The Fire: Where Great Men are built.

  On one of those days, I was scrolling through the Instagram page of a successful Christian entrepreneur and that experience raised a lot of questions in my mind.

• Am I the only one visible to enemies?
• This man seems to be doing just fine without stress, maybe he doesn't have attacks or haters.
• Can't I just achieve my goals in peace?
• When will these battles end?

I even went ahead to rant to my mentor about it, I was fed up. He then said something that changed my mentality.

He said, "You only see this man's success but did he tell you what he had to go through and the prices he had to pay before he reached where he is today?" Success does not come overnight. Then it hit me.

If you make the mistake of comparing someone's finished product with your work in progress, you will leave your process of refining and you will never become a finished product of great value.

While you admire and aspire to be great like your role models, you must also take into account the price to be paid to achieve such a level of greatness.

Now know this, the greater the glory, the greater the price.

You are not the first to go through process and you will not be the last. You must go through the fire like others if you truly want to succeed.

        The Fire is the room of process and refining. The fire builds character for greatness. Without character, you can never go far. Your gift will open doors for you but your character will keep them open.

If you fail to build character before glory, two things will happen in the long run: You will end up destroying everything you have laboured for or everything you have laboured for will stripe you of your greatest value.

Jumping stages can destroy you. Each stage of refining is supposed to prepare you to withstand the heat of the next stage. When you decide to bypass a stage because of impatience, you get burnt instead of refined.

God knows the glory He has set ahead of you, which is why He wants to build you to the capacity of maintaining such glory.

Proverbs 10:22 - The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it. (KJV)

Greatness is not meant to hurt you but when you choose to bypass the right process of getting there, you get sorrow. If you must obtain glory, you must obtain it legally.

The wealth and greatness of some people have now become their biggest regret. Others end up worse than their former state because they decided to bypass their process of character-building. They went from grass to grace and grace to pit.

Don't despise the days of little beginnings. Don't despise your days of pain and trials. This fire is not meant to hurt you but to make you stronger.

If God had informed Joseph of the fire he would go through after the glorious dream, he may have rejected the glory because when you fix your eye on the process, you will lose every strength to reach the finished line but when you fix your eye on the price, you receive strength to finish well.

        How would a man destined to lead Egypt, liberate his generation from poverty and feed the world fulfill destiny by remaining under the comfort of His father's roof and mother's arms? Comfort kills passion.

No doubt Joseph was the favourite child and last born at that time. He had a coat his brothers could only dream of and the support of both parents even when he was in the wrong. He might have also had some character issues being the over-pampered teenager that he was.

So what did God do? 😏

He decided to shake him up a little bit. He let him pass through the fire of refining.

Stage 1: God took Him out of his comfort zone into a strange land to fend for himself. Oh nooo.. poor Joseph 😂

And just like that, Joseph went from being served by servants in his father's house to being a slave in a strange land. He went from being the favourite one to an absolute nobody. He was scared, confused, treated poorly, lonely, and maybe angry but he still served God and his master faithfully.

Stage 2: He was faithful in the first stage of refining so God moved him to the next stage.

He became the head of the house and God granted him favour before Potiphar.

From a follower, he became a leader and a faithful one at that. He did not disappoint God. If you must be a good leader, you must be a good follower.

Stage 3: Now there comes stage three (the test) and satan thought to cut the journey of Joseph short by making him jump his process of refining. He gave him an easier route that would cost him his destiny. Sleeping with Potiphar's wife may have opened some doors of favour for him but that would also mean losing favour with God.

Now know this, your journey ends the day you forsake your guide. Every step you take with God will leave you going in circles like the children of Israel in the wilderness. their journey of 40 days became 40 years because of disobedience.

Thank God for Joseph, He had been strengthened from previous stages and did not fail to overcome this one too by the grace of God.

Stage 4: Joseph was framed and thrown into prison for refusing Potiphar's wife. You might want to ask; Joseph passed stage three so why receive a punishment instead of a reward?

Sometimes you have to take some steps backward to launch further forward. God works in mysterious ways.

The vessel to be used in elevating Joseph was in the prison (the king's cupbearer) and so God used what the enemy meant for evil for the good of Joseph.

In the prison, God also built Joseph in leadership and endurance. He was now trained in leadership for both the higher class and the lowest of classes.

Now know this, God opens doors of opportunities but what we do with them determines our outcomes. God brought Joseph before the cupbearer and he was wise enough to build strong connections by offering value with his God-given gift.

When God puts you in that space, don't be silent, add value.

Stage 5: God created an opportunity for Joseph's elevation and used the seeds he had sown for this glory.

God can do anything and break any protocol for your sake when you remain faithful to him.

He sent the cupbearer to prison, gave him a dream, used Joseph to interpret his dream and set him free to be at the right place and time to recommend Joseph. What a master planner. He makes a way where there seems to be no way.

In this stage, Joseph's patience was tried. Notice that the cupbearer did not remember Joseph until after 2 years when it was the appointed time for his liberation. Rather than complaining and sulking over being forgotten by the cupbearer, He fixed his eye on  God and remained faithful to Him.

Now know this, never put your trust in men but in God. People will surely disappoint you but God will never leave nor forsake you.

Stage 6: God granted Joseph favour before Pharaoh. Where had it been heard that a foreign slave was given a position of high authority in Egypt? No doubt nepotism existed in Pharoah court but the favour of God was stronger. He must have had his most trusted advisers and he could have given the responsibility to one of them and used Joseph as a puppet but no! He gave Joseph an instant promotion. All protocols and laws were broken in a minute because anything Pharoah says goes.

Now imagine if one of the wise men in Pharaoh's court got defensive about Joseph's qualification to hold such a position without knowing the sacrifices he had to pay and how much time he gave to nurturing his gift before he reached perfection. We would think such an official is not being fair but that is what many of us do while scrolling through social media, questioning the authenticity of the successes of people we know nothing about and judging their smiles. Even those who follow crooked means also paid prices and sacrificed something for their short-lived success. Their success might have come overnight but it also came with a price. They got it at the expense of their priceless peace.

Don't be distracted by the pain of your fire or the successes of others. Nothing good comes cheap or overnight.

Remember this, the most valuable gold in the showglass sitting so elegantly was once being heated in the fire.

Never despise your fire because, like the three Hebrew children, the fire is where you find God in His fullness. Don't pray to God to take away the fire, it is essential for your level of aspired greatness. instead, pray for grace to overcome the fire.

Isaiah 43:2 - When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. (KJV)