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My passion for 2018? It hasn't really changed since I read and memorized this when I was 14. I have grown, my desire has grown and become more intense, but the goal is the same. THAT I MAY KNOW CHRIST AND THE POWER OF HIS RESURECTION, BECOMING LIKE HIM IN HIS SUFFERING AND DEATH SO THAT SOMEHOW I MAY EXPERIENCE HIS RESURECTION FROM THE DEAD! Philippians 3:10.
Everything else is worthless compared with knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For that goal I shake off every other goal. For that prize I run the race lightly, letting go of everything that weighs me down. I make it my single focus to pursue and really know Him. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! Our friends in First Baptist Church Sutherland Springs shared, and are sharing, in that experience as are many in the community.
What does really getting to know and pursuing Christ look like? Does it look like reevaluating my priorities? Reorganizing my time and energy to reach that goal of knowing Him intimately? Or does it mean I will have to know Him in my suffering through grief and loss? Jesus loved us SO MUCH that He chose the suffering and death so we could be with Him. Jesus says it in John 14, "I'm going to prepare a room/ mansion for you. So that when it's ready, and you are ready, I'll come get you so that we can be together!" God really loves us that much. That being with us makes Him happy. In other words. Jesus will do anything and everything to be with us.
My prayer for you today is from Ephisians 1. That you may know the hope of His calling for you, the richness of His glory in the saints who have His inheritance in them, and the incredible greatness of His power toward those who believe in Him, that the same power that rose Jesus from the dead lives in us, today!!! WOW! WOW! WOW! So as I contemplate the sorrow and trouble and death around me, I place over that the picture of Jesus dying and rising from the dead so that we could be like Him, so that we could know Him in our earthly experience, so that He could come get us when our room is ready and we could be together! Now that's a great thought for my heart to start this day. ♡
I have been meditating on what Paul meant by "fellowship of His suffering" for some time now. I have concluded that it does not refer to His death and Crucifixion so much as the suffering He endured just being confined to an earthly vessel. I am convinced that Jesus lived His life in union (Oneness) with the Father; and that awareness of what He had left and was missing in the eternal realm was constantly before Him. It is a crude example, but I used to suffer greatly when I was "confined" to a fire station on Christmas Eve because I knew the experiences I was missing at home. I think that the "fellowship of His suffering" to which Paul refers is directed at being so in union with Him here in this life that we no longer feel comfortable confined to this separated flesh, and long to "be at home." When we work hard to understand His Kingdom and our future, we get more and more "antsy" to leave this kosmos behind and go to where righteousness is at home. Gazing on our future produces in us a suffering that is unlike physical pain, and even distress from persecution; it causes a holy discontentment and desire to be further and ultimately "sanctified" (set apart) from all that is time/space/matter, and in union with all that is eternal. Blessings Martha!
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