It is God's way to place His kings in various kinds of imprisoning circumstances. He shuts us up so we cannot come forth. We do not understand the reason for such confinement, especially after we, like Joseph, have had visions of our role of rulership in the Kingdom of God.

We cannot break out of God's prison without breaking God's law. We are obligated to remain where we are and pray for deliverance. Meanwhile, a change takes place in our soul. We pass from self-rule to Christ's rule. In our patience we possess our souls by handing over the reins of our life to Christ.

Separation from self-rule is very hard to achieve. It is God alone who performs the separation within us. Great patience on our part is necessary because self-rule is exceedingly difficult to kill.

God will permit no member of the royal priesthood to be guided by his own self-rule. There only is one legitimate will in the universe, and that is the will of God. Every member of the Kingdom of God lives, moves, and has his being according to the will of God. Those who are self-ruled have no part in the royal priesthood.

God's prisons prevent us from moving forward in our own wisdom and strength. We are forced to wait, wait, wait on God. The waiting kills our self-rule and encourages the development of Christ's rule in us. It is an intense stretching of us, but such waiting is necessary if we are to be trusted with the powers of the age to come.

God never shall give His glory to another. Being in God's prison brings us into oneness with God. We become part of Him. Then, when He give us His glory, He in reality is giving it to Himself.

Deferred hope. God gave Abraham the hope of having a multitude of descendants, and also that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan. Abraham had to wait a quarter of a century before his first son was born, and another four hundred years before his descendants were able to enter Canaan.

We give mental assent to the patience of Abraham until God does something similar to us. Then the suffering of such delay enables us to grasp some measure of what Abraham, Joseph, the Lord Jesus, and other saints have endured. The delay is not too painful until the hope is something that one desires with fervency. Then the delay becomes a cross on which one writhes year after year.

Persisting in patience concerning some intensely-desired object slays our self-rule. The temptation is to plan how to get what we want apart from waiting on the Lord, or to turn aside to something else in our lusts or self-pity, or to grow angry at God for promising us something and then not giving it to us.

Sometimes we have to wait many years. Walking in deferred hope is a grueling experience, but necessary if we are to be separated from self-rule.

Every member of the royal priesthood knows the cross of deferred hope.

To be continued.