The Fellowship Of His Sufferings

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This Post is From The 4th Chapter of My Newly Released Christian Book 

"Apprehended & Apprehending"

Chapter Title: The Fellowship of His Sufferings

.......If you truly receive Him in your heart and you immediately die afterwards, then you are indeed saved, and at judgment time, God will judge and reward you according to His own sets Standards. Remember God is God, He said to Moses in Exodus 33:19,

“ … For I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose”

It is not our place to corner Him by using the story of the thief on the cross. Besides, the event of the thief on the cross is so much deeper than meets the eyes.

The next big thing we should consider is that Scriptures teach us there is no such thing as being saved and having the pause button on our Christian life perpetually pressed until He comes. Christ had a lot of followers who did not really believe in Him but wanted something from Him. We also know from Scriptures that a relationship with Him is a dynamic one. Therefore, if indeed we have received Him, we need to do the next best thing He asks of us, which is taking up our cross and go on with Him as His follower. The choice is clear here. So, instead of examining God, I would suggest that we learn to examine our actions, motives, and attitudes first. It is incomprehensible to see how many professed Christians simply dismiss some of the examples we have in the Bible as to how God will be dealing with His own people who are not able to hold fast in the faith. In Matthew 25:1-13, we have the story of the 5 foolish virgins who did not have oil, which incidentally, represented the work of our faith, the faith that keeps you going forward with Him. We also have the Parable of the Seed in Luke 8:13, and what about the Parable of the Talents and the demise of the last servant in Matthew 25:30? Sadly most of us do not understand how important it is to live Christianity with a spiritual balance that is found solely through an exchanged life WITH and IN Christ (1 John 3:1-3 & Colossians 3:3-4.) the exchanged life simply means that He has become your whole life while your life is in Him. Strangely when this is known to your soul, you can see this paradox with your spiritual eyes and it all seems so simple.

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Life On Earth Has Never Been About Us!

When God deemed you privileged enough to experience what it means to live a life on earth according to his purpose, it is something personal and powerful. I remember in 2005 when I began to go though the wilderness torments, just for a moment which even today seems a life time flashed before me, He showed me how that everything He was going to put me through had nothing to do with me and it was not about me. That was the strangest thing to see how all the pain, the loss, the hardships, and all the adversities even though they were happening to me were not about me. Of course back then I assumed that the episode that I was going through was going to last only a few months. I am glad God did not show me the whole path that I was going to go through for seven years in the wilderness. I would have been spooked and miss out on righteousness, knowledge, wisdom, patience, Agape love, intimacy, faith and all that I have found through going  forward with Him.

I still remember how baffled I was to live out the beauty of being born for a purpose, yet I was puzzled as to how did we manage to make things so much about us. This vision God showed me was not meant just for me. Through it, I understood that God was totally misunderstood by us. I felt like a human being was more like an experiment that has gone wrong. Through the capabilities He put in us, we used them to turn against Him. Each one of us was meant to be a tiny part of a much bigger picture. We are like the tiny pixels that make up the element of a digital picture. Or another comparison would be the tiny fibers of a thread that is used to put together and weave a canvas

We have nothing; absolutely nothing we can offer God that would satisfy Him. The reason is that nothing that we possess belongs to us. Every breath we take, our finances big or small, our possessions, our children, our knowledge etc, all belong to Him. Even the first commandment that is so dear to His heart, we cannot even come close to loving Him if He does not put His Agape Love in our heart, He cannot accept our love because our love is not a selfless love. The only prize possession we possess and that He is after is us coming back to Him so that we can be put back into a relationship where once again He is the Master. The only way possible to do that is through a surrender of the self back to Him.  He wants us to do it, because we recognize who we are in Him. In our helplessness we have come to realize that without Him we are incapable of taking care of ourselves.  He alone has the schematics of our lives. Anything else we create on our own is apart from Him and His vision for us.

Through this revelation, God wanted to impart to me the fact that my life was not about me at all. He succeeded. It is funny, all these years I have been so busy focussing on learning to live a life where He was given His proper place (my Creator) and role (my Master) that I forgot to look at this experience in any other way. That is until this morning when I started reading Oswald Chambers devotional

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Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest"

Devotional for November 5

Partakers Of His Sufferings

"Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." — 1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across. Oh, I can't deal with that person. Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on that line, and you barged off because it seemed stupid to spend time in that way.

The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according to the will of God," not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God's aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God's order by a short cut of their own. God's way is always the way of suffering, the way of the "long, long trail."

Are we partakers of Christ's sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way, that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place, and say - ' 'Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!"

Copyright Statement
Taken from 'My Utmost for His Highest', by Oswald Chambers. © l935 by Dodd Mead & Co., renewed © 1963 by the Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and is used by permission of Barbour Publishing, Uhrichsville, Ohio. All rights reserved.

Examine Yourself!

