 How's everybody doing? Really? That's as good as you're gonna do today, right? It's summertime, baby, it's warm out. Got yard work to do, man. Hey, just real quick this summer, we got some great things planned. Next weekend is Memorial Day, but then come in June, we have Brother Abraham, who's gonna be with us on Father's Day. How many have never heard Brother Abraham from India? Raise your hand, you're in for a treat. Anna, go ahead and give this to me, thank you. Everybody, Anna Sorgi, thank you. And then in July, we have a couple community cookouts, Water Baptism, so if you've never been baptized, you can sign up for that. And Rita Springer, who's a fantastic matriarch worship leader, is gonna be with us. And so if you've never heard of Rita Springer, it's gonna be fun. August, we have Prophetic Presbytery. If you've never been a part of that, you're in for a treat. September is our anniversary. October is at the movies. And before you know it, snow is flying again. So don't get too warm. Hey, real quick, how many of you brought your Bibles? Raise your hand if you brought a Bible. It's gotta be like a real Bible, like a physical Bible. Raise your hand if you got a Bible. Okay, let's see, you keep your hand up and pastors don't count. So I'm looking for a guy. Where's the guy? Where's the guy? He's got a Bible. Where's the young man? That guy right there, yeah, you. I want you to come on up here. And where's this young? I'm gonna throw this at you, okay? So here's what we got out of the bookstore. Look at this. These say Arise Shine. And these are sweet 1980s style T-shirts. And we have them in the book table. And so this is for you because you brought your Bible. And where's my, let me see your Bible. What is this? How do you read that thing, bro? Look at that. It's like 0.215 microscopic font. Do you actually read this? Man, I'm 47 years old. Here you go, man. There's a little T-shirt. Give these guys some love. All right. And the rest of you bring your Bibles and buy a T-shirt. All right, turn with me in the Bible that you did bring to Genesis chapter 37. This morning is week number three of our Dreamers series. I'm excited about this message because we're gonna be looking at a young man who takes up more space in the book of Genesis than any other character. His name is Joseph. And so we're gonna be talking about Joseph the Dreamer. The story of Joseph takes 13 chapters out of 50 in the book of Genesis. That's more than Abraham. That's more than Noah. That's more than Isaac. That's more than Jacob. All of them actually combined. And there's a reason why I believe God goes into so much detail about the life, the story of Joseph, even more so than he does any other character in the book of beginnings. It's because what God includes in the first book of the Bible sets a pattern for what will unfold in the rest of the Bible. And the pattern that we find and the story that we find in the life of Joseph is actually all of our stories. And so I wanna, we're just gonna read 11 verses out of this story, but it will set the stage for the rest of the story. So look at verse number one, chapter 37. It says, Jacob lived in the land of his father, sojourning in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. And then it jumps right into Joseph. It says, Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flocks with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpa, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel or Jacob loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made for him a robe of many colors, but when his brother saw that their father loved him more than all of his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. Now Joseph had a dream and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, hear this dream that I've dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field and behold my sheaf arose and stood upright and behold your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf. His brother said to him, are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to rule over us? And so they hated him even more for his dream and his words. Do you see a progression? Verse number nine, it says then he dreamed another dream and he told it to his brothers and said, behold, I have dreamed yet another dream. Behold the sun, the moon, the eleven stars were bowing down to me. But when he told it to his fathers and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, what is this dream that you've dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves on the ground before you? And his brothers were jealous of him but his father kept these words in mind. Now, Joseph, it says, is the son of Jacob's old age. And Joseph grew up in a family that probably a lot of us in this room can relate to. A dysfunctional blended family. And like many families, mom and dad, you know, we raised kids, Jane and I raised three, they're in their 20s now. But you know, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you love your kids the same but you treat them differently. You know, your first child who's born, at least in most cases, when they're born, it's like, they're your guinea pig at parenting. So it's like you're figuring this thing out. Jane and I were 23 years old when we became parents and it's like, you wanna do everything right. It's like organic baby food. I mean, it's like, oh, does that have preservatives? Does that have sugar? Is that all natural? Like food processor, you know, you wanna do everything right. You know, you are very careful putting the car seat into the car. When they get older, you monitor