his pomp is “almost.” The man in chains wishes the king had what he has. Paul did not envy Agrippa. He pitied him.
That is Psalm 73 answered in a single scene.
Then Agrippa gives his ruling: “This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar” (Acts 26:32). It sounds like a tragedy. It was transportation. The Lord had already told Paul, “so must thou bear witness also at Rome” (Acts 23:11). Rome’s courts and Rome’s soldiers — an unbelieving empire — carried the apostle to its own capital under guard. And from that confinement he wrote:
“But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.” (Philippians 1:12, KJV)
Lesson two: God does not need believers in power to get His will done.
“The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” (Proverbs 21:1, KJV)
Pharaoh. Felix. Festus. Agrippa. Caesar. None of them bowed. All of them served. So the boss, the judge, the doctor, the official, the person who wronged you — not one of them is outside His hand either.
So what is suffering for?
Scripture does not hand you every reason. It does hand you these.
- To put you where you are needed. Joseph — “to save much people alive.”
- To carry the gospel where comfort never would have. Paul — before governors and kings.
- To break your trust in yourself. “That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
- To make you like Christ. The “good” of Romans 8:28 is defined in the next verse — “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Not comfort. Christlikeness.
- To make you useful to the hurting. He comforts us “that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble” (2 Corinthians 1:4).
And the people who seem so blessed without Him? Prosperity without God is not blessing. It is Agrippa’s pomp — “almost,” and then the end. Asaph saw “their end” and his envy turned to grief. Do not envy a man whose best day is today. Pray for him.
What to do this week
- Take the complaint to God, not around Him. Asaph’s turn came in the sanctuary, not in the argument. Pray Psalm 73 out loud. He already wrote your words.
- Stop grading the story in the middle. Write it on a card: Year thirteen has not come yet. You do not have enough of the story to call it needless. Neither do I.
- Be faithful in the room you are in. Joseph served well in the prison. Paul preached to the men guarding him. Each morning ask: who is in this room with me, and what do they need?
- Look for the butler. Someone near your suffering needs what God is giving you in it. Comfort one person this week with the comfort you have received.
- Refuse the comparison. Their ledger is not closed. Neither is yours.
The case that settles it
If you still wonder whether God can mean good through unbelieving hands, look at the cross.
“For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.” (Acts 4:27–28, KJV)
Herod. Pilate. The worst injustice in history, carried out by men who wanted nothing to do with God — and His hand and His counsel had determined it, for your salvation. The only truly innocent sufferer did not suffer needlessly.
If God was at work on that Friday, He is not absent from yours.
The butler forgot Joseph. God never did. He has not forgotten you.
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18, KJV)
Father, I have looked at other people’s lives and called mine unfair. Forgive me for grading Your work in the middle. Be with me in this prison the way You were with Joseph. Use these chains the way You used Paul’s. Make me faithful in this room, and make me like Your Son. I trust You with the end. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist