📅 November 27, 2025

🌾 Joseph – A Faith That Carries Through
Devotions from the Life of a Dreamer with Character

🧭 7.Faith Instead of Grudge
When you’ve been hurt – and still choose to trust rather than repay

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👣 Introduction

It is one of the hardest experiences in life when the people we trusted become the ones who hurt us the most. When words cut like knives. When the decisions of others shape years of our lives. When trust breaks and nothing is the same anymore.

Joseph knew what that felt like. Betrayed by the brothers who should have loved him. Sold like an object. Deprived of his future, torn from his family, torn from his land. No one could have blamed him if he had become bitter.

But Joseph made a choice that changed everything: he did not allow bitterness to grow in his heart. He did not cling to the injury, but to God. He believed, even though he had every reason to harden. And in that lies the power of his life – and the reason why his story still heals today.

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🎯 Devotion

When Joseph stood before his brothers again after all those years, the room was filled with all the unspoken things that had built up between them. They looked up at a man who now had power over their lives, and yet each one of them remembered the day they stole his freedom. The past stood heavily between them, and they knew: if Joseph sought revenge, it would only be just.

But Joseph did not look only at the past. He saw the path God had taken him on – a path that had led through deep valleys but was always carried by a hand stronger than the hatred of his brothers. Years earlier they had taken his dreams, but they could not take from him the God who had placed those dreams in his heart.

In that decisive moment, Joseph took a deep breath – not out of weakness, but out of peace. He knew that bitterness would only tighten the chains of the past. But God had loosened them. And so he spoke words that broke through the atmosphere like warm light: “Am I in the place of God?”

This was not a sentence of resignation, but a confession. Joseph had understood that he did not have to be the judge of their guilt. God had seen all the years. God knew every tear, every step, every moment of waiting. And God had turned what began in bitterness into something beautiful. Joseph no longer saw only the injustice – he saw the miracle that had grown from it.

He knew: what others wanted to destroy, God had used to bring life. Not only to him, but to many. And therefore he could forgive. Not because it was easy. Not because the injury was small. But because God was greater.

In that moment not only Joseph was healed. His brothers also experienced something greater than any punishment: grace. A grace that flowed from a heart God had shaped, cleansed, and preserved.

Forgiveness was not a feeling for Joseph. It was a decision. A sacred decision not to let his life be defined by what people had done to him – but by what God had made of his life.

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💡 Thoughts for us today

Rejection does not have to define your story.
Hurt does not have to turn into bitterness.
God can transform what others wanted to destroy into something that brings life.
Forgiveness does not mean minimizing the wrong – but trusting that God’s justice is enough.

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💎 What we can learn from Joseph

Forgiveness is not forgetting.
It is letting go.
A surrendering.
A trusting that God sees farther than we do.
And that He can bring healing out of what has broken us.

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👣 Practical steps

Allow your heart to be honest about the pain.
Ask God to show you His view of your story.
Give Him the right you’ve taken into your own hands — the right to judge.
Create space for grace – first in you, then through you.
And trust this: God sees, God knows, God leads.

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💭 Questions for reflection

Where am I still carrying bitterness that keeps me captive?
What would it mean to stop wanting to judge on my own?
In what situation might God want to show me that He is greater than the injustice?
Where can I take a step toward freedom today?

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🙏 Prayer

Dear Father in heaven,
you know the wounds in my heart.
You know where I have been hurt, where I have been disappointed,
where I felt left alone.
I bring you my pain.
I bring you my questions.
I bring you my bitterness.

Help me to let go of what harms me.
Help me to forgive where I cannot do it on my own.
Teach me to leave the right of judgment in your hands.
Give me a heart that heals,
a heart that becomes free,
a heart that trusts you.

Thank you that you see everything.
Thank you that you are just.
Thank you that you can heal what is broken.
Amen.

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🔑 Key thought of the day

You cannot change what was done to you –
but you can decide to whom you give your heart:
to bitterness or to God.

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🌿 Blessing to close

The God who carried Joseph through betrayal and loss,
who preserved him when everything fell apart,
who gave him the strength to forgive,
may this God also be with you.

May He heal what was wounded.
May He comfort what is crying.
May He strengthen what has grown weak.
And may He lead you into the freedom
known only by a heart that has forgiven.

May the God who can turn bitterness into grace,
and pain into peace,
bless you.
Amen.

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LumenCorde | Daily light for a living soul.

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