how much screen time they have if they're gonna do a stayover or a sleepover at a kid's house you do an FBI background check on the family. You interview the kids, you take footprints, dental imprints of every child that interacts with your kids when they become teenagers, you know, driver's trainings like you're just super cautious about it. And their curfew is like 7.30 p.m. when they're 19. But by the time the baby of the family comes along they're eating Captain Crunch and drinking Mountain Dew out of the bottle. They're being babysat by Netflix. You don't care who they're running around with. They come home on a city bus at like 2 a.m. And you're not even sure they have teeth. Who cares about the dental records? FBI, I mean, you're just like, hey, hey, there you go. And all the kids are like, mom, dad, you treat them different. You spoil them, the baby of the family. Well, Joseph was one of the babies and there was a massive gap between him and the first wave of kids that Jacob had had. They're the older brothers and then there's these two younger ones. There's Joseph and Benjamin and they're the favorites. And out of those two, the favorite, the favorite is the firstborn of the two youngest ones. And that's Joseph. And the Bible says that it's obvious to everyone that he was daddy's favorite and dad dressed him even better than the rest of the kids. Everybody else was wearing clearance from Walmart clothes and Joseph has an Armani coat of many colors. Bomber jacket, that he bought in Chicago while he took Zilpa and whatever, took the other kids to Walmart to pick something off the car hard rack. And Joseph is 17 years old. He's a tattletale. You can tell he's given bad reports of the older brothers to dad and they don't like him. It says they can't speak peaceably of him. If you've ever had those interactions in your house where your kids can't mesh and can't say anything nice, we told our kids like, if you can't say anything nice to one another, don't say anything at all. That was the quietest day in our house ever. And this is what's going on in Joseph's family. And 17 years old, he's spoiled his dad's favorite and his brothers hate him. And the Bible says at 17 years old, he dreams a dream. It's not the, I watched the wrong movie last night or had too much pizza last night type of dream. This is a God dream where God downloads into his heart a dream, a dream from God's heart. You know, what you need to understand about dreams is that long before they were ever your dream, when it's a God dream, it started in God's heart over you. And then God shares it with you. I've had several significant dreams in my life that have been mile markers, little snapshots where God dropped something into my heart. And Joseph has one of those dreams. And in the dream, which he foolishly shares with his siblings, in those dreams, he's the one who's standing. Everybody else is bowing down and serving him. How many know that does not go over well in the pecking order of the family? And then he's so socially unaware that when he has another dream from God, another God dream, he shares that as well. And now it's like the escalation level in the family is just rising to an apex. And what we know about Joseph's life is eventually the brothers hate him so much that they're gonna throw him into a pit, sell him into slavery. Joseph's gonna end up being a slave in Potiphar's house, falsely accused of trying to rape Potiphar's wife. And because of that, he's gonna be thrown into prison. And while he's in prison, he's going to be forgotten about. And ultimately, he's going to be brought out of prison and the dream is going to come to pass. But long before the dream comes to pass, the dream is gonna take him through a process. And before you're too harsh and before you make too many judgments about a young, arrogant 17-year-old Joseph, you need to realize something that you and I are just like Joseph. You say, well, how am I like Joseph? Well, number one, you're highly favored by your father. The Bible says that God has bestowed grace upon grace that you and I, in the eyes of our heavenly father, we are the favorite. And you say, well, who's the favorite? Yes, God is the only being in the universe who is capable of having favorites every one of us and treating us. That's the way that our father relates to us as if we were the only one and as if we are his favorite. The second thing that we have in common with Joseph is that because we're favored, there is a unique grace on our lives. Romans chapter 12 says that God has given grace to each and every one of us. And you know what? There was a grace upon Joseph's life. Even though he was immature, he had leadership on the inside of him. He had problem solving on the inside of him. He had the ability to keep the end in mind at every stage of his life. We won't see that actually live out through Joseph until he's in the process, but it's in there. There's a leadership grace that when Pharaoh can't solve a problem, this young man is able to step in under the grace of God and provide a solution that actually doesn't just help them survive but actually helps Pharaoh and Egypt thrive. And just like Joseph, there's a grace on your life because when Jesus saves you, he bestowed the grace, the favor of the father upon you, but he's also deposited a grace and that grace is connected to the dream. But you see, just like Joseph, we're immature in our dreams. We're 17 spiritually in relationship to the father. In other words, when God finds us, we're all at a state of immaturity. 