When people put their trust in God to provide for their needs in times of crises, the way God

usually provides for the needs of his people is through human agencies.

And there's no piety in sitting back in the rocking chair, as Jacob could have done and said,

well, you know, I trust God. God's going to feed us, and I'll just wait for it to rain quail from

heaven. He takes the responsibility that all of us are to take in these situations and tells his

son, we're hungry, get down there, use every

means that we have at our disposal to secure the necessities of life.

For many of us, it can be hard to imagine the severity of the famine that struck in Joseph's

day.

But it was in light of this coming famine that the Lord raised up Joseph to help provide, not

just for Egypt, but for surrounding nations as well.

This is renewing your mind, a daily outreach of Ligdier Ministries.

I'm your host, Lee Webb.

Well, how did the Lord use Joseph to provide and what was it like for Egypt and the nations

to navigate life through seven years of famine?

Here's Dr. Scroll now on the seven years of plenty, followed by the seven years of famine.

We're in the 41st chapter of the book of Genesis, and in our last session, we saw the incident

where Pharaoh called upon Joseph to interpret his dream, and Joseph did that,

and as a result, Joseph was elevated to second in command of the entire Egyptian nation.

We read in verse 45 of this chapter, this conclusion to the matter, and Pharaoh called Joseph's name

Zapnath Paniah, and he gave him as a wife, Asanath, the daughter of Potafira, priest of Ahn. So Joseph went out over all the land of Egypt. The name that was given to Joseph is unclear

in terms of its exact etymological meaning, but most commentators see it to be an Egyptian name that means God speaks and he lives,

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