In other situations, when our worthy desires are not granted in the way we had hoped, it may actually be for our ultimate benefit. For example, Joseph the son of Jacob was envied and hated by his brothers to the point that they plotted Joseph’s murder. Instead, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. If ever a person might have felt that his prayers were not answered in the way he had hoped, it could have been Joseph. In reality, his apparent misfortune resulted in great blessings to him and saved his family from starvation. Later, after having become a trusted leader in Egypt, with great faith and wisdom he said to his brothers:
“Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.
“For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
“And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
“So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God.”
....As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “Faith also includes trust in God’s timing.”
April 2019
General Conference
Brook P. Hales
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