For thought and meditation

[rl69]

The Fellowship

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings." Philippians 3:10

The words "fellowship" and "suffering" don't look as though they fit together. One communicates comfort. The other, pain. Yet God links these words, insisting that our deepest fellowship with Him can be found in the midst of suffering.

The word "fellowship" does not mean a club. It's not an inner circle of elite believers or a higher level of super-spiritual saints who have arrived. Fellowship -- in the Greek, koinonia -- means a mystical participation together with Christ. It's a marvelous mystery that Jesus feels the sting in His chest when you hurt.

When I hurt, when I'm in physical pain from my paralysis, when my heart twists in anguish, I cast myself on Jesus. In the fellowship of suffering, I know He takes my pain personally, He's close enough to catch me. As I rest in His arms, I'm amazed how often I find myself singing this hymn:

All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me, All my heart was full of misery and woe; Jesus placed His strong and loving arms around me, And He led me in the way I ought to go. No one ever cared for me like Jesus, There's no other friend so kind as He; No one else could take the sin and darkness from me - O how much He cared for me!

Thank You, Jesus, for the warm, intimate union we enjoy together in the fellowship of Your sufferings. Bless you for catching me when I fall, for holding me when I hurt.
by Joni Eareckson Tada

[USMC87]

Amen, A great lesson!

[Blackwater]

What a great lesson! God promised He'd never put more on us than we can carry. Sometimes we misunderstand just how much we CAN carry, but ... that's not HIS fault, it's ours, for underestimating our own selves. It's our willfulness coming out that makes us shy away from challenges, especially the ones that include pain as part of the challenge. But if we take up the cross and bear it, and carry it well and unfalteringly, or at least carry it through to the end, our reward will be SO very much beyond what we ever seem to expect!

Modern man, perhaps more than in any other era in mankind's history, seems to seek pleasure and avoid pain more than in any previous time in our history. We've become real "powder puffs," unwilling, and telling ourselves we're "unable," to cope with any sort of challenge or hard time. What a bunch of wastreals we try to be!!!!

But Christ gave us all the wisdom and advice and direction we could possibly ever use or profit from. We just don't WANT to take it most of the time! And that's OUR fault, not God's!

Yeah, it's hard to follow Him. He told us that, but ..... do we listen???? We LOVE it when He talks of all the great things we can have, and what Heaven will be like. We turn against Him at the first sign of anything that doesn't match our imagined and desired situations in life. What a cheap bunch of followers we can be! Taking all the good, and reeling from the slightest "bad!" Christ had the courage of his convictions. He had enough to suffer Himself to be nailed to the cross, and suffer unmercifully for all our sins, in our stead. How weak and willful we are! But it doesn't HAVE to be that way. IF we "study to show thyself approved," and really think about it, and decide which side we're really on, we CAN do a LOT better! But we have to do the HARD things, the things we don't always want or like doing, to get to that point. And even if we know that, we often say, "I'll start tomorrow," and of course, that "tomorrow" never seems to come.

Now is the only time we'll ever have in this world. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is but a dream right now. Today is all we've got, and all we'll ever have. We need to make use of it, or .... keep putting it off until that "tomorrow" that never comes.