Book review- While You Wait

Now, here is where perseverance comes in, our text says that perseverance must finish its work. Joseph may cry, but that will not make “perseverance” to interrupt its work. Perseverance means to be moving ahead in spite of difficult situations. That means standing tall in spite of pain. Unknown to Joseph, the painful trials he faced was producing a hardstand status in his life, and soon the hardstand status developed character- right attitude that is the pride of the trainer. When a coach has properly trained his ward, he does not join him in the race but stands by to watch the ward perform, because he believes he has done his part. The process of hard training is painful. So God uses hard training to mold our character. There is no time frame for this; it goes at the pace of the one going through the training.

We may ask, “In what area is this testing or trial concentrating?” The area of our faith. We need to prove we know God and believe in His wisdom to carry us through. We also need to surrender our whole life and future in His hand when there is nothing else we can do to help our self. In this process our attitude to people going through problem begins to change; we now know that it takes the grace of God to attain our dreams. That is the point our prayer life begins to grow, we begin to stand with other people who are facing challenges and begin to borrow from our pains to help others who may be going through pain. That means that perseverance has produced Christian character and character has begun to produce maturity. At this point we attain completeness; that means we understand every part of life, whether smooth or rough. This is the point God can now trust us with the blessings. When He was through with Joseph, hear what he had to say about his enemies----------

We see the transformation; from a cocky, prideful, self-centered, self-driven and reckless man to an emptied, God centered and humanity driven personality. That was what God was working at. Even though He did not tell Joseph this when He made him the promise of greatness, it was inevitable route for all who will attain God’s kind of greatness. You may ask, “Are there other routes to greatness”. The answer is, “Yes!” But those who followed other routes were short-lived. Neither they nor those around them enjoyed that greatness for long. They always crashed regretting the shortfall in their lives. We have such example in Abimelech in Judges Chapter nine. His rise, glory and doom were summed up in only one chapter of the bible. A sad reminder for all who will rush through the short cut to greatness.

Excerpt from my new book, "While You Wait for the Promise