Joseph’s clarifying moment occurred on the day his ten brothers filed into the throne room, desperate for food, awed by the splendors of Egyptian royalty, and totally oblivious of his secret identity.

His last glimpse of them had been through a film of tears as they’d ripped off his colorful robe, thrown him into a cistern, and sold him into slavery for twenty shekels of silver.

The ten men hadn’t changed much. Older now, faces showing wear and tear, hair thinner, stubble grayer, eyes duller because of long-harbored guilt. Genesis 42 says they came and bowed down before him with their faces to the earth. Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but they did not recognize him. And he turned himself away from them and wept.

He could have exacted revenge—or justice—on that day. He could have settled the score and balanced the books. But instead, he wept, and his tears washed away years of confusion for he was beginning to see God’s end game. There was a purpose to the pain he’d endured. And God has reasons for our struggles, too, though we can’t always see them at the time. I can’t tell you specifically why certain things are happening to you, but through Joseph’s story, I can show you some of the patterns of God’s clarifying grace.

Problems Provide Greater Opportunities

First, problems provide opportunities. For Joseph, the road to the throne wound through Potiphar’s house and Pharaoh’s prison, but every time a door slammed shut it jarred another one open.

It’s interesting to notice how some of God’s greatest heroes spent time behind prison walls. There’s an entire section of the New Testament called the “prison epistles” because Paul wrote them to individuals and churches while he was incarcerated. The book of Revelation was written by the apostle John while imprisoned on Patmos Island.

It was in prison that John Bunyan envisioned the great allegory of Pilgrim’s Progress, and it was in a Chinese cell that Watchman Nee composed some of his greatest Christian works.

You may be imprisoned by a set of circumstances that aren’t to your liking, but problems are God’s way of providing us with opportunities that would never otherwise come. A young man wrote a prayer request to his church. His car had broken down, and he was struggling to get to his classes and workplace each day. But he said he’d had a great time witnessing to his unsaved neighbor who had driven him to school.

In every obstacle there is an opportunity.

Problems Promote Spiritual Maturity

Problems also promote spiritual maturity; they can make us better if we refuse to grow bitter. Few people have experienced worse treatment than Joseph. He was maligned, cheated, abused, and betrayed by one person after another. But there’s not a shred of evidence that Joseph grew angry at God. Instead, the circumstances matured him.

As we look back on Joseph’s life, we have the impression that he had a rather soft childhood. While his brothers were out working, Joseph was walking around in his fancy coat. Though younger, he was the favored son. But the Lord sent experiences to harden him up. Psalm 105:17-18 says that Joseph was “laid in irons.” An old English translation says that iron entered into his soul.

When Joseph came out of prison, he was an iron-souled man, a man of strength, courage, and wisdom. He was ready at age thirty to carry his adopted nation through prolonged crisis without one sign of revolt. He was prepared for the hardship of famine because he had experienced the pain of prison.

God needs “iron saints” today, and the Bible says, “No chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

God could spare us from hardship, but how would we learn? How would we grow? In 1952, Congressman Walter Judd gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention. He told delegates of helping his daughter with her homework. “I can get the right answer almost every time, and she would like to have me do it for her,” he said. “I’ll help, suggest, advise, counsel, nudge, maybe pray; but I don’t work them for her, not because I don’t love her, but because I do, and I want her to succeed—and that is the way for her to grow and learn how to solve problems.”

Problems Prove Integrity

Those problems also prove our integrity. Our character, if genuine, is never altered by circumstances. Nothing exemplifies our moral fiber like the way we face difficulties. Every once in a while, I hear people say, “Well, the situation made me this way.” No, the situation revealed the way you were. When we face difficulties in life, it’s a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the reality and the integrity of our character before others.

Joseph’s character was a steadfast compass in his soul, but it was put on public display because of the hardships he endured. Whether we realize it or not, the same is true for us.

Problems Produce a Sense of Dependency

Problems also teach us to depend on the Lord. Whenever I read about Joseph in the Bible, I’m impressed with a phrase that’s repeated several times: “But the Lord was with Joseph . . . . The Lord was with Joseph.”

Our sins can separate us from God, but never our circumstances. The secret of Joseph’s power was his consciousness of God’s presence. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say: “Pastor, I knew God loved me, but I’ve never learned so much or leaned on Him so hard as during this crisis I’ve endured. God has been with me.”

Has that been your experience?

Problems Prepare Our Hearts for Ministry

Finally, problems prepare us for ministry. We comfort others with the comfort we ourselves receive from the Lord. Joseph was able to comfort his family and nation because he knew firsthand the faithfulness of His God.

After my seminary training, my wife and I moved to Haddon Heights, New Jersey, to work at a church there. One afternoon, I received a phone call. A young couple in the church was driving to the ocean with their ten-month old baby, and the baby aspirated. Before they could get to the hospital, the baby was unconscious. Donna and I sat with that couple in the hospital, crying with them, praying with them, and comforting them. When the child died, I conducted my first funeral.

Donna and I felt we could offer at least some slight degree of comfort because of what had happened to us some months previously. We’d been married several years without children, and we were ecstatic when we learned we were expecting a baby. We lived in a little upstairs apartment at the time, and one day as I returned from a speaking engagement, I found Donna in tears. She told me she thought she was going to lose our little unborn baby. And that’s what happened.

That hurt us worse than anything we’d ever faced as a couple, and I still remember how we held each other and cried and cried. But in that hospital room in Ocean City, we knew just a little of what this young couple was feeling, and we felt we could love them all the more.

Sometimes problems are God’s way of preparing us to help someone else. That’s what happened to Joseph. From his prison experience, he became a servant of the whole world. Joseph went from pasture to pit to prison to palace—and at every step, God was with Him, causing all things to work together for good under the omnipotent hand of divine sovereignty.

If we’ll only step back from the distress and see beyond the pain, we’ll understand there’s a purpose to every problem and a reason for every riddle, and when we realize that, it’s such a gloriously clarifying moment.

Don’t grow bitter, grow better. Let God transform your situation into new opportunities, deepened maturity, demonstrated integrity, holy dependency, and a fresh heart for helping others. In the process, you’ll see more clearly than ever before.