Joy In Suffering

My friends I want to share with you the great joy my Heavenly Father has graciously bestowed upon me. I desire to share my heart with you so that God may graciously impart the same joy and hope with in you. This joy and hope does not come from the things that you can see with your eyes, but rather things you can only see in the Spirit. This joy and hope I’m speaking of is found in the person of Jesus Christ.

I’ve been a Christian practically my whole life. I’ve loved Jesus through this journey, yet each time He brings me to a deeper level of Himself I’m challenged in thinking did I really love Him? I ask myself this not because I believe I’m a heathen heading towards hell, but because this new found joy, love, and freedom makes my past love for Him look like a lukewarm pale gray. He is so good and faithful to start and finish the faith within us. He is so faithful to bring us from glory to glory—there is no end, only an eternal loving Father.

I’m not sure how to articulate all that is within me. I feel like the bride to be after her engagement—so overwhelmed words cannot express, but I’ll try.  “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death” Philippians 3:10. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” Hebrews 12:2. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” Galatians 2:20.

My friends I have such joy and excitement in picking up my cross. What a privilege it is to bear the name of Jesus, what an honor. In the past I have chosen to die to myself and pick up my cross, but it wasn’t out of joy or powered by the Spirit. I did this foolishly the only way I knew how. By mustering up some kind of faith and choosing to do something with fear, timidity, uncertainty, and concern, all of which are not from God. Because it wasn’t out of a position of humility and love with my eyes stubbornly fixed on Jesus, and because I wasn’t truly allowing Jesus to be Lord in all areas of my life (although I thought I was), I wasn’t able to truly die to myself and pick up my cross. Instead, I was beaten and broken near death by condemnation and a twisted view of faith.

This time I have found the joy in experiencing a life upside down and backwards. I laugh with excitement in the thought of suffering for Christ. Not because I’m twisted or desire to experience pain, but because I see Christ. I see my Love. I see Jesus, and I’ve tasted something that in all my walk with the Lord I have never tasted before. My friends Jesus is Lord! No really, Jesus is Lord. He is Lord over my thoughts, words, actions, my heart, and my whole life. This great standard of Holiness—to be Holy as He is Holy— is unattainable on my own. It must be powered by the Holy Spirit, and that is why He gets all the glory. Do I mess up? Yes, don’t we all? But when I do, I repent and run violently towards Jesus and my loving Father.  

I know my sufferings are not the same as my brothers and sisters in this world, but whatever my future may hold, I know that I can rest in this hope and joy and certainty in Jesus. For I will not be distracted any more, but fix my eyes on my loving Jesus and allow Him to overflow my being.  

As a bride wears her wedding ring—a token of the covenant of marriage, so I wear a token of the covenant with my Lord in the form of a cross—my cross, as I fellowship with Him in His sufferings. What an Honor to bear the Name of Jesus, the one who takes away the sins of the world!