17 is kind of like that age where you feel like you're an adult, but you're really not. And if you're 17 in this room and you say, well, I'm an adult, it's like, well, you think you are until you hit 30 and realize how immature you were at 17. It's amazing how smart your parents get, the older you get. When you look back on it and go, wow, they kind of knew something, wow. But at 17, Joseph was immature and most of us, most of us have not lived out the fullness of God's dream, God's purpose, God's destiny for our lives yet. Which means we're still in a state of immaturity. We talk about it, we share it with people, we're excited about it, but it's really me-centric. That's what immaturity is, is it's me-centric. I see the world through the lens of me. Let's talk about me. Let's talk about I, enough about you. Let's talk about me again. And did I tell you about the dream that God gave me? About here, I was and there you were. It's just immaturity. And you know what, we're all at different stages of immaturity. Today on the church calendar is actually Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost Sunday is the celebration, first of all, of Acts chapter two, when God poured His Holy Spirit out upon His church. Tongues of fire, wind, rain. People, you hear the rain, by the way? Come on, Jesus, right here. Woo, I'm feeling it. Send the fire. But God poured His Holy Spirit out upon His church. People were gathered in the city from all over the world. They hear the commotion, they gather to the upper room, trying to figure out what's going on. Peter stands up on the balcony of the upper room and he says, these are not drunk, as you suppose. Something was happening in them that had the appearance of being drunk. So this is not a dignified church service. These are people losing their minds as they're being filled with the Holy Spirit. And then Peter, listen, Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost and he says, this, what you're seeing is that, which was prophesied by the prophet Joel. When he said hundreds of years ago that there will come a day in the last days when God will pour out His Holy Spirit upon all flesh and it says your sons and your daughters will prophesy and your old men will dream dreams. Do you know that as we celebrate Pentecost today as Christians, as the church, we're also celebrating a God who when He pours out His Spirit pours out dreams, pours out visions. God is a dream giver and a dream, listen, a dream is not just your imagination, processing information, it's God communicating something of His purpose and design for your life, depositing into your heart, into your imagination that once you've received it, you can't unknow. It's a time-release seed of eternity that's planted in the temporary in order to bring about your destiny within the context of your history. Buy the CD, rewind that, write that down. Because God puts a seed, a seed contains DNA that when it hits the right soil releases whatever it's supposed to produce. And a dream is a carrier of heavenly DNA, God's purpose and plan blueprint for your life that He puts into your life. Sometimes it's a physical dream, sometimes the way that we get a dream is our eyes are wide open, sometimes it's a scripture we read, a prophetic word, somebody speaks over our life, sometimes it's a season that produces an angst on the inside of us that drives us in the direction of our destiny and God's purpose for our life. But a dream is a gift from God. And so we're no different than Joseph. We're favored, there's grace, there's natural leadership on our lives and we're in a state of immaturity, but nonetheless we contain a dream. And what's interesting about Joseph's dream was even as he shared it, he had no idea that before he would ever see that dream come to fruition, the dream had to go through a process. Psalm 105 verse 17 says, God's sending man before them, talking about Israel, his name was Joseph, who was sold as a slave. And they heard his feet with fetters and he was laid in irons. Listen, as a prisoner, until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him. Until the time that it was full season for that dream to come to pass, before that happened, Joseph was constrained not by just change, but by the word and the word actually tested him. You know, when we get a word from God or we get a dream from God or a sense of purpose for our lives, oftentimes we think it's gonna happen right now. We just like, this is it. God's called me to do this. God's called me to be a missionary. God's called me to be a pastor. God's called me to change the world. And you know what? It actually might be God. I don't believe in telling people that's not from God. Because here's what I know. It's over the course of time. Fruit is either gonna bear out or people are gonna get bored. When it's a word from God, it will not let you go. When it's a word from you, you'll get over it quick. You'll get it over it as quick as the mullet in the 80s. But when it's a word from God, you won't get over it. And a word before it ever comes to pass will actually go through a process of testing. Every word of God does. Every word of God has to be a test. And Joseph goes through a test. So what happens is his brother's one day, Joseph is coming out to check on them. And as they see him, they say, here comes the dreamer. Here comes the dreamer. And they begin to conspire about taking Joseph out. They said, you know what? I'm tired of hearing about his dreams. I'm tired of hearing about how great he thinks he is. I'm tired of his arrogance. I'm tired of his good looks. I'm tired of how dad loves him. Tired of his coat. You know what