For four years Ogechi had prayed for a promotion. She was an accounts officer with a logistics company on Trans-Amadi in Port Harcourt, and she was good at her job: quick with figures, reliable with deadlines, liked by the drivers who brought their receipts to her desk. Every January she wrote the same request in her prayer journal. Every crossover night she shouted the same declaration. Her WhatsApp status the previous New Year had read, in gold letters on a purple background, My season of lifting has come.
In March the finance manager resigned. He had secured a visa to Canada and gave two weeks’ notice. On the Friday he left, the managing director called Ogechi into his office and asked her to act as finance manager while the company decided what to do. She drove home along the Aba Road singing.
Within two months she was drowning. The half-year accounts were due, and she had never prepared consolidated statements; her old boss had always done that part. The company had installed a new accounting system the year before, and she had skipped most of the training sessions because the reporting module was “not her job”. The external auditors began sending queries she did not know how to answer. Under the pressure she snapped at two junior staff in front of the whole office, and when she found an error in her own figures she quietly adjusted it rather than reporting it.
At the board meeting in June, the auditors flagged the error. The managing director was kind but firm. He brought in an experienced consultant to finish the accounts and asked Ogechi to return to her previous role “for now”. She sat in her car in the company car park for nearly an hour afterwards, crying with the engine running and the air conditioning on full.
“Pastor,” she told me later, “God opened the door I had been praying about for four years. And I could not walk through it.”
Then she said the sentence that has stayed with me. “I spent four years asking for the position. I did not spend any of them preparing for it.” She had registered for her professional exams three times and never once sat for them.
When the door opens before you are ready
Opportunity has a way of revealing what was there all along. A promotion exposes gaps in skill that were hidden while someone else carried the harder parts of the work. A platform exposes weaknesses of character that were tolerable in obscurity. A marriage reveals selfishness that single life never tested. A leadership role uncovers how a person handles pressure, criticism and power. The opportunity does not create the weakness. It simply turns on the light.
That can be a painful experience, and I want to say at the start that it need not be a final one. Ogechi’s story did not end in the car park. But it does teach us something that Scripture says repeatedly: there is a quiet work of preparation that comes before greater responsibility, and neglecting it has consequences.
This teaching is about that quiet work. It concerns the learning, skill and character formation that make a person ready to carry what God may entrust to them. And it also includes a warning, because there is a popular way of talking about delay that can do real damage. Not every waiting period is a divine test with a guaranteed reward at the end. We will come to that.
Twelve years old, and asking questions
Luke gives us the only story we have of Jesus between His infancy and His baptism. Joseph and Mary had taken Him to Jerusalem for the Passover when He was twelve. On the journey home they discovered He was missing, and after three anxious days they found Him in the temple:
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Notice first what Jesus was doing in the temple. He was “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.” The doctors were the teachers of the law. The Son of God, at twelve, was listening to them and asking questions. Luke tells us that everyone was “astonished at his understanding and answers,” so His questions were not empty. But His posture was that of a learner. He took His place among those who knew the Scriptures and engaged with them.
Then notice His answer to Mary: “wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Already, at twelve, Jesus knew who He was and whose He was. His sense of identity and purpose was clear. And yet what happened next is astonishing. “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.”
He knew His Father’s business. He went home to Nazareth anyway. And there He stayed for roughly eighteen more years. Luke later tells us that “Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age” when His public ministry began (Luke 3:23). When He returned to preach in Nazareth, the townspeople asked, “Is not this the carpenter?” (Mark 6:3). That is what they knew Him as. A craftsman. A man who had worked with His hands among them for years.
We should handle this carefully. Jesus was fully God, and He did not become more divine in Nazareth. But He was also fully human, and His humanity was real. Luke says that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” The writer of Hebrews says something even more striking: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Jesus never sinned, so this learning was never a correction of wrongdoing. It was the real growth of a real human life, maturing through experience into the full shape of obedience His mission would require.
