Before they threw him in the pit, they stripped him of his coat. That coat wasn’t just fabric. It was identity. Favor. Belonging. Proof that he was seen, chosen, loved.
The first thing his brothers did, before the pit, before the slavery, before any of it….. was rip it off his body.
Because if you want to destroy someone, you don’t just hurt them. You try to take their identity first.
Read that again. Every place Joseph went after that moment, someone tried to hand him a new identity:
Slavery said: you are property.
Potiphar’s wife said: you are an opportunity.
Prison said: you are a criminal.
Years of silence said: you are forgotten.
Four different lies. Four different chances for Joseph to believe he was whatever his circumstances said he was.
He said no to all of them.
Not because it was easy. Because somewhere underneath the slave clothes and the prison chains, he remembered who he actually was before anyone tried to strip it from him.
This is the part of the story most people miss:
Purpose doesn’t just require surviving what’s done to you. It requires refusing to become what they said you were.
You can be betrayed and still know who you are. You can be forgotten and still know who you are. You can be misjudged, mislabeled, and misunderstood, and still know who you are.
Joseph walked out of every single identity that was forced onto him and walked into the ONE that was actually his all along.
If somebody stripped something from you, a title, a relationship, a season, a version of yourself you thought was gone for good, I need you to hear this…
They can take the coat. They can’t take the calling.
This is what we’re uncovering as we study Joseph’s life. Not just what was done to him but who he refused to stop being underneath it.
Comment JOSEPH26 and I’ll send you the details on my book Jospeh; Positioned for Purpose. What they stripped away was never who you actually are.
Natalie Breckenridge 🤎