we're gonna do? We just need to get rid of this guy. What are we gonna do? Here's what we do. We kill him. We take his coat. We tell dad that a wild animal tore him apart. We throw his body down into an old abandoned well that will serve as his grave. This is all as he's walking towards them. If it wasn't for his brother, Ruben, who had other plans, Ruben steps in and says, no, no, no, here's what we do. We'll take him, but we don't lay a hand on him. We don't hurt him. We throw him down into the well and we teach him a lesson, but we don't harm them. And the reason for that is because Ruben's desire in chapter 37 verse 22 is he says, that way he could circle back around so he could rescue Joseph and restore him back to his father. But the brothers, they bargained. They said, okay, we'll throw him down into the well. So they did that. They beat him up, overpower him, throw him down into the well, probably about a 15 to 20 foot well. And then coincidentally, along comes these Midianites who are this traveling vagabond nomads and the brothers say, hey, we've got this, we've got this rebellious slave down in the well that will sell to you cheap. So they sold their brother into slavery. The Midianites took him bound him. They took him to Egypt and then they put him on the slave market in a rich man named Potiphar, buys him, takes him to his house, puts him in charge over everything. And eventually Joseph finds himself in the pit on the pathway in Potiphar's house in the middle of a process that he never thought was going to be required of him in order for his dream to come to pass. Every single one of us are like Joseph. Every single one of us have a process. Every single one of us have a dream. But your dream will test you. The word of God will test you. It'll test whether you'll stick to it or give up. It'll test you whether you believe or whether you doubt because the purpose for testing is not to destroy you. Listen to me, God when he tests you is not trying to destroy you. He will try you not to prosecute you but test you to promote you. And I wanna talk to you in the next few moments just about passing the test of process because James chapter one, it tells us, count it all joy, brothers. When you fall into various kinds of trials know that the testing of your faith produces patience and patience when it has its full work will make sure that you are perfect, complete and lacking nothing. That's God's goal. Notice how James says when you find yourself in various tests and trials, count it all joy. How many know it's not joy but you're supposed to count it that way. Nobody wakes up and goes man, today I'm getting sold into a pit. This is awesome. Today is part of, today's gonna be a hard day of my process, hallelujah. This is so joyful. But it says, no, count it as joy. Why? Because you know that in the end God's working for you to develop you because listen, before your dream can come to maturity you have to come to maturity. It requires a mature dreamer in order to see a dream become mature. We're always focused on getting to the dream. God's more concerned about developing the carrier of the dream so that when you actually get to the place that you've seen in your dream you're able to hold up under the weight of your dream. How many remember growing up with Polaroid cameras? Anybody remember those? My grandmother had one and at Christmas time she would come out and it was always, you couldn't see anything. You take the picture and it's like I don't see anything and you were supposed to shake it. How many of you remember that? If you're like 35 years old or younger you're like, what, who does that? It's like, well they had these things and it would kick out a little picture that had chemicals in it and so you'd shake it and first it would be green. You could barely see anything about it. The more you shook it then the blues would kick in and then you can kind of faintly see the picture. After about two minutes of shaking it the picture, the full picture is there. That's how a vision works. So a dream works. God gives you this dream but you can't see what it's gonna look like and you've gotta shake it in order to get everything activated on the inside of it so that you have a complete picture. The process is the Polaroid shaking. It's God taking your life and saying hey I gave you a dream. It's like ha! And then he begins to shake you. Get all the ingredients mixed up in there and every single one of us have a process. Every single one of us are carriers of a dream. I don't know what your dream is but I know that you have one. I know that God has a dream for you. I know that you're highly favored. I know that there's a grace on your life and I know that you're immature in it and so the process of bringing you to being complete and lacking nothing immature like James 1 says is gonna require a process. And the process comes with tests just like Joseph. Joseph had to pass three tests before his dream came to pass. And I wanna share these with you because you're gonna see these in your life just like I've seen them in my life. Number one is the test of the pit. Genesis 37 says in verse 20, come now and let us kill him and throw him into one of these pits. So Joseph says brothers took him and he threw him into the pit. Why? It's one word. Pride. Pride. He was 17 years old and arrogant. I know it's hard to believe because I was not arrogant at 17 years old. I promise you I was humble. I was very restrained. I was very teachable. I didn't think I knew anything. I was probably other than Moses. I was the most humble man who's ever lived on the