This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alpharetta, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the preaching of God's word. Thank you, Bible, and go with me to the book of Genesis chapter 41. And I will give you the introduction to a message that I will preach in a few weeks, because there's a lot of stuff on our schedule on Sunday nights and my schedule, Sunday nights and Thursday nights. And so I want to share just a little bit with you about this. I do ask you to please get ready, pray and be ready to bless the church, to bless Vision Baptist of Cobb County on Sunday night. I ask you to help us make it a very special night. If you would, that would be a tremendous opportunity and blessing for them. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 41. You can just throw the paper away or hold on to it for a couple of weeks because next week, Brother Tony Howell will be preaching I think the week after that, Brother Jim Roberts will be doing a class on chowering, and so I'll be back around to preach about the next week. But I wanted to talk to you tonight about the other prison. I just want to take the time, and I want to read you the verses, and we'll go back over those verses again. But I think there's a big issue among our people, and I have preached this all over the world, and every time I've ever preached it, I have found that people are suffering from that. Look in your Bible, if you would, at Genesis. chapter 1, verse 51 and 52. And that's all we'll read tonight. Genesis chapter 41, verse 51 and 52. The Bible says, Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, for God said, He hath made me forget all my toil and all my father's house. Underline, God made me forget. God made me forget all my toil. And we'll talk just briefly about that. You know, a lot of us live in the past. A lot of us live making our past so strong that we don't get to enjoy our present or our future. We got hurt in the past. We got abused in the past. We got misused in the past. And we don't have victory in our life. And Joseph, if anybody, had an excuse. He had an excuse. He could have easily been ruined for the rest of his life. He was snatched out of his home, drug down into a desperate situation, and he lived a desperate situation for 13 years. But at the end of 13 years, he comes out of that, God brings him out of it, and puts him in a new place, and God gives him a wife, and God gives him children, and what he says is this, I have been able to forget my past, forget all my toil and my father's house. Verse 52, In the name of the second called he Ephraim, for God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction. And I wish you'd underline, God made me fruitful. God made me fruitful even in a place where it wasn't easy. And I would say to you that bitterness and all the bad memories and all the hanging on to your past, hanging on to your failures, hanging on to something people did wrong to you, has made you sterile. It's kept you from enjoying life. It's kept you from enjoying what God has prepared for you. It's kept you from that. God gave him a son and he forgot the past. God gave him a son and he talks about how he was fruitful in the land of affliction. That guy was horribly mistreated. They hated him at home and considered killing him. He was the baby brother. He was only 17. They threw him in a pit. They sold him as a slave. Slave traders hauled him off. How do you think he was living? If you made a movie today, if we got the clap boys who are the famous movie makers, if we got them to make a movie about the life of Joseph at age 17, when he snatched out of his home and drug him. How do you reckon the slave traders treated him? How do you reckon he spent the first night? How do you reckon he was treated as he cried while he was still in the pit when his brothers wouldn't get him out and wouldn't help him? And then when they got him out, he cries. That's in the Bible. And they refused to hear his cries. And they put him in whatever, I don't know, handcuffs, a cage, ropes, I don't know, and they drug him off. And then they put him in a slave market. The kid who's a favorite gets put in a slave market. Everybody's eyeballing him. You know, you've seen pictures. stories about what they do to slaves. They did all that probably with him. He is sold as a slave. He is taken in as a slave. How do you reckon pieces of property were treated? Young 17-year-old boys were treated by men in Egypt. Please don't think that it was a godly society. Please don't think that Abraham Lincoln was the slave owner. Please don't think that it was somebody being good to him. It was a rough time. Then he gets falsely accused and cast into prison. How do you suppose life is in a prison? And then he gets forgotten while he's in prison. But the story is that he gets free from the prison of bitterness. He gets free from the prison of bitterness. And that's what the lesson's about. I wanted you to be able to fill it in and take it home with you because Over the years, I have met and talked to so many people, and when I'm talking to them, they keep bringing up something that happened to them 30 years ago. And I want to say to them, get over it. It's past. You can have victory. You can focus forward. You can quit thinking about what happened in your past. You can't change your past. You can't even change your memories of your past. But you can choose to replace the thoughts with new thoughts and focus on new truths. We are not who we used to be. We are not who we used to be. In the story of Joseph, in the story of Joseph, later his brothers will come in and stand before him and he will have complete and total power and ability. He could take their lives. He could do anything he wanted to. He had every opportunity to get vengeance, but he doesn't. He doesn't have them killed. He doesn't have them flogged. He doesn't mistreat them. He is a little rough on them a couple of times. That's kind of funny in the story. He's a little rough on them a couple of times. But then when their dad dies, the brothers come in and they say, we know the only reason you haven't killed us. We know the only reason you haven't killed us is because Daddy was alive. We know the only reason you haven't taken our lives is because Daddy was alive. And he said, no, what you meant to do to me to hurt me God meant for you to do to bless our country. God had a bigger overall arching plan than the plan you had. And I could focus on me, and I could focus on you, and I wouldn't be able to understand what's going wrong in my life. But I can look and say that God had a far greater plan. Bob, I want you to have one minute. When I was a boy, I honestly, I had to work harder than most kids my age. I had less things than most kids had. And I had parents that said, you will eat whatever's placed in front of you, and you will enjoy it, and you won't complain, and you won't make faces. And I often complained about the conditions I lived in, having an outhouse, taking a bath in a tub, eating whatever junk was placed before me. And one day in Peru, I wake up, and I am able to eat whatever they put in front of me. And I am able to go outside to an outhouse. and I'm able to bathe in a tub outside, and other missionaries can't seem to get along or develop and adapt. And I realized what I thought my parents were doing wrong to me, God was preparing me to do what God had for me to do. God is at work in your life. And the junk that's happened to you, and the stuff that's gone wrong, and please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to minimize it, but if you'd get the bigger picture, if you'd back up and say, in my stupidity even, God has been at work in my life. Then maybe you could forget your toil and be fruitful. You could forget your toil and be fruitful. Father, I pray You'd bless Your people. I pray that You would bring honor to Your name and glorify Yourself. And I thank You so much because I know that You're at work and I know that You're bigger than all the issues that have happened in our lives. And I know that You're powerful and I know that You're great. And I just ask that You work in our lives God, there's some hurting people in here. They got mistreated when they were 10 years old. They got mistreated by their dad or their mom or they were sexually abused or they were brought up in really rough circumstances. And God, they're focused on the wrong person. And I'm asking you to deal with their heart and help them to trust you and to back up and see the big picture and realize what a great God you are and what a great work you've done. And I'll give you praise. This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. For more information, log on to www.visionbaptist.com, where you can find our service times, location, contact information, and more audio and video recordings.