The Pit: When God Starts With a Setback
Sometimes life's hardest seasons begin with a question we never expected to ask God: How could this possibly be part of the plan?
We believed God was leading us. We prayed and trusted. Perhaps we even felt certain about where He was taking us. Then something happened that seemed to move our lives in exactly the opposite direction. A diagnosis arrived. A relationship ended. Someone betrayed us. A job disappeared. A business failed. A child walked away. Someone we loved died. A door we expected God to open suddenly closed.
In those moments, the distance between what God has promised and what we are experiencing can feel enormous. That is where we meet Joseph in Genesis 37. At seventeen years old, Joseph had received dreams from God pointing toward an extraordinary future. Yet before the palace, there would be a pit. Before influence, there would be betrayal and slavery.
Joseph had the promise. What he lacked was the path.
His story reveals a truth that matters most when life takes an unexpected turn: The pit isn't the opposite of the promise—it’s the path to it.
When the Path Looks Nothing Like the Promise
Joseph’s brothers already resented the special favor their father gave him. His dreams only intensified their jealousy. When they saw Joseph approaching them in Genesis 37, they said, “Look, this dreamer is coming!” Then they conspired to kill him.
Reuben intervened, so instead they stripped Joseph of his special tunic and threw him into an empty cistern. Eventually, they sold him to traders traveling toward Egypt.
Imagine Joseph sitting at the bottom of that pit. God had shown him a future in which others would bow before him, but now he was helpless while his brothers stood above him. Nothing about his circumstances resembled what God had shown him.
That is often where faith becomes difficult. It is one thing to trust God when the road seems to lead toward the promise. It is another when the road suddenly turns the other way.
We can assume that difficulty means we have missed God. If He called us, why is this happening? If He gave us the dream, why has everything fallen apart? Joseph’s story reminds us that a setback does not necessarily mean God is absent. Sometimes the road toward His purpose passes through places we never would have chosen.
God Never Asks Us to Pretend
We should not romanticize Joseph’s experience. Genesis later tells us that his brothers remembered “the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear” (Genesis 42:21, NKJV). Joseph wasn't sitting peacefully in the pit, contemplating God’s plan. He was terrified and begging his brothers for help.
Some of life’s deepest pits are dug by people closest to us.
Christians can sometimes feel pressure to hide that kind of pain. We learn the right phrases and tell everyone we are doing well while privately falling apart. Yet Scripture gives us a much more honest picture of faith. David cried out. Job grieved. Jeremiah lamented. Jesus wept. Joseph pleaded from the pit.
God never asks us to pretend the pit is not deep.
Romans 8:26 tells us, “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses.” Paul goes on to explain that when we do not know how to pray, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us. There are seasons when carefully formed prayers disappear and all we have left is a groan, a tear, or the words, “God, I don’t understand.”
Even there, the Holy Spirit is working. When you can’t pray your way out of the pit, the Spirit prays you through it. Faith does not require us to deny sorrow. We can acknowledge the depth of our pain while remaining anchored to the faithfulness of God.
They Took His Coat, but They Couldn’t Touch His Calling
Before throwing Joseph into the pit, his brothers stripped away his tunic. That coat represented his father’s favor and was one of the most visible markers of Joseph’s identity.
His brothers could remove the symbol, but they could not remove what God had placed within him. They took his coat, but they couldn’t touch his calling.
We often attach our identity to things that can be taken away. A career can become our coat. So can a marriage, title, ministry position, business, financial status, reputation, physical ability, or relationship. Without realizing it, we begin answering the question “Who am I?” with something that was never intended to carry the full weight of our identity.
Then life strips away the coat.
Joseph’s dreams did not come from his coat; they came from God. Our deepest identity is not found in what we possess, accomplish, or what others call us. It is found in Christ. Circumstances can radically change what surrounds us without changing who we are in Him.
What has been taken from you may have mattered deeply, but it cannot cancel what God has placed within you.