face of the earth at 17 years old. That is far from the truth. Joseph was this good-looking daddy's boy entitled, has a dream from God in his heart and he's not afraid to share it with anybody. He's unaware of how he's being perceived and he finds himself throwing the pit. They overpower him. They throw him down into the pit and the real reason that he's in the pit is because of his pride. It's because of his arrogance. Now, right now, if you're thinking to yourself, well, that's not me because I'm not proud. Can I just tell you, that's a prideful statement. If you think you don't struggle with pride, you probably struggle with it. If you're arrogant enough to think that you don't have pride issues, let me just define pride for you. Pride isn't just you puffing your chest out and saying, well, I'm better than everybody else. Pride is much more subtle than that. Pride is actually when the lenses of your life are turned in at yourself. You see yourself and you prefer yourself and you like yourself and you preserve yourself above all others. When you live your life through a lens of self, it's because there's a root of pride. And there's nothing that destroys people more when they get to a place of success in the world's view of having platform, of having influence, of having material wealth and those kinds of things more than pride. Do you know that pride was the original sin? It's what got Satan kicked out of heaven? Satan's, the word Satan actually is an aromatic word that means adversary, enemy. But isn't it interesting that we've made that a capital S and we actually identify God's arc enemy by how he opposes God? His original name was Lucifer, which means lightbearer. Bible says in Isaiah and Ezekiel says that when God created him, he was perfect. He was beautiful. He had musical instruments like hardwired into him and he was the anointed chair of that covers. He probably led the angelic hosts of heaven in worship until one day pride was found in him because he was so enamored with himself and that's what got him thrown out of heaven. Do you know that pride was what made Adam and Eve fall? Because they thought they could do it without God. And whenever pride is an issue in our life, we have to go through the test of the pit because in the pit, we either try and dig our way out of it by our own power or we surrender and let God bring us out. When I was seven years old, my mom remarried and we moved into my stepdad's apartment and in the backyard, we had just this massive sand dune. It was so cool, especially for a seven to eight year old kid. So we went out, me and this neighbor kid and we did what boys do, we dug a hole. I had no purpose for digging the hole. It's just like, we got a shovel, there's dirt, let's dig. So we start digging this hole. For a couple different days, we're digging. And I had a little plastic beach pal and I'm digging it out and he's using a shovel and we're digging it out. I had a snow shovel, that didn't work, we're digging it out. And this hole's getting deeper and deeper. One day we went down and we both got to the hole at the same time and we both got down to the hole and he's digging, I'm using the bucket. And what we didn't realize is we dug the hole so deep that we couldn't get out of it. We could get out of it before because it was shallow. We could like climb out of it. But now we had dug ourselves into this hole. We tried to get out of it. We looked at each other like, uh, how are we getting out? You know, the walls are sand. You know, you don't climb up sand. It's just caving in. And eventually we just pulled enough sand down and it elevated the floor and got us out. But it was a scary, I remember being seven, eight years old, being kind of scared. It's like, nobody knows we're in the hole. How are we getting out of the hole? Do you know what? That's what we do sometimes in our pride. We find ourselves in the pit and we're there. Sometimes because we deserve it and sometimes not because we deserve it, but it's a test. How are you gonna respond in the pit? Sometimes we're digging a hole and we don't even know that we're making it deeper when we think we're trying to solve the problem. Digging a hole in our marriage. I don't need that Jimmy Evans stuff telling me about marriage on the rock. I got my wife in her proper place. I told her how it's gonna be. She better listen to me because I know what's going on. I know the score here. Guess what? You're digging a hole in my finances. Don't be telling. That pastor is always talking about money. Telling me I need to honor God with a tithe. I got better things to do with that 10% than give it to God. And after all, I'm the self-made man. You keep digging that hole, baby. Then you look up and it's like, well, how do we get out of here? Well, dig. Go to China. Well, I really want my teenagers to serve God, but I'm taking summer off for sports. Nobody here. You're all here. Um, and then in October, your hole's so deep. You're just like, why don't my kids love God anymore? It's because you told them God's optional. And you got a baseball bat that you're worshiping up on the mantle. Uh-oh, it's the 11 o'clock service. I just went there. As a youth pastor, I had parents come to me in April and say, you know what? My kids are on travel league, so we'll see you in November. And I said, really? And then by January, it's like, I don't understand why my kid doesn't want to go to the youth group anymore. I don't understand why my kid doesn't love Jesus anymore. It's because you made him optional. You said Jesus is a really cool add-on accessory to your already good life. What