Dear Friend, (6 min read)

(This started as a podcast episode, recorded on a walk this morning. Prefer to listen? Listen here.)

Week one of the missions trip. .

I'm standing in front of a room of kids, ages 7 to 15, with a translator turning my English into Russian.

And I'm about to tell them the story of Joseph.

Not Joseph the carpenter. Joseph the dreamer. The favorite son. The one with the designer coat.

If you don't know the story, here's the short version.

Joseph is one of twelve brothers, and he's his father's favorite. He has a dream that one day his whole family will bow to him... Then he makes the mistake of telling them.

His brothers hate him so much they plan to kill him. They settle for selling him as a slave into Egypt instead.

In Egypt, he works for a man named Potiphar. Does excellent work. Rises. Then Potiphar's wife tries to sleep with him. He refuses ("Why would I sin against God?"). She grabs his cloak as he runs, then uses that same cloak to falsely accuse him.

Prison.

While he's there, he interprets dreams for two of Pharaoh's servants, the cupbearer and the baker. One interpretation ends in a restoration. The other ends in an execution. Both come true.

Joseph asks the cupbearer for one thing: when you get out, remember me. I didn't do anything.

The cupbearer gets out.

And forgets him for two full years.

Then Pharaoh has a dream nobody can interpret, and the cupbearer finally remembers the Hebrew from prison. Joseph gets pulled out, interprets the dream (seven years of abundance, then seven years of famine), and doesn't stop there. He hands Pharaoh the plan to survive it.

Pharaoh's response is basically: is anyone wiser than this guy? He puts Joseph over all of Egypt. Only the throne stays above him.

Sold by his brothers. Falsely accused. Forgotten in a cell. Second in command of the most powerful nation on earth.

And at every single step, God was with him.

In the pit. In Potiphar's house. In the prison. In the palace.

Every step.

That's what I told the kids.

But somewhere in the middle of telling it, I realized something about myself.

I've been hiding.

Here's the thing. I grew up homeschooled, and we read through the entire Bible as a family. By the time I was 15, I had read it cover to cover at least eight times. Later I went through Thrive College and took Old Testament and New Testament classes.

And somewhere along the way, I forgot that most people haven't read the Old Testament even once.

All that knowledge just sat in my head as background. I assumed everyone had it.

But that's not the real reason I stayed quiet.

The real reason was fear. Fear of getting a detail wrong. Fear of someone asking a question I couldn't answer. Fear of not having enough theological depth to earn the right to speak.

So for years, I said almost nothing.

Then on the flight home, Tim, YaHyl, and I watched Mufasa, the newest Lion King movie.

And I couldn't turn it off. Not the movie. The pattern recognition.

A cub gets rescued from a river and adopted into another pride. That's Moses. Floating down the Nile, raised in Pharaoh's house.

"I always wanted a brother." That's David and Jonathan. The son who was supposed to be king, loving the man who would take his place.

I sat there at 30,000 feet watching a Disney movie and seeing the Old Testament everywhere.

That's when it clicked.

This isn't something I know. It's something I see. It's a lens I've been carrying my whole life and keeping in my pocket.

You don't have to have all the answers to share what you know.

Nobody expects you to. I was the only one holding myself to that standard. And the standard was really just fear wearing a costume.

The details do matter. I'm going to work hard to get them right. But "I might get a detail wrong" is not a good enough reason to stay silent about the things that changed your life.

So here's my filter now. I will not share about things that haven't affected me. But if something has actually changed me (how I see people, how I work, how I live), then keeping it to myself isn't humility.

It's hiding.

And maybe for you it isn't the Bible. Maybe it's twenty years in an industry everyone else finds confusing. Maybe it's what you learned raising kids, or surviving a business failure, or the language you grew up speaking that you assume "doesn't count."

You have a deep well you're not drawing from. And you probably can't see it, because to you it's just normal.

This week, share one thing you know that you've been keeping quiet.

One conversation. One post. One story told at dinner. Something that changed you, told to someone it might change too.

You don't need permission. You don't need a degree. You need to stop treating your well like it belongs to someone more qualified.

Joseph interpreted dreams in a prison cell. He didn't wait for the palace.

This whole trip taught me that God provides through people. Turns out sometimes the person He wants to provide through is you.

Well, that's all for now.

-Daniel

PS I also was a guest on a podcast that launched last week. You can join almost 10 thousand others who have already watched it. wild. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pig3IpTwDm4&t=64s