The Answer May Already Be on the Road
One of the most remarkable details in Joseph’s story occurs while he is still trapped underground. His brothers sit down to eat while he is pleading from the pit. Then they look up and notice a caravan approaching.
Those traders were already traveling toward them. They hadn't left home when Joseph hit the bottom. They had been on the road long before Joseph knew he would need a way out.
Before Joseph hit the bottom, God’s answer was already on the road.
Being pulled from the pit did not mean Joseph’s problems were over. He was headed toward Egypt as a slave, and more difficult chapters were ahead. Yet he was also moving toward the place that would eventually become central to fulfilling God’s promise.
Psalm 105:17 describes the same event this way:
“He sent a man before them—Joseph—who was sold as a slave.” — Psalm 105:17, NKJV
Genesis says his brothers sold him. Psalms says God sent him. The brothers were still responsible for their cruelty, but their actions could not prevent God from accomplishing His purposes.
What earth called sold, heaven called sent.
When we are in the pit, we see the walls. God sees the road beyond them. He sees people we have not met, places we have not reached, and purposes we cannot yet imagine.
People Can Write the Plot, but Not the Ending
Joseph’s brothers believed they were ending his dreams. “We shall see what will become of his dreams!” they said.
Years later, famine brought those same brothers to Egypt in search of food. Joseph had risen to extraordinary authority, although they did not recognize him. Genesis 42 records that they bowed before him with their faces to the earth.
The very people who tried to destroy the dream became part of its fulfillment.
People can write the plot, but they can’t write the ending.
Someone else’s choices may have dramatically altered your life. Betrayal may have cost you something you cannot recover. Another person may have forced you onto a road you never intended to travel. Those losses are real, but people have limits. They can influence your circumstances without becoming the author of your life.
Eventually Joseph would understand why Egypt mattered. A devastating famine was coming, and God would use Joseph’s position to preserve countless lives, including his own family. What looked like the destruction of Joseph’s future became part of something much larger than Joseph himself.
That is multiplication emerging from a pit.
Scattered, but Not Silenced
The same pattern appears centuries later in the book of Acts. The early church was growing rapidly when persecution erupted in Jerusalem. Stephen was killed, believers were driven from their homes, and Saul began dragging Christians away to prison.
From a human perspective, it looked like the church was being dismantled. Then Acts 8:4 tells us:
“Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.” — Acts 8:4, NKJV
The enemy scattered the church, but he could not silence it.
Philip went to Samaria and preached Christ. People responded. Unclean spirits came out, the paralyzed and lame were healed, and Acts 8:8 says, “And there was great joy in that city.”
What looked like destruction became distribution.
Jesus had already told His followers that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Yet the church remained largely concentrated in Jerusalem until persecution pushed believers outward.
It took a pit to get them to Samaria.
The multiplication that followed was about more than numbers. The Holy Spirit moved through ordinary believers wherever they went. People encountered Christ, lives changed, and communities experienced God's power.
They were scattered, but they were not silenced.
From Scattering to Harvest
Acts 11 continues the story. Some of the scattered believers traveled as far as Antioch, where “a great number believed and turned to the Lord.” Antioch became one of the most important churches in the New Testament. Believers were first called Christians there, prophets and teachers were raised up there, and eventually the Holy Spirit called Barnabas and Saul from that congregation into missionary work.
Think about the progression. Persecution scattered the believers. Scattered believers carried the gospel. The Holy Spirit worked through them. New churches emerged. One of those churches became a sending church that helped carry the gospel throughout the Roman world.
Persecution scattered them. The Spirit multiplied them.
Even Saul, one of the chief persecutors, encountered Jesus and became the apostle Paul. The man trying to stop the spread of Christianity became one of its greatest missionaries.
God’s ability to multiply His purposes is not limited by opposition.
Buried or Planted?
Joseph was thrown down and carried into a foreign land. The church was attacked and scattered throughout new cities and regions. Neither situation looked like multiplication when it began.
Both looked like loss.
A seed beneath the soil can look buried or planted. From above the ground, the two appear almost identical. The difference becomes visible when life begins to emerge.