If the Son of God did not hurry past the years of growth, we should not imagine we can. Clarity of calling does not cancel the need for development. It is entirely possible to know what God has made you for and still need years of preparation before you are ready to carry it.
Notice also the four areas of growth in verse 52: wisdom, stature, favour with God, favour with man. Mind, body, spiritual life and relationships. Preparation is not only about acquiring a qualification. It concerns the whole person.
Not a novice
When Paul wrote to Timothy about the kind of men who should be appointed as overseers in the church, he gave a long list of qualifications. Almost all of them concern character: blameless, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, hospitable, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy, patient, not a brawler, not covetous, ruling his own household well. Only one item, “apt to teach”, is really about ability. Then Paul adds this:
Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
The word translated novice is neophytos, from which we get neophyte. It means, literally, newly planted. Paul is using an image from the garden. A seedling may be healthy and vigorous, but it has not yet put down deep roots. Put too much weight on it too early and it will snap.
What is the danger Paul names? “Lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.” Sincere interpreters understand that last phrase in two main ways. Some take it to mean the same judgement that fell on the devil, whose own downfall is often connected with pride. Others take it to mean the accusation and reproach that the devil brings against a leader who has fallen. Either way, the mechanism is clear. Responsibility given too early can inflate a person faster than their character can carry it. Prominence feeds pride, and pride goes before a fall.
Paul says something similar about deacons: “let these also first be proved; then let them use the office” (1 Timothy 3:10). And later he warns Timothy, “Lay hands suddenly on no man” (1 Timothy 5:22). The church is to be slow to put people forward, because gifting can run ahead of maturity.
This principle reaches far beyond church office. It applies to the young man who is given a large contract before he has learned to manage small ones. It applies to the singer whose video goes viral before she has learned to handle praise. It applies to the new believer with a striking testimony who is put on every platform within six months. In each case the gift is real. The roots are shallow. And the weight of the opportunity can do serious harm.
Notice too that verse 7 asks for “a good report of them which are without.” Preparation includes the ordinary reputation a person builds over time among neighbours, colleagues and business contacts. That cannot be manufactured quickly. It grows through years of keeping your word.
PunchlineAn opportunity does not create a weakness. It turns on the light. The quiet work of preparation is how we make sure that what the light reveals can bear the weight.
A vessel prepared unto every good work
In his second letter to Timothy, written near the end of his life, Paul uses a different image:
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Paul pictures a great house. In a wealthy home in the Roman world there would be many kinds of vessels: gold and silver ones for honoured use at the table, wood and clay ones for the kitchen, storage and waste. The context tells us what Paul has in mind. He has just named two false teachers, Hymenaeus and Philetus, whose words were spreading “as doth a canker” (2 Timothy 2:17). The church, like a great house, contains people of different kinds. Timothy is to separate himself from what is corrupting.
“If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.” Look at the sequence of words. Sanctified: set apart. Meet for the master’s use: useful, fit for the owner’s purposes. Prepared unto every good work: made ready in advance, so that when the master needs the vessel, it is available.
That last phrase is the heart of our subject. A vessel is prepared before the meal, not during it. The master does not stop in the middle of serving guests to wash the dish. It is ready because someone did the work beforehand.
What does that preparation involve? Verse 22 tells us. “Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Youthful lusts certainly includes sexual temptation, but the following verses suggest a wider meaning. Paul goes on to warn against foolish questions that “gender strifes” and says “the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient” (2 Timothy 2:23-24). The passions of youth include impatience, quarrelsomeness, the love of argument and the hunger to be noticed. Those are exactly the things that tend to surface when an opportunity arrives.
We must be clear about grace here. We do not make ourselves acceptable to God by self-improvement. Every believer is already accepted in Christ and already a son or daughter in the Father’s house. But Paul is talking about usefulness, and usefulness involves our cooperation with the Spirit’s work. God sanctifies us; we also flee and follow. Notice the last phrase, too: “with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” Preparation is not a solitary project. We grow in company.
