READ THE STORY TOGETHER AND THEN THINK ABOUT IT TOGETHER

• How do you feel about the story of Joseph and his brothers? Can you imagine your own brothers or sisters selling you off to a foreign country? How would you feel if that had happened to you? Would it be very easy to forgive them? 
• What does it say about God that God was faithful to Joseph through all of his struggles and at the same time, didn't strike down the brothers for doing bad things? Through this story, what do we learn about what God is like? 
• God is with us even when life is really hard (or in other words when life is hard it doesn't mean that God is punishing us or is absent)
• Just because it takes time (years, even), it doesn't mean that God isn't at work creating new life out of hard times.
• God is patient with the brothers, knowing that true changes of heart and reconciliation are always the best outcomes. 
• How would you feel if you were the brothers and knew you had made a very bad choice, only to have to face it years later? Would you be scared at seeing Joseph, wondering how he would react? Happy to see him again? Mad that he's still alive and doing well?

Faith Story Prompts

See if you can connect your faith story to God working through Joseph's life. Hearing about your faith each week is a way for you to witness to the gospel, giving your children examples of what faith looks like as it is enacted in and affected by life. Here are some ideas:

• Have you ever been in a position of needing to forgive someone but it was really hard? What happened? Try to think of an example where you were able to forgive them and what it was like before and after forgiveness.
• Have you ever been in a position of having to confess a hurt you caused and asking for forgiveness? What was it like? How did you feel? What happened? What was it like to receive forgiveness?
• How have you seen God work good things out of bad situations? Not that God caused the bad situations or that the bad situations are now good because God worked through them. But in the midst of the hardship, how did you see God at work creating new life?