Often, we aspire to do great things in our lives, maybe even dream of being great leaders like Joseph dreamed in Genesis. If only God would just magically gift us that greatness… just like He did to Joseph.

Joseph’s story in the Bible intrigues me very much. Pastors and Bible teachers often talk about how he is a leader and how he did the right thing, but not many talk about how Joseph developed from a cocky oblivious youth into an astute leader. While God may have given a young Joseph the dream about being the leader over all his brothers, it took years of development and practice to become that leader.

From my perspective I see different stages of Joseph’s development; a childhood, a reality check, a peroid of confident in competence, doing more with less, proficiency. While there are some key moments in Joseph’s life that defined how things would turn out, the choices that defined those key moments required years of work experience to shape.

Yes, it does take God putting us in the right place at the right time to rise to greatness, but how have we prepared to rise to the occasion of that greatness?