George Warnock preaches on the importance of continually identifying with God throughout life to truly know Him, experience His power, and share in His sufferings. He uses the story of Joseph to illustrate how embracing God's vision for our lives may lead to unexpected challenges and setbacks, but ultimately results in a glorious fulfillment beyond our imagination. Joseph's transformation from a dreamer of greatness to a vessel of mercy and compassion showcases the beauty of identifying with God's Way and allowing His purposes to unfold in our lives.

As we begin to identify with God's Way, then it is that the Word of God and the Truth of God begin to take on reality to those who seek to know Him. True we identify with the Lord when we receive Him, and Christian "baptism" is a mark of that identification. But that is just the beginning. From then on and throughout life there must be a continual identifying with Him if we hope to attain to the highest prize of all, of "knowing Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings." And as little by little we learn to walk with Him, so does the Word of God become more and more meaningful to us. Once the story of Joseph was just that, a beautiful story. But now it means more, because in small measure at least we have been able to identify. He had a vision... and we have a vision. He would like to see it fulfilled, but he soon learned that only God Himself can fulfill the vision that He has given. He does not give us the vision as an incentive to work on, but as a seed of truth to embrace and allow it to fulfill God's purpose in our lives. We find with the prophet that in eating of the Book, it is like honey in the mouth, but bitterness in the belly; and we wonder how a Word so sweet can become an experience so bitter. But as Joseph cherished the vision, the fulfillment of it became more and more distant and more and more impossible. Finally he discovers himself in a foreign land, completely cut off from the family that he saw in the vision--a prisoner and a slave rather than a king and a ruler. To try and figure out what might have gone wrong would only lead to further frustration, so he simply tries to forget it all. (Eventually when his first son is born he will call him, "God has caused me to forget.") He cannot deny what God showed him, but he will just lay it aside or put it in a bottle, seal it, and cast it upon the waters. And yet in and through it all God was consistently and without any intermission working out all the intricate details in Joseph's life that would eventuate in the vision being gloriously fulfilled, only on a much higher and loftier plane than Joseph ever imagined as a young lad who dreamed the dream. Gone were the thoughts of greatness. Gone the thought that some day I'm going to be somebody great, and all you boys are going to have to recognize it. Here was a man of the Way who in walking with God became a stranger in his own home, a byword among his own brothers, a dreamer whose dreams soon vanished when he was sold to the Ishmaelites and became a stranger in a foreign land. And so the vision of greatness was fulfilled in the perfection of God's order; but it was only fulfilled as Joseph found grace to identify with God's Way; and in so doing the dream itself was utterly transformed until it became a transforming experience in Joseph's own heart; and a vision of mercy, of deliverance, and of compassion for those who had mistreated him. The man of the Way, whose feet were hurt in fetters of brass, and whose soul was laid in iron, was recognized for what he was: the elect of God, marked with the mark of God and destined to become Zaphnathpaaneah, ...a name which signified to Pharaoh and the Egyptians: "A Saviour, or Sustainer of Life."