What God Does While You’re Waiting

Day 2 — Headwind: Genesis 39:20-23, 41:39-40

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Introduction

Yesterday you named the gap.

Maybe you wrote it down — the thing you hoped for, the thing you have instead. Maybe you just held it in your mind for a moment before moving on. Either way, you looked at it honestly, and that took something.

Today we’re going to stay with Joseph. Not at the pit — that was yesterday. Today we’re going to follow him further in, to the place the story doesn’t rush through even though we usually do: the long middle. The years between the pit and the palace. The part of the story where nothing seems to be happening and everything actually is.

Because here is the thing about disappointment that nobody tells you: it rarely arrives once and leaves. It settles in. It becomes the weather you live in, not just a storm you pass through. And the longer it lasts, the louder the question gets — not just why is this happening but is anything happening at all?

Joseph has an answer for that question. It took him thirteen years to live it.

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Scripture

Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

— Genesis 39:20-23 (NIV)

So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you.”

— Genesis 41:39-40 (NIV)

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Reflection

What’s Happening in the Text

Between these two passages is thirteen years.

Joseph arrives in Egypt as a slave and works his way into a position of trust in Potiphar’s household — only to be falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and thrown into prison. From slave to prisoner. From one pit to another. And then the long wait in the dark.

He interprets dreams for two of Pharaoh’s officials while in prison. He asks one of them to remember him when he gets out. The man forgets. Two more years pass.

The text gives us one repeated phrase across all of it — in Potiphar’s house and in the prison both: the Lord was with Joseph. Not the Lord rescued Joseph. Not the Lord explained things to Joseph. Just: with him. Present in the in-between. Working in the waiting.

And then, in the span of a single morning, everything changes. Pharaoh dreams. The official remembers. Joseph is pulled from the prison, cleaned up, and brought before Pharaoh. By afternoon he is second in command of Egypt.

Thirteen years. One morning.

What This Means for the Reader

Yesterday we said that God’s word does not expire when circumstances contradict it. Today we go one step further: the waiting is not wasted, even when it feels like it is.

This is the hardest thing to hold in the long middle. Not the initial disappointment — that is acute, and acute pain has its own clarity. The hard thing is the sustained disappointment. The month that becomes a year. The prayer you’ve prayed so many times the words feel worn smooth. The hope you’ve picked back up so often your hands are tired.

In that place, the silence can start to feel like an answer. Like God has moved on, or decided differently, or simply isn’t engaged with the particular geography of your life right now.

But Joseph’s story insists on something else entirely. God was not absent from the prison. He was not waiting at the palace gates for Joseph to finally arrive. He was in the prison with him — granting favor, building something, working at a depth that the surface of Joseph’s circumstances couldn’t reveal.

The warden didn’t know he was watching God work. Joseph may not have known it either, day to day, year to year. But the text knows. And it tells us plainly: the Lord was with him, and gave him success in whatever he did.

Here is what that means for you: the gap you named yesterday — the space between the promise and the present — is not empty space. It is not God’s waiting room where nothing of consequence happens until the real story resumes. It is the place where the formation is occurring that the destination will require.

Joseph could not have governed Egypt without the prison. The very qualities Pharaoh needed in a second-in-command — wisdom under pressure, faithfulness without recognition, the ability to lead when no one is watching — were being built in exactly the place that looked like the end of the story.

What looks like delay is often development.

You may not be able to see what God is building in you right now. Joseph couldn’t see it either. But the Lord was with him. And the Lord is with you.

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Grace Note

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. — Philippians 2:13 (NIV)

Romans 8:28 is the promise — all things, working together. Philippians 2:13 is the mechanism: He is not working on your circumstances from a distance. He is working in you, right now, in the middle of the wait. The destination and the formation are not two separate projects. They are one.

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Prayer Prompt

Jesus, I’ll be honest — the long middle is where I lose my footing. The first hit of disappointment I can handle. It’s the waiting that undoes me. The not knowing how long. The picking up hope and putting it back down so many times I’m not sure I trust it anymore.

I want to believe You are doing something in this. I want to believe the prison has a purpose. But some days it just feels like prison — and “God is working” sounds like something people say when they don’t have anything better to offer.

So I’m asking You for something specific today: let me feel You in the in-between. Not the breakthrough — I’ll trust You for that in Your time. Just Your presence in the waiting. The sense that You are with me here, the way You were with Joseph there in the long dark middle. That this place, as hard as it is, is not outside Your reach or outside Your plan.

Do in me what the palace will require. I don’t know what that is. But You do. And I’m choosing to trust that You are already at work.

Amen.

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Response

1. Carry the Gap Forward (Connective): Pull out what you wrote yesterday — the gap between what you hoped for and what you have. Read it again. Then underneath it, write this question: What might God be building in me here that the destination will require? You don’t have to answer it. Just let it sit next to the gap.

2. Find the “With Him” (Observational): Today, look for one concrete place in your current circumstances where God has shown up — even quietly, even small. Favor in an unexpected place. Provision you didn’t see coming. A conversation that steadied you. Write it down. The Lord was with Joseph in the prison. He is with you in yours.

3. Tell Someone (Relational): Find one person today — a friend, a spouse, someone in your circle — and tell them one true thing: “I’m in a hard waiting season, and I’m choosing to believe God is in it.” You don’t have to have it figured out. Just say it out loud to another person. What we declare in community becomes harder to take back in private.

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To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind

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© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way