There are times in life when opportunities seem to have passed us by. You’ve done the right things while travelling the hard road, and yet still … things don’t seem to go your way. What is going on?   A Missed Opportunity? We all have hopes and dreams – and you know how it goes. They bubble away in our hearts, we do a lot of day–dreaming about our dreams, we paint the picture, imagine what it will be like when our dream is realised. And little by little things seem to be heading in the right direction, and then things take a turn for the worse. It’s in that moment, that I’d like to spend some time with you today, because those moments are as difficult as they come. I was in one of those places recently, it was a ministry thing, a relationship we were working on with another ministry organisation. It’s something we’d put quite a lot of effort into and we’d hoped that it would go really well, and then on the mourning, I was preparing today’s message in fact, things took a turn for the worse. The details aren’t important, but you should know that we all go through this from time to time. I certainly do and I know you’ve been there too, right? And we’re going to find ourselves in that moment again one day. Over the last week on the program/ over the last few weeks on the program we’ve been taking a look at how to make sure that we don’t miss God’s opportunities. And we’ve been doing that by travelling a way along the path with young Joseph, the son of Jacob or Israel as he became known, in the Old Testament. Because Joseph had more than enough reasons to give up on God’s opportunities. Love by his father, his brothers turned against him and plotted to kill him because he was dad’s favourite. Eventually they sold him into slavery, whence he was shipped to Egypt, sold to one of Pharaoh’s officials Potiphar and made a slave. He did well at that and Potiphar put Joseph in charge of his whole household, until Potiphar’s wife, who fancied young Joseph, wrongly accused him of making improper advances, so Joseph was thrown into jail. He did well there too, so much so that the jailer put him in charge of the prison. And it’s here in prison that we pick up the story, because it’s here, languishing in an Egyptian jail that Joseph has one of those moments – a very long moment actually – where it appears that his opportunity of getting out of jail passes him by. Let’s have a listen to what happened –it comes from Genesis Chapter 40 in the Old Testament. Some time after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker offended their lord the king of Egypt. Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he waited on them; and they continued for some time in custody. One night they both dreamed—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison—each his own dream, and each dream with its own meaning. When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. So he asked Pharaoh’s officers, who were with him in custody in his master’s house, “Why are your faces downcast today?” They said to him, “We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” And Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.” So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, “In my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine there were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms came out and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” Then Joseph said to him, “This is its interpretation: the three branches are three days; within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; and you shall place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer. But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon.” When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favourable, he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream: there were three cake baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating it out of the basket on my head.” And Joseph answered, “This is its interpretation: the three baskets are three days; within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from you! —and hang you on a pole; and the birds will eat the flesh from you.” On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants, and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. He restored the chief cupbearer to his cup–bearing, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand; but the chief baker he hanged, just as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. Not only did the chief cupbearer forget him, it was actually another two years before he remembered Joseph and things started to happen. Two years is a long time even when you’re having fun. Two years in prison, is unimaginable. I can’t imagine spending one night in jail. But two more years in prison when you’re there because you’ve been wrongly accused, and because before that your brothers turned against you and sold you into slavery and shipped you to a foreign land … I mean, come on – put yourself in Joseph’s shoes. How do you feel? Everything’s piling up against you. Your family’s turned against you. Your master has turned against you because his wife lied about you – she was the one with evil things in her heart, Joseph was the one who’d done the right thing – yet here he was in prison. And now … now you do this wretched cupbearer a favour, I mean God’s given you this amazing spiritual insight and gift of interpreting this dream – God’s here right? So let me ask you – would you be tempted to give up on God in those two years?   A Step of Faith I have a confession to make, I hate heights. I remember once standing on top of a 30-metre tower when I was training to become an officer in the Australian Army – it was a water jump on an obstacle course. The idea was simple, climb the tower and jump into the water. Thirty metres doesn’t sound an awful lot does it? I can cover one meter in a single step. Easy. 30 metres, not that much. I was a little nervous as I queued that day at the bottom of the tower, watching my mates climb up and jump. But as I headed up the tower, I became more and more fearful. By the time I stood on top of the tower, looking down, I was completely petrified. This was so unnatural – I still remember looking down and my stomach was in a knot. All I wanted to do was run. I couldn't of course. Everybody else so far had taken the jump, apparently fearlessly. Pier group pressure was overwhelming … so I jumped. The fall seemed to take forever. Of course, not a single person died that day or was injured that day. We all survived to tell the tale. Leaps of faith can be scary can’t they? And sometimes God comes along and gives us an opportunity that is just as scary. Perhaps you’ve felt a call in your heart to go and do something and the fear of failure has paralysed you. Or maybe you’ve been hit over the head by failure so many times that you’ve started believing that failures is your default mode of operat...

Released on 6 Feb 2022