do you want to raise a mediocre baseball player or a passionate lover of Jesus? Don't make me preach. I will come down here. I'll come preach. You gotta pass the test. We gotta pass the test, people. These are not days for us to be messing around. Think, oh, Jesus is my boy. No, Jesus ain't your boyfriend. Or your homeboy, or your bobblehead, or anything else. Pass the test of the pit. What's the way to get out of the pit? It's humble yourself in the sight of the Lord so that he can exalt you. He finds himself in a pit, and I'm sure that in the pit, he could have listened to all the same voices we listened to when we're in the pit. What's one of the voices? It's like, I'm a victim. I didn't deserve this. I didn't ask for this. Why am I in the pit? It's victimhood. The other voice is hopelessness. I'm never getting out of the pit. The way out of the pit is instead of elevating yourself up, like Joseph did his own sheaf, it's bowing your knee, and saying, God, I'll do it your way. My destiny, my dream is in your hands. It's not in my hands. If it's up to me, I'm gonna mess things up, but there is nothing that the enemy can do to your life take from your destiny when you submit your life constantly into the hands of God. And you know what? That's exactly what Joseph did. Joseph humbled himself because what we find is when he migrated into the next test, he was pulled up out of the pit. Immediately, he was sold in his slavery, and he had to pass the test of purity. So he finds himself a slave. He's living in Potiphar's home, and Potiphar is a wealthy businessman. He makes Joseph the head slave over all of his house, and he says, everything, my checkbook, everything belongs to you. I travel a lot, so you just manage it. And Joseph managed it really well, but Potiphar had a wife who was a desperate housewife of Egypt. She's, and she's checking out the new pool boy, Joseph. It's like, oh, look at him. He's good looking, Jewish, wavy brown hair. He's, you know, he's built. GQ, he's got the cute little Egyptian linen E-Fod on. He's walking around sweeping and cleaning and managing everything. And she's bored because Potiphar's gone. And so she begins to flirt with Joseph a little bit. Do you know if Joseph had not kept his heart right in the pit, then he could have given up his dream and said, God's not for me. I don't deserve this. I'm a victim. My dream is gone. So I might as well just enjoy a little recreational activity because she was trying to seduce Joseph. She's like, oh, you're so good looking, Joseph. Oh, I just love your shoulders. How do you get them so strong? And Potiphar's gone. You and I should, we should do this. I'm delirious. I hurt my back yesterday on my pain meds. I don't even, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. She's got a Selena Gomez. She's can't keep her hands to herself. She's all over Joseph. But Joseph passed the test of purity. What did he say? It says that he, he fled. She grabbed ahold of his garments. She tried to pull him close. And he literally, his clothes came off because it says that Joseph fled. He ran. He ran for it. He fled. You know, 1 Corinthians chapter six says flea, immorality, flea. Flea is a premeditated posture. You don't, if you wait till you're in a situation to make a decision about what you're going to do, you will cave when it comes to purity every single time. But you gotta make your mind up. It's like, when I'm in these situations, if they ever happen, I'm out. Nothing's going to defile my covenant with God. Nothing's going to defile my covenant with my wife. Listen, nothing's going to defile my covenant with my dream. Because when we talk about purity, immediately our minds go to sex. And that was Joseph's situation. I get that. And I think that we're in an over sexualized culture where we treat sex as just a board game. It's like Twister. We just treat it like recreational activity and we don't realize that it's God's gift as a bonding agent for covenant. Husband and wife who come together in a covenant and commit to life for one another and we've set ourselves apart for one another. That's the sexual purity of it. But do you know, listen to me, you can cheat on your dream. You can cheat on your dream. Because what is immorality? It's promiscuity. Do you know what promiscuity is? Here's a promiscuity, a definition of it is when I take a shortcut bypassing covenant commitment in order to have immediate fulfillment. And when it comes to your dream, when you find yourself in hard times going through tests and you say, well, that's where I wanna go. That's who I wanna be. There will be off ramps from the pathway to destiny in which you can be promiscuous even with your dream. Where you say, my covenant is with you God, I'm trusting you, but I think you're taking too long. So I'm gonna take a shortcut and try and make it happen on my own. We bypass covenant in order to get immediate fulfillment. And when we do that, we end up in a place where it costs us more than we ever wanted to pay. When we become impurity and Joseph passed the test, I love the fact that he passed that test. He said, no, he fled, he ran. And you know, even though he did the right thing, sometimes when you do the right thing, it doesn't always produce the immediate right result that you were hoping. You would have thought Joseph would have said, you know what, I kept my purity ring on, my devotion to the Lord, my covenant of purity. And now here's what happens. She falsely accuses him of rape and they throw him into prison. Man, I'm telling you what, by now, if I were Joseph, I think I'd be pretty