Although I may have no intention of putting you in a dungeon and although you may have no intention of putting me in a dungeon, what actually happens is that we put one another into a dungeon. When you were married, did you intend to put your wife into a dungeon? Surely you had no such intention. But this is just what you have done. Unintentionally and unconsciously, we put others into a dungeon. My children have done this to me. Sometimes they tell me how much they love me, but within myself I say, "Your love puts me into a dungeon." Nevertheless, we need to say, "Hallelujah for the dungeon! Although I have been here for ten years, I need to stay another two years." Again I say, do not drop out of the dungeon. Stay there and stay there gloriously, with praises to the Lord, not with the gnashing of teeth.

Madame Guyon was one who could praise the Lord in her dungeon. She even wrote a poem in which she likened herself to a bird in a cage. Here is the first stanza:

A little bird I am,
Shut from the fields of air,
And in my cage I sit and sing
To Him who placed me there;
Well pleased a prisoner to be,
Because, my God, it pleaseth Thee.

Madame Guyon grew to love her cage, which was her dungeon.

If Joseph had not stayed in the dungeon for twelve years, he would not have been qualified to rule over the land of Egypt. For this, he had to be thirty years of age. Those twelve years in the dungeon accomplished a great deal for him, not through objective education, but through subjective suffering and discipline. Be patient; eventually you will be qualified to rule. But in order to be qualified, you need to stay in the dungeon for another period of time.