There are seasons when we feel buried. Something has ended, and we cannot imagine what comes next. Yet suffering does not possess the power to make God stop working.
A career change can place us among people we never would have encountered. A painful experience can give us compassion for people whose suffering we once could not understand. A season of loss can deepen our dependence on God and eventually give us words for someone standing in the same darkness.
This does not mean God caused every tragedy or that we should call painful things good. It means that no painful thing is beyond His ability to redeem.
The pit didn’t bury the promise. It planted it.
When the Pit Becomes a Mission Field
Joni Eareckson Tada experienced her own life-changing pit at seventeen, the same age Joseph was when his story began. A diving accident left her a person with quadriplegia, and she endured profound despair as she confronted a future radically different from the one she had imagined.
Over time, through Scripture, Christian friends, rehabilitation, and a deepening relationship with Christ, her suffering became connected to a ministry she never could have imagined before the accident. She became an author and eventually founded Joni and Friends, reaching people affected by disability with practical help and the gospel.
Her accident did not become good because ministry eventually came from it. The loss remained real. But the loss did not get to decide whether her life could remain fruitful.
Sometimes the pit introduces us to people we are uniquely equipped to serve. The experience we would most like to erase from our story may eventually give us compassion, credibility, and understanding that cannot be learned any other way.
God can multiply something through us even in a place we never wanted to be.
Jesus Entered the Deepest Pit
Behind Joseph’s story stands an even greater story. Jesus was the beloved Son sent by His Father. He was rejected by His own, betrayed for silver, stripped, falsely accused, and ultimately placed in the grave.
To His disciples, the crucifixion looked like the complete destruction of everything they believed God was doing. Then came the resurrection.
What appeared to be the end became the beginning. Fifty days later, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church. Peter, who had denied Jesus three times, stood publicly and proclaimed Christ, and thousands responded.
Christian hope is therefore deeper than optimism. Our confidence is not that every circumstance will quickly improve or that every loss will be restored exactly as we want. Our confidence rests in Jesus Christ, who entered death itself and came out victorious.
Jesus went into the pit so we wouldn’t have to stay in ours.
What Do You Do in the Pit?
If you are in a pit today, begin by being honest with God. Joseph cried out, and Scripture permits us to do the same. When words fail, trust that the Holy Spirit meets you in your weakness.
Refuse to let the pit rename you. Joseph lost his coat, home, freedom, and position within his family, but he did not lose what God had placed within him. Circumstances may change what surrounds you without changing who you are in Christ.
Then keep your eyes open. The caravan may already be on the road. The answer may not look like what you expected, and it may not return you to where you were. God may instead be moving you toward something you cannot yet see.
Instead of asking only, “God, how do I get out of here?” we can also ask, “God, what can You do through me here?” The scattered believers did not stop being the church when they left Jerusalem. Wherever they landed, they carried Jesus with them.
And if you are not in a pit, look around. Someone near you probably is. Joseph’s brothers sat down to eat while he cried beneath them. The Body of Christ should be different. We listen, pray, remain present, carry burdens, and reach down into the pit with others.
Joseph could not see the palace from the cistern. The believers fleeing Jerusalem could not see Antioch or the missionary movement that would grow from their scattering. They could see only what had been lost.
God could see what was being planted.
The coat may be gone, but the calling remains. The walls may be high, but God is not confined by them. The road may be hidden from your view, but the answer may already be traveling on it.
The pit is not the opposite of the promise—it’s the path to it.
Continue the Journey
Continue exploring these themes with Pastor David Sellstrom’s books. Weapons of Mass Distraction challenges believers to recognize what competes for their spiritual attention and pulls them away from God’s purposes.
The Authentic Gospel calls Christians back to the Jesus revealed in Scripture and to a gospel grounded in biblical truth rather than one reshaped by culture.
The Way, The Truth, The Life points readers toward Jesus Christ as the foundation for what we believe, how we live, and where we place our hope.
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