One of the Old Testament stories that continues to inspire me is the story of Joseph and his brothers. As you probably recall, Joseph was Isaac’s favorite son—so much so, in fact, that he didn’t have to work in the fields with the others. Instead, he was free to spend his days and nights dreaming of future glory. That was hard enough for his brothers to stomach … but when Joseph kept recounting these dreams in sickening detail at the breakfast table each morning, they quickly lost their appetite for him altogether.

Their initial plan was to toss him into a pit and tell Isaac that his fair-haired boy had had a fatal tangle with a wild animal—thereby killing most of the old man’s dreams as well. But when some traveling salespeople happened by, they saw a chance to be rid of Joseph and turn a tidy profit besides. He eventually wound up as a slave in Egypt, working for an army captain named Potiphar. After a brief stint in jail over an embarrassing misunderstanding with his employer’s wife, Pharaoh got word that Joseph had a knack for interpreting dreams and decided to see if the young Israelite could decipher some troubling ones that he had been having lately. Joseph passed the exam with the same flying colors that had once adorned his coat, and Pharaoh promptly gave him a cabinet position as head of the Department of Agriculture.

Years later, when a famine struck up north, Joseph’s brothers were forced to make the trek down to Egypt themselves. Because they had pretty well put him out of their minds, they didn’t realize that it was Joseph at first. But he immediately recognized them and couldn’t resist the opportunity of pretending that they were spies, just to settle the score. The charade didn’t last long, however, since Joseph was starving for family as much as they were for food. When he finally revealed who he was, they fell into each other’s arms—laughing and crying and swapping stories—almost as if it had all been a bad dream. “Do not be afraid,” Joseph reassured them. “You may have intended to do me harm, but God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20).

In effect, Joseph realized that God had been a part of this journey from the very beginning. Despite all of the unexpected detours that his life had taken … despite all of the hardships and heartaches that he had been forced to endure … Joseph never lost sight of the fact that God was leading him somewhere. Even as he sat in that Egyptian prison cell, with no reasonable hope of ever being paroled, Joseph continued to dream!

And mind you, it wasn’t just idle daydreaming about a better future. That’s not what kept Joseph going when the going got tough. It was his faith—a faith that told him not to give up … or to give in.

I’m sure, like any of us, Joseph had his moments of doubt and discouragement. There were probably nights when he tossed and turned, worrying himself sick over his present circumstances. But when he finally closed his eyes to sleep … he would dream again. And more than anything else, I believe those dreams kept repeating the same thing that he would eventually tell his brothers—“Do not be afraid, for God is intending this for good!”