The time Joseph had the dream of his future, he was yet too young to appreciate the glory that lay ahead of him. If he had become the prime minister earlier than he did in Egypt, he would have been too inexperienced to handle the position. So, the hard times he went through in the dry pit, Potiphar's house and in the prison, were God's own way of preserving him for the glory ahead. It was in this dark period of his life that he gained the necessary experience and maturity to handle the responsibilities imposed by the exalted position in the royal court in Egypt.

Successful people don't just drift to the top; it takes focused action, personal discipline and a lot of energy every day to make things happen. So, in order to make things happen every day, as a child of God, feel strong in challenges, believing that your personal improvement and fulfilment in life come through the continual process of learning from both positive and negative experiences.
As long as we live we must still learn. As children of God, we learn through the daily things that happen around us for life is a high school of learning where the necessary truths are imbibed. That is, life itself is a college of God. In the college of God, however brilliant you may be, you will not be given double promotion; you will take every course because each course serves a purpose.

As a would-be leader, you need to be prepared up in the areas of mind management, material management, human management and self-control before you can be fully experienced and matured to handle the responsibilities ahead of you on the throne. Like Joseph, the place where your throne is situated may not be in your father's house, country or in your continent but in a place where God has appointed it to be. As you step out towards the place where your throne is situated, life itself which comes from God, will begin to teach you the necessary lessons you must learn in order to handle the responsibilities that are laid ahead of you.

If you do not learn what it is to be in the dark, how would you appreciate the light when it finally comes? How would you learn to care for those who are in the dark when you are finally in the light?

Events that seem ordinary in the natural world may have extraordinary effect in the spirit, much of which is hidden from the ordinary eye because of our limitation in the things of the spirit. If not because of hard times, man by His wicked nature would not have sought the face of God. This means, God sometimes uses hard times to draw us to Himself, so the we can learn His ways and take our proper position in Him. Your present situation may be to prepare you for a new level in life or to preserve you for redemption.

When God knows that if you become rich, get married or become a graduate at the early stage of your life, something that would cost you your life will happen to you, in order not to lose you to premature death, He will use hardship, poverty, sickness, failure or disappointment to preserve you. When the evil days are over, He will release you, give you the best and bless you abundantly. When God knows that if you conceive at the early stage of your marriage, you will die during delivery, in order not to lose you to sudden death, He will use childlessness to preserve you from the imminent danger. When the evil days are over He will release you and bless you with God fearing children. To delay is not to deny. When your miracles are being delayed you are about to receive mother of miracles.

However, when God does not remove our troubles and temptation, yet if He gives us grace sufficient for us, we have no reason to complain nor to say that He is not faithful to us. As a co-student in the college of God, please permit me to remind you that in life, there are two schools: school of condemnation and school of praise. As a child of God, your relationship with God should be built on the rocks of condemnation and praise. You cannot make it in life if you don't go through these schools. Each of these schools is a real situation or a place where your genuine spiritual experience needs to be tested in order to expose the reality of it. Faith must be believed in the heart and confessed with mouth. Faith must be worked out in actions. Faith must be tested by tribulation. As gold is tested in furnace of fire, human character is refined or tested in the furnace of humiliation. When time are stable and the sea is calm and secure, no one is really tested. A man will continue to hide his true character until his pride is injured.

For your true character to be known, you need to encounter tests and trials which are meant for your belief. People will challenge you, question you and try to get you off track but please, don't listen to the temptation to act out of character. See your situation as an opportunity to honour God just as it is an opportunity for God to glorify His name. There is no great nation or person who has never experienced hard times.  As children of God, our hard times are for a purpose because they give us an opportunity to learn the necessary and maturity we need to handle the responsibilities that lie ahead of us. Those who are rich in every sense of the word understand that life is a learning experience. No matter how good you are no matter how cleaver you are, there is always another level to reach for.

I believe that there can be no greater privilege in life than the grace to be in God's presence. There can be no higher aspiration in life than the zeal to reach Jesus Christ. So, let's aim high to reach high because life is a learning experience.