Qualifications for God's Promotion

Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:10

There are three important steps towards receiving your next promotion from the Lord. 

First, you must have a humble heart for God to promote you. In Isaiah 66:2 God says, “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” The only way to go up in God is to go down. We must learn to humble ourselves before the Lord and others. Without this posture, we will not find promotion from God our Father.  

Second, promotion from God only comes to us when we have been faithful where we are. We must attend to all that is under our present responsibility before the Lord trusts us with more. Jesus said, “He who is faithful with little will be faithful with much.” In Christ’s parable of the talents, the manager told his investors who were faithful that he was giving them more money to steward since they had invested wisely with smaller amounts.  

Third, God promotes us in His perfect time. Do you remember the story of Joseph? God gave him dreams that his family would one day bow down to him, but his jealous brothers sold him into slavery and was taken to Egypt. He suffered greatly and was falsely accused. He ended up in prison where he interpreted the dreams of two of the Pharaoh’s officers who were also incarcerated. Joseph predicted that they would both return to Pharaoh where one would be reinstated to his royal position and the other would be executed.

Joseph asked the man whose dream had a favorable interpretation to remember him when he reported to Pharaoh. But two years passed. At this time, Pharaoh had two dreams and the officer finally told him about Joseph and his ability to interpret dreams. As a result, Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and was promoted to second in command of the nation of Egypt.  Later his family did bow before him and he was able to help the nation of Egypt during a great famine.  

But this all happened in God’s perfect timing. It actually took 13 years from the time he was sold into slavery till his promotion in Egypt. It took time, but God was faithful. We too may need to wait for God’s promotion but if we are humble and faithful and wait on the Lord’s timing, we will experience promotion from the hand of Jesus.     

Let’s humble ourselves before God and others, let’s be faithful with all that we are responsible for and let’s surrender to the Lord and his timing. If we do these things, God will promote us and enable us to be a greater blessing to others.