The Cross and the Way of Life

Why is it that there are so few that can identify with what is happening in the lives of so many of our siblings that are going through such utter desolation?
Maybe it’s because they have never experienced having been in His crucible themselves. Like Joseph, there are those He has sent ahead for this (His) purpose. “God did send me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5).

Rich

What rich encouragement these words are to me from Austin Sparks.

And that leads us to the peculiar cost and deep way by which such a function is fulfilled; for in type there were few in the Old Testament dispensation who knew more deeply the meaning of the Cross than did Joseph. Yes, the Cross was planted very deeply in his life. He suffered in a measure all that the Lord Jesus suffered later: the suspicion of his own brethren after the flesh, the prejudice, the ostracism, the hatred, the malice, the jealousy and the murder. Joseph went through it all, cast off among the dead, lowered into the pit as one slain, put into the dungeon and left by men, forsaken, cast out. And it says, “His soul entered into the iron” (Psa. 105:18). Poor Joseph! And he did not know what it was all for. He did not know what was coming. He did not know of the glories that should follow. He went through it in utter loneliness and if the Cross means one thing more than another, that is where we feel it most, the utter desolation of soul where no one can go with us in understanding.
Yes, there was peculiar cost in suffering, in experience, bound up with this function. We can say that others do not go that way; even others of the Lord’s people do not go that way. It is for this particular kind of instrument. It goes by a particular kind of way and it has so much that a multitude of Christians know nothing about. Their Christian life is more like a playground than a winepress.
Yes, Joseph knew the Cross deeply and terribly. Disliked, suspected, cast out, hated, killed, made to suffer immediately by them of his own family, and made to suffer resultantly at the hands of the world. You get the interpretation. I need not say more.
You can read the whole article this was taken from here.