But his father was a spiritual man, and he kept it in his heart. In other words, just because he'd had this dream, didn't mean it wasn't from God; and sometimes the dreams that God gives us, we don't always understand all they mean, and how they'll work out, but they're about our destiny. They're about our destiny. I'd love to hear young people saying: God's given me a dream. I have a dream in my heart. I've a dream of what my life could be. Listen, without that dream, you're all over the place. Without that dream, you're drifting. You're like a boat in a storm with no rudder. It's a horrible thing, you just can't go anywhere. You just go with the crowd, go with the flow.
So this dream he had was a dream of impacting a nation in his generation. The way the dream worked out was this - we'll see how it worked out. How it worked was this - He rose to become probably the greatest financial manager of a nation that the world has ever seen. He rose up, and in the midst of a crisis, a financial collapse - the Bible tells us in the time of Joseph, money totally collapsed. There was a financial collapse in the world, beyond what we've ever seen. Everything collapsed; and in the middle of it, God gave him the keys how to transfer wealth, and make his boss the wealthiest man in the world in that time. Now how about that - and he was 17 when he got the dream. How many 17 year olds have we got here? At least 17 hands are up. Okay, the rest are all younger than that. That's okay, [laughs] so it was time we had some dreams then isn't it?
But what God didn't tell him - and this is the tricky bit of the things of God, because He doesn't always tell you what's going to come up on the way to get to the dream being fulfilled, and you've just got to learn how to trust Him. I want to share with you a few lessons that Joseph had to learn in prison; and prison is a place of containment, confinement, so when God gave him a dream of being a ruler, and his family all coming and bowing down, what God didn't tell him was how he was going to get there. He didn't tell him about the injustice. He didn't tell him about the bad treatment, He didn't tell him how he'd be sold as a slave, He didn't tell him how he'd be betrayed. He didn't tell him how he'd end up in prison - didn't tell him any of that. God leaves all that stuff out, have you noticed?
If you've been walking with the guy, you'll find He leaves out all that stuff. He leaves out the details of how He's going to get you, where He's going to get you. You've got to actually trust Him on the way, that whatever's going on in your life, it's an opportunity for you to learn and grow. So we're going to look at his time in prison. Here it is, we'll pick it up in Genesis 39: and the master, when He heard these words - Verse 19 - when the master heard these words which his wife spoke, saying: this is what Joseph did, his anger was aroused. So the boss, the master took him, put him in a prison, a place where the king's prisoners were confined, so it wasn't just an ordinary prison. It's a place where the worst criminals are put, and confined him in the prison.
The Bible says: he was bound with chains on his feet, and it says but! - ha, ha - so he's in a prison BUT, God was with him. That's the thing that makes the difference. God was with Joseph. God showed him mercy, because God's a merciful God. God gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison, and the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners who were in the prison; whatever they did there, it was his doing. In other words, even when he was in the prison, he ends up in charge of the prison, and that's pretty good isn't it aye? Especially knowing what he was challenged with.