My prayer over the last year has been simple — God, mature me. But sometimes the simple prayers are the most dangerous.

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The truth is that God wants all of us to grow. Maturity is one of his purposes for our lives. Hebrews 6:1 tells us to “...press on to maturity.” God intends for us to continually pursue spiritual growth so that we may “be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29).

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For God to mature us, we have to confront the things that are holding us back and hindering our growth. Are we getting better or worse? Are we improving and developing or are we stuck?

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Maturity is not about age, appearance, or accolades. It comes from using God’s Word as a mirror so we can step into everything God has created us to be. I’m discovering that maturing is a messy process. It’s not linear — there are ups and downs and steps forward and backward. But Jesus doesn’t call the ready, he calls the willing. Are we willing to mature?

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Joseph is a great case study in maturity. I’ve always been drawn to this story because we get to watch Joseph become a man of God right before our eyes. His story is real and relatable. His life is the making of a leader, and often, the making of a leader looks like the breaking of a leader.

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Joseph’s story begins like many of ours. We see him in an interesting stage of life, going from childhood into adolescence. An uncomfortable but necessary time of transition. At seventeen years old, there’s nothing really bad about Joseph, but he’s certainly a bit immature.

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One night, Joseph had a dream from God. He saw eleven sheaves of wheat bowing down to him. Using his gift of interpreting dreams, he went to tell his brothers that they would one day be bowing down to him. His brothers, who already hated him, decided to take matters into their own hands. They threw Joseph into a cistern and watched as he was taken away to Egypt.

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As we watch Joseph’s story unfold, there are four marks of maturity we can apply to our lives.

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1. Mature me knows how to master my mouth.

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Immature people have no control over their tongue. When Joseph opened his mouth to share his dream, it got him into trouble.

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Just like the doctor tells us to stick out our tongues to check our health, God checks our spiritual health the same way.

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James 3 gives us several illustrations regarding the tongue, calling it a bridle to a horse, an udder to a ship, and a spark to a fire. James 3:8 says, “No one can tame the tongue. It is an uncontrollable evil filled with deadly poison.”

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Every single day, we speak enough words to fill a book. We have to pause and evaluate what kind of book we are writing.

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Sometimes it's our mouths that put us in a pit. Asking God to mature us means mastering our mouths.

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2. Mature me chooses right over easy.

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Joseph’s journey to Egypt looks terrible on the surface, but underneath, God was using the suffering and pain to mature Joseph so God could accomplish his purpose.

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As the story goes on, Joseph ended up at the house of a man named Potiphar. Potiphar was a powerful, affluent man who saw the favor on Joseph’s life and decided to put Joseph in command of his household.

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While Joseph found favor with Potiphar, he also found favor with Potiphar’s wife. Genesis 39:6-7 says, “Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’”

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Overcoming temptation is choosing the right thing over the easy thing — it’s learning to mature past our pleasure. How much different would our lives look if we decided to stop giving into our flesh?

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We have to be careful that our gifting does not take us to places our character can’t keep us. Immaturity defeats us slowly as we choose short-term pleasure over long-term satisfaction, destroying our destiny one compromise at a time. Our aim is to be people of character, not compromise.

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It would have been easy for Joseph to give in and appease Potiphar’s wife, but maturity is choosing purity over pleasure. Choosing purity always produces security — it’s powerful to walk with no secrets or skeletons in our closet. Maturity runs in the opposite direction of temptation, choosing right over easy.

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3. Mature me is positive under pressure.

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The question isn’t whether we will or won’t face troubles, it’s about the way we respond.

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Joseph’s decision to refuse Potiphar’s wife landed him in prison. He was sent to the wrong place for doing the right thing, but the Bible says that God was with him. Joseph found favor in the eyes of the prison warden and was put in charge of everyone else who was imprisoned.

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This is when he met two men, the cupbearer and the baker, who were in prison because they had offended Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. One night, they both had dreams they couldn’t understand. Joseph offered to interpret their dreams with one request: that they would not forget about him.

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Eventually, the cupbearer returned to his position under Pharaoh. After two full years passed, Pharaoh shared that he had a dream he couldn’t comprehend, and the cupbearer remembered Joseph. Joseph was called to interpret Pharaoh’s dream and was promoted to number two over all of Egypt. God had been preparing Joseph in private, and now he was being promoted in public.

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Maturity looks for opportunities to serve — if we can’t serve when no one is watching, we will never be ready when everyone is paying attention.

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At this point in the story, decades of Joseph’s life have gone by. Years of struggle, grief, hardship, and betrayal. At a quick glance, his life looks unfair and unjust, but beneath the surface is the making of a mature leader.

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4. Mature me is self-aware but not self-absorbed.

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Famine fell across the land, and Joseph’s brothers made their way to Egypt to acquire grain, not realizing that Joseph had been promoted to governor.

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When Joseph’s brothers fell at his feet to make their request, it was the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream at seventeen years old. As they bowed, they did not recognize that they were kneeling before their brother. Some of us will become unrecognizable to those around us — not because we changed our style but because we matured in the Lord.

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Through tears, Joseph revealed himself to them, telling them that even though their actions sold him to Egypt, it was really God who sent him. “Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come close to me.’ When they had done so, he said, ‘I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.’”

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Joseph had matured enough to recognize that he was not sold, he was sent.

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Immaturity says I’m sold, maturity says I’m sent. Immaturity says it was an accident, maturity says it was providence. Immaturity says it was rejection, maturity says it was protection. Immaturity says I’ll sit, maturity says I’ll serve.

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There is no such thing as an overnight success, only an over time success. A God-dream is never about us — it’s about God and other people. As we faithfully walk the journey God has laid before us, we can trust that he is maturing us in the process.