So if you're serving right now, and passionately making what's around you better, you've got the heart of a king, you've got the heart of Jesus. Here's the last thing you need to do. You need to learn that promotion comes from the Lord. There came a time it says when he got suddenly promoted. You look at Genesis, Chapter 41, and it tells - look at this - it said: so his advice was good in the eyes of Pharaoh - Verse 37 - in the eyes of his servants. The Pharaoh said to his servants: where can we find a guy like this, in whom is the spirit of God? And the Pharaoh said to Joseph: inasmuch as God showed you all this, there's no one as discerning and wise as you. You'll be over my house, all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the throne, will I be greater than you. See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.
Now you've got really get the picture of this. Egypt was the major military, economic power of the day. It was the leading nation in the world, and this guy goes overnight from the prison, to next to the king on the throne. Now you see God can promote you. God can step you up, and give favour upon your life, and bring you before important people. God can open the door to promote you. See, if God doesn't do it, you've got to do it yourself, and it's real hard if you do it yourself. It's easy if you let God promote you, and to let God promote you, learn the things you need to learn in the prison. That's how God promotes you.
So what happened was this: he became known because of the prophetic edge, and the favour of God. How did he have the favour of God on his life? He did the things I told you he did; and you know what? He put his whole heart into it. He just was quite an excellent person, and so people heard: here's a guy who's got a prophetic gift. Here's a guy who serves, here's a guy God's on his side. Everything he touches turns to gold. This kind of guy can help us - and he suddenly gets a door opened to him. So God can open doors of opportunity for you. Paul says: he prayed for doors of opportunity to be opened.
You want to become something with your life, why don't you do the things you need to do to succeed? Be great wouldn't it? Imagine looking back, and you remember tonight, and you remember all of the people sitting around you. Out of all of them, you were the one that somehow rose up and the other all say: oh, well God seems to have favoured that person. The answer is not so, that He favoured them. You just put into practice the things you needed to do, to position yourself, for God to promote you.
Throughout the Bible, God promoted people, promoted them, lifted them up, gave them all kinds of opportunities. God can do it. He can do it for you.
Why don't we just close our eyes right now. Father, we just thank you right now for your presence here, just get ready to pray - why don't we just thank you. Just close our eyes. Let's just open our hearts to the Lord right now. Maybe you're going through a difficult situation, difficult circumstance, difficult experience, a season of limitation. So your prison can just be a season where your activities are limited, what you can do is limited, maybe financial limitation, maybe a limitation just at school. That's a limitation to you, to some extent, because you're just contained, and confined within a learning environment for a few years of your life; and most people when they're at school, want to get out of school. Once they're out of school, they wish they'd been back there and learnt something while they were there; so while you're in school, it's the season of containment to learn something.