disappointed, I'd be pretty frustrated, I'd be pretty mad. God, where are you? Have you ever felt like that in your process and in your life? God, where are you? I've been believing for a godly spouse all this time and there's just a bunch of knuckleheads walking around here. And now, you know, it's like my biological clock is ticking away. God, where are you? I've done it right. Where are you? Or I've kept my integrity at work but I'm not getting the promotion. If I'd had just cheated, I would have been promoted by now. But he finds himself in the prison, which is the third test, the test of the prison. And instead of hardening his heart, he keeps his heart wide open because he doesn't lose faith in God. Do you know that there are some prisons that are made with steel and iron bars to keep our bodies in place, contained? And then there are prisons of the heart that have no bars that we can see. Have no doors, gates, windows that anybody else can see. But it's a state of our heart in which we have locked ourselves off. From God, from others. And we say, you know what? I'm not trusting anybody anymore. I'm not trusting God. I'm locking it down. The only person who's gonna care is me, about me. But you know, when Joseph finds himself in prison, the integrity of his heart is maintained. He runs into two other dreamers. This guy named Baker, who's a baker and the cut bearer for the king. And they both have dreams. He's sitting in jail, probably thinking about his family, thinking about dad, thinking about how he got to where he's at. And I wonder how many times, as he sat in prison, did he think about the dreams? God, I thought you had a purpose for my life. How did I end up here? All I've ever done was, all I've ever done was what you asked me to do. And he hears a guy over in bunk B say, man, I had this dream. If he had been bitter in heart, you know what he would have said? He would have just shut it off and said, I don't care about dreams. I don't want to hear about your dream. Cut bearer says, I had a dream too. But Joseph listens to their dreams. And he says, I'll tell you what your dream means. Remember me when you both get released, because that's what your dream means. Your day of deliverance is coming. So when you get up there, remember me. Remember my story, tell my story. But do you know both of them get released? One gets hung, one gets restored. And they forget about Joseph and he's in the prison for two more years, hanging on a dream. Until one day, there's a third dreamer and it's Farrell. Farrell, the leader of the whole world. He has this dream. He can't figure it out. None of the wisest people in his kingdom can figure out the dream. And somebody goes, there's this guy. There's this guy down in the prison. He told me about my, he'll tell you your dream. Joseph gets brought up before Farrell. Farrell says, here's the dream. And in a moment, everything that God had been developing in Joseph throughout the process and the crucible gets brought into the limelight in one moment. And he says, Farrell, I'm gonna tell you your dream. And here's the solution. If you'll listen to me, not only are you gonna survive but you're gonna thrive. And it happens just like Joseph said, Joseph gets elevated to the highest place under Farrell that you can possibly have. But as he's sitting on the throne, I'm sure that there were even moments where Joseph was thinking about his family. God, what did it mean when my family would bow before me? What did all that mean? And one day, when there's a famine in Israel, a group of boys come walking into the courts. And he realizes it's my brothers. It's his brothers who've come there to buy food because there's no food back in the land. The son has scorched it all. There's no crops, the family's dying. And he sees his brothers. Do you know if he hadn't kept his heart right, he would've executed them right on the spot? The fact that after all these years, he still recognizes them is amazing. And he goes through this whole process. You should read the whole story, but he goes through this process, sitting on the throne, looking at his brothers. And he ultimately brings his whole family out of Canaan into Egypt and it reveals himself to his brothers. And I just want you to hear these words in closing this morning because this is so powerful. Sitting on his throne, he says to his brothers, Genesis 45, come near to me, please. Shows you the tenderness of his heart. I don't want you to get away from me. I want you to come near to me. I want you to hear me. I want you to see my face. I want to look you in the eyes. They came near to him and he said, I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into slavery. Now, do not be distressed or angry at yourself because you sold me here. Listen to these next words. For God sent me before you to save your lives. Process. Joseph had passed every step along the way and the 17 year old immature, arrogant, unrefined young man is now sitting on the throne in the position to change the lives of his family as well as all of Egypt, all the millions and millions of people that have been impacted by the wisdom of this leader. And he says, don't get upset. You guys sold me into slavery. Don't hate yourself because of the process. Realize that in spite of you being wrong, God still used the wrong in order to put me here so that I could save your lives. The final test of the process is when we come to realize that the dream that God gives us is never about us. It's always about others. God deposits something on the inside of us that if we'll give ourselves to the process when it comes