Sharpening the axe
Not all preparation is moral. Some of it is simply competence. The Preacher puts it in a memorable picture:
If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.
A man with a blunt axe can still cut wood. He just has to swing harder, sweat more and take much longer. The wise man stops and sharpens the edge. It feels like lost time while he is doing it, because no trees are falling. But it makes everything that follows more effective.
Many believers are trying to cut down trees with blunt axes. They want greater responsibility, but they have not developed the skills the responsibility requires. They are praying for a business breakthrough but have never learned basic bookkeeping. They want to lead worship but have not practised their instrument. They long to preach but have not studied the Scriptures with care. Paul told Timothy, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed” (2 Timothy 2:15). The workman who is not ashamed is the one who has learned his craft.
Proverbs offers a related principle:
Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house.
Prepare the fields first, then build the house. In an agricultural society, a man who built a fine house before his fields were producing would soon find himself with a beautiful home and nothing to eat. Get the foundation of provision in order first. Then expand. The order matters.
As a Pentecostal, I believe deeply in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. I have seen God use people far beyond their natural ability. But anointing does not replace competence. The first person in Scripture said to be “filled with the spirit of God” was Bezalel, and the verse goes on, “in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship” (Exodus 31:3). The Spirit’s filling showed itself in skilled craftsmanship. Spiritual power and practical skill belong together.
“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings” (Proverbs 22:29). That is a general principle of wisdom, not an unconditional promise. But diligence does tend to open doors, and when it does, the diligent person is ready.
Not every delay is a test
NuggetNow I need to add an important caution, because there is a way of teaching about preparation that becomes cruel.
You have probably heard sermons that treat every delay as a divine test with a predictable outcome. Joseph went from the pit to Potiphar’s house to prison to the palace, the argument goes, so your setback is simply God preparing you for promotion. Hold on, and the palace is coming. Some people find that comforting for a while. But it can do real harm.
It is true that Scripture interprets Joseph’s delay as a time of testing. The psalmist says that God sent him ahead, that “his feet they hurt with fetters,” and that this lasted “until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him” (Psalm 105:18-19). God was at work in those years. But we know that because Scripture tells us the end of the story and explains it. We are not told that every believer’s delay will follow the same shape.
In fact, Scripture tells us plainly that some faithful people waited all their lives without seeing what they hoped for. Of the patriarchs, Hebrews says, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises” (Hebrews 11:13). And the Preacher observed that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise” (Ecclesiastes 9:11), because time and chance happen to everyone.
Some delays come because we are not yet ready. Some come because of injustice: favouritism in an office, a corrupt process, a superior who will not let a capable person rise. Some come through illness, economic collapse or simply the disorder of a fallen world. Some have no explanation we will ever be given. To tell a person in any of those situations that their delay is definitely a test, and that the promotion is definitely on its way, is to promise what God has not promised. And when the palace does not come, they may conclude that they failed the test or that God lied.
There is also an opposite error: assuming that every delay must be your own fault. Ogechi’s delay was partly her own doing. But a woman passed over three times because of tribal favouritism should not torment herself with the thought that she is simply not prepared enough. Some situations need courage to confront, or wisdom to leave, rather than more self-examination.
So why prepare at all, if there is no guaranteed reward? Because preparation is good stewardship of what God has given. Skill honours Him. Character blesses everyone around us. Knowledge equips us to serve. A sharpened axe is a better axe whether or not a forest ever comes your way. We prepare not to put God under obligation, but because faithfulness in the present is right in itself. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10).
When you find yourself in over your head
What should you do if, like Ogechi, an opportunity has already arrived and revealed that you are not ready?
