When You Realise God Named You Not Your Parents

I'm human, and it is normal for us to feel the weight of pressure. I'd even go as far as to say I feel pressure more than many. We put ourselves under a lot of pressure and society puts us under even more. The weight of expectation.

It's easy for us to compare ourselves continuously to the people around us, compare our achievements to others, compare our race. I am the king of letting other peoples success weigh on my mind. Questioning the rate of my career growth, or where I am in relation to getting married, future security, all sorts of things. Not being happy with where I am in relation to where I hoped I would be at this time.

Last weekend we had a program at my church called 'The Manifestation' where guest speaker Heather Lindsey preached a message entitled, "From The Pit to The Palace". She spoke about the 13 year wait Joseph had between his dream that his brothers would bow to him and his dream coming to fruition.

"The dream may be great but the path ugly" - Heather Lindsey

She spoke on being steadfast in the journey, it is being faithful in the trial that brings about the coming to fruition of the dream. Are you able, like Joseph, to trust God in the process? Or will you be like his brothers, so distracted and caught up in jealousy and envy of others?

Joseph was steadfast in the pit, in slavery, when he was thrown in prison, through the entire process he trusted God and didn't lose sight or faith in the dream. I find it so easy to let the process get in my head, to think it isn't happening for me just because it hasn't happened yet. I'm not living up to the societies expectations or even my own, I haven't garnered the status or the wealth or the esteem that I had hoped for and I'm seeing people around get so much. it's so easy to get lost in the irrelevant.

"There's something about continuing in the process and not giving up on God." - Heather Lindsey

The funny thing is this didn't hit me during the message but days after. I had an interview and knew they'd ask me about future projects and the truth is as of now I have none, so that had me worrying, what am I doing? Am I where i should me? Is all this work paying off? ...And that is when it hit me that my Christian name is Joseph. The crazy thing about this is that my name isn't meant to be Joseph. Family tradition is that the oldest so gets named Joseph, my dad is named Joseph cause he is the first born as was my grandfather, but I am the 2nd son and last born, but I was the one named Joseph.

In that moment it hit me like a train, that God was telling me, 'You're the one I need to be patient in this process, you're the one I need to remind that it may not be quick, or easy but My hand is on you.'