to fruitfulness in the end, we'll not just be something for us to stand back and go, look what I did, but it will impact the people that are around us. Yes, his brothers and his mother and his father bowed down before him, but in that moment he didn't throw his shoulders down. He wrapped his arms around them because he realized that in every step along the way that he thought God could have abandoned him, God was there refining him seven times over so that he could be refined as pure gold. And let me tell you, I don't know where you're at in your process. I don't know where you're at in life. I don't know what God's doing in you. It may seem like God's a million miles away. It may feel like you've been the victim. It might be like you've been taken advantage of and you've even lost hope. But let me tell you, God is here. God is with you and he's got his eyes on you because you are a highly favored and just like Joseph means to add to, God's not here taking you through the process to take something away. You are Joseph. God's bringing you to a place to add to who you are because he's good and he's got you. Once you stand up with me all over this room, God has got you in the palm of his hand. So many times we think God has forgotten us. But Jeremiah says that our names are written in the palm of God's hands. Every time God's hand moves, your name moves with him. Every step along your process where you're like, God, where are you? I can't see what you're doing. He's shaking the Polaroid. He's like, hold on. Though the vision tarries, wait for it. But even though it seems like it's not going to come to pass, it will come to pass. Don't let go. Hold on to it. Because there's a hero on the inside of you that God's building and shaping and refining. And there will come a moment where he reveals himself to you. There will come a moment where it all makes sense. We just don't grow weary. I want to invite everybody to bow their heads with me all over the room. If I can have the prayer team please come and make their way up to the front, please. Father, just to say that word and to know that we're highly favored in your sight means everything. God, just to imagine that you know us by name. That long before we ever dreamed of what our lives could be, you had a dream in your heart for us. Lord, today would you bring the refreshing dew of the Holy Spirit, your presence upon our lives that we sense here today to be a reminder that we're maybe in process, but it has not yet been revealed what we shall be because you're at work in our lives. Give us grace for the shaking. Give us grace for the process. Give us eyes to see that there will be an end to your work. There's a finished product under somebody waiting on the other side of our obedience and our process. Before we dismiss this morning, I just feel strong sense that the Lord wants to release encouragement and hope to some people. There's a dream in your heart. There's a sense of purpose and destiny. Maybe it's something that you thought was dead. Maybe in the pit you thought it's over. I dug a hole too deep. I can't get out of. Something has happened that wasn't fair. And you've kind of given up on a dream, given up on a vision from God. Today God wants to speak life, hope, and resurrection over you. That Jesus wants you to lift your hand to say, pray for me. I've got a dream in my heart. I don't know how it could possibly come to pass. I've given up. I'm struggling with it. You're in process. Maybe today, keep your hands up. But if today you say, I'm in the process and I'm just getting tired, I need encouragement. I just want you to lift your hand up today. You're in process. So many hands. Father, you're so good to us. Just pray for a release of your encouragement, a release of your hope, Lord, that you would allow the vision to come clear at Lord and allow your presence to draw nearer. To be closer to us than we've ever experienced before. Lord, that you would release and activate old dreams that have been filed away. Lord, resurrect them, bring them to life today. Let us be dreamers that in our day we believe that God, you can use us to accomplish the things that seem ridiculous to us. To change the people in the world around us. Give us grace for the process. This morning before I say, man, nobody looking around, please. I'm just going to invite you that when I close in prayer just a second, if you're in one of those positions where you just feel like, man, I just need encouragement. I need God to just show up in my life. I need him to breathe on this dream. I need strength. I'm just going to invite you before you leave today to just come and receive prayer over whatever that is today. Our prayer team has been praying for you for this moment and there's really something powerful that happens when we put our faith together and we pray over those things. Maybe for you it's just, you need to come home. You're a prodigal. You've walked away from God, but today he's calling your name. It's time for you to come home. Or maybe you're here today and you've never surrendered to Jesus Christ. It's just been a game, but today he's calling you home. He's calling you to surrender your life. That's where the dream begins. Whatever you have need of today, we're just going to, as we dismiss, invite you, hang around, come down forward for prayer. We'd love to pray with you. God, send us today full of hope, full of faith, full of strength. Use us to be heroes in a world that's broken and looking for hope. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. You're dismissed. Come forward if you need prayer today.