Solomon gives us a beautiful example. When he became king after David, he was young and inexperienced, and the responsibility overwhelmed him. When God appeared to him in a dream and invited him to ask for anything, he said:
And now, O LORD my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
“I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in.” There is no pretence in that prayer. Solomon does not claim to be ready. He admits the gap between the responsibility and his capacity, and he asks for what he needs. God was pleased with that request and gave him wisdom.
The first step, then, is honesty. Admit the gap to God and, where appropriate, to the people affected. Ogechi’s greatest mistake was not her lack of skill. It was hiding an error to protect her position. Concealment turns a gap in preparation into a problem of integrity.
The second step is to ask for help. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not” (James 1:5). God does not scold you for asking. Ask people too. Find someone who has done the work before and learn from them.
The third step, sometimes, is to step back without shame. If the responsibility is genuinely beyond you for now, it is wiser to say so than to damage people and organisations by holding on. Stepping back from a role is not stepping back from God’s purpose. Your identity was never located in the position. You were a beloved child of God before the promotion and you are one after it.
And the fourth step is to begin the preparation you neglected. Not in a frenzy of shame, but steadily. Enrol in the course. Learn the system. Ask a mature friend to tell you honestly how you come across under pressure. Ask the Holy Spirit to work on the impatience or pride the opportunity exposed. God’s grace is not only forgiving. It is also training. Paul says the grace of God teaches us (Titus 2:12).
PunchlineOgechi did not get the finance manager’s job back. The company hired an experienced manager from Lagos that September. That was hard for her, and I will not pretend it was not.
But something had shifted in the car park. The following week she went to the managing director and told him about the figure she had adjusted. He was quiet for a moment, then thanked her for her honesty. She registered for her professional exams a fourth time, and this time she sat them. It took her two years and one failed paper to qualify. She asked the new finance manager to teach her the consolidation process, and he did, patiently, over many evenings. An older colleague, a woman in her sixties who had worked in the industry for decades, agreed to meet her once a month and tell her honestly how she was handling her team.
Three years after that board meeting, Ogechi is a deputy finance manager in the same company. She is not yet the manager. She may be one day, there or elsewhere, or she may not.
When I asked her recently whether she was still waiting for the promotion, she smiled. “I used to think the preparation was for the position,” she said. “Now I think a lot of it was for me. If the door opens again, I will be ready. If it does not, I am still a better accountant and a kinder woman than I was.”
Perhaps you are asking God for a door. Keep asking. But use the waiting well. Sharpen the axe. Prepare the field. Let God make you a vessel ready for every good work, so that when He calls, you can answer.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Has an opportunity ever revealed a gap in your preparation? What did it show you?
- What does Jesus’ willingness to return to Nazareth and grow there teach you about your own season of development?
- Which area of growth from Luke 2:52 (wisdom, stature, favour with God, favour with man) most needs your attention right now?
- Have you been told, or told yourself, that a particular delay is definitely a test with a guaranteed ending? How does this teaching change the way you see it?
- What is one “blunt axe” in your life that you could begin sharpening this month?
This Week
Choose one responsibility you hope to carry in the future, whether at work, in ministry or at home. On a sheet of paper, write down three skills and two qualities of character it would require. Beside each, honestly rate your present readiness. Then choose one skill and one quality and take a concrete step this week: register for the course, book the session with a mentor, read the first chapter of the book, or ask a trusted friend for honest feedback. Pray Solomon’s prayer from 1 Kings 3:9 over your list each morning.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that my worth rests in Your love and not in any position I hold. I confess that I have sometimes asked for opportunities I was not preparing to carry. Thank You for the example of Jesus, who grew in wisdom and stature and was content to wait in Nazareth until His time had come. Give me a learner’s heart. Help me to sharpen my axe, to prepare my field, and to flee whatever would make me unfit for Your use. Where I find myself in over my head, give me the humility to admit it and the wisdom to ask for help. Make me a vessel prepared for every good work, and let me be faithful in the little things You have already placed in my hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.