Sun, Apr 23rd - 11:58PM

The Fellowship of His Sufferings

Have you ever noticed how, even though our friendships may be filled with fun and laughter, we grow closest to those with whom we have walked through difficulties? Suffering, whether our own or that of someone close to us, has the ability to strip away all the trivialities and focus on the things that really matter.

We can be sure that Christianity was never meant to be a "long-faced religion." Joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit, and when we consider the incredible gift of salvation that is ours in Christ, we have more reason than any people on the face of the earth to rejoice.

However, there is a difference between joy and frivolity. Sadly many in the Church today seem to have embraced a version of Christianity that is all froth and bubble, with little or no substance beneath the foam. Much of the modern understanding of God confuses Him with Santa Claus – a benign grandfatherly figure whose function in life is to provide us with whatever we want. It is a concept far removed from the God of the Bible.

In fact, there is even a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness depends on the things that happen to us. It is ephemeral, here one moment and gone the next. Joy, on the contrary, has substance. It is firmly tied to our relationship with the Lord, and does not desert us just because things don't happen to be going the way we would like them to go.

It is this substance that makes joy big enough to accommodate the reality of suffering. We can know that no matter what things we may have to walk through, our joy will remain in tact because it is not centered on those things but on the Lord.

More than that, our relationship with the Lord can make it a joy to actually embrace suffering for His sake.

Paul wrote, "I want to know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffering..." (Phil 3:10) Most of us today would agree wholeheartedly with the first two sentiments. We want to know Christ – Christ the Saviour, Christ the Healer, Christ the Deliverer, Christ the Comforter. We want to experience the power of His resurrection in our lives – the power of victory over satan, death and destruction, the power of a new beginning.

Yet Paul pressed toward something deeper. He wanted that kind of relationship which comes only from having stood with another through pain and anguish. That relationship may come as a result of us standing with another in his suffering, of another standing with us in our pain, or of us standing together through the fire.

Likewise that deeper level of fellowship with the Lord can come in several ways. It can come by a revelation of the Holy Spirit, making Jesus' sufferings powerfully real to us. I remember a day 15 years ago on a beach in Brighton, England, when the Spirit caused me to walk through the whole of Christ's human experience, from the time He laid aside His divine power and prerogatives to take on human flesh, to the time when He ascended again to be enthroned at the Father's right hand. At every point the emphasis came: "He did this for me! He did this for me!"

It may come through intercession, as the Lord allows you to feel a tiny part of His suffering on behalf of man, and at the same time to feel the suffering of man in need of God, and as it were to bring the two together in your own body.

It may come as you personally suffer for your faith, choosing to stand for Christ rather that back down and save yourself from persecution. I recently read of a brother in one of the countries where Christians suffer persecution. A convert from another religion, he had been beaten severely over an extended period of time. Seeking out the missionaries through whom he had found Christ, he told them joyfully that, whereas he had previously thought that he was a disciple of Christ, now he knew he was because His Saviour had allowed him the great privilege of suffering for Him!

What sort of relationship do you want with the Lord? Are you content with a "fair-weather friendship"? Or would you prefer something deeper, something with substance, something which can never be shaken? If your answer is the latter, then join Paul in his plea to share in "the fellowship of His sufferings."

(c) Lynn Fowler 2006

Rev. Lynn Fowler is the Founder and International Director of Glory to the King Ministries International and head of Glory to the King Apostolic Network.

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