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This is such a tall order for those of us who call ourselves Christians. When I was not walking in the Spirit yet, I used to wonder about how do I do this in the light of God’s Word. I know to some people it sounds stupid to ask such a question when it is written down in the Bible in black and white. So finally, I concurred with those who kept telling me the definition of this verse simply meant that everything in my life has to pass the test of God’s Word. While the explanation did not help and did not answer the “how” part of my question I assumed I had to let it go. As I learned through the Holy Spirit, to examine myself in the light of God’s Word according to His standards, I understood why it was difficult for people to answer this question properly.  Simply put, this command can leave you like a dog chasing its tail.

I realized two important things: first the awesome job of the Holy Spirit never let me be satisfied with head knowledge, always calling upon me to come up higher and draw near to God. Even though I did not know yet how to hear Him or communicate with Him. The second thing is that if you are not walking in the Spirit, then examining yourself in the light of God’s Word is as clear to your soul as someone who is born blind, yet you are telling this person to behold the beauty of the stars in the sky. Without God’s grace, there is no way I would have known that I was not examining my thoughts in the light of His Word. Every time I recall how He pursued me and never let me be satisfied with shallow understanding and my own explanations of things, I cannot help but feel privileged to be amongst those fortunate enough to be living under His grace. It is certainly not because of who I am but because of who He is.  

When you examine your thoughts in the light of His Word, the end result is you choosing to live out His truth. Not the truth according to how you see it in your own interpretation of things. But rather how He sees it.  Here is where we Christians we get in trouble, we cannot know the truth if the Holy Spirit is not revealing God’s Word to us. We cannot know the truth if our soul does not go forward possessing Christ within. In this simple command “examine yourself”, everything collides. The truth is no less than Him in all His fullness. The truth is living a righteous life, and a true righteous life means you are living in oneness with Him so you can partake in His righteousness. It also means living an obedient life, not a life where you decide on a case by case basis which one of His Word suits you best. Can you see where I am going with this?  While there are a lot of Christians out there who do not bother to examine themselves, but the majority of those who actually examine themselves are not really doing it in the light of His Word. They do it according to their own understanding; hence they keep following the wrong path, They keep doing the same wrong things over and over again and Christianity keeps declining because we are not walking as we should. Righteousness, faithfulness and obedience have to be right in the middle of our examinations.

  

PRAYER: Father God, you are indeed a great God and everything you have done, through Christ has made provision for us to walk in the light. But, we do not like the light, so we hide behind excuses which affect drastically our walk with you. I pray saviour you would revive us in our slumber to see how important meeting your standard is to you and that your Word will not come back void to you. Teach us to fear you. Do whatever it takes to bring us back to the reality of Christ’s Cross. Help us my Lord! 

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Commitment To The Faith

 

In my book "Apprehended & Apprehending" I have a small chapter about commitment. The reason commitment is so important to me and I felt I had to include it in the book is because while I had no idea what it meant to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit was hard at work in the background to help me come up higher. I realize He has never let me be satisfied with my own explanations of the Word of God in the Bible. Pushing people to not be satisfied with data tucked away while living in the flesh, makes knowing someone like me, a little bit annoying if you like your comfort zone. It is harder if you are an immediate member of my family. But, in my defense, I have no idea how to live the Christian life any other way because the Holy Spirit targeted me right at the onset of Salvation.  (Although I suspect He targets all of us) I shared almost throughout every chapter of my book how He called me to come up higher over and over again. Since I talked about it at length, I will refrain from going into more details.

You see, while some professed Christians are busy separating Salvation, discipleship commitment and grace to excuse their behaviors God showed me they are all one in the same according to His standards at work in us. I was surprised to find out that Christ’s call to us in Mathew 16:24 “to take up our cross and follow” actually meant “make the commitment, come up higher, live like you have a Master and surrender to me at any cost.”  Later on, I was more surprised to find out that not only this is Salvation being worked out in me, but the strength to do all these above were in Him,  through His grace alone.  This walk, the Holy Spirit was constantly working in the background to get me to question what I understood only in the flesh, in order to get to the point where I would make the commitment to follow and step into my discipleship role. Indeed, making the commitment to Him to let Him be the Master of your life it is not an easy thing to do. When you make this commitment you know what you have done is in effect what all the other disciples in the Bible did as they left everything behind and follow Christ on the onset of His ministry. The commitment to follow Him, if it is done with the right understanding, attitude, motive and with the Holy Spirit makes you realize that you are aware you found something that deserve your full attention. You feel, there is a Master in town now, and you have to go with Him to hear what He has to say. Like Paul turning his back away from his honourable position with Gamael, like Peter leaving his lucrative fishing business behind, like Matthew the tax collector who left his booth and lucrative business to follow and so forth.  

Just in case you are wondering what I mean in the paragraph above when I said the right attitude, motivation and understanding it is about understanding we have to do it knowing even though it will hurt but it has to be done. We know this mean we will lose complete control over our lives and we are no longer in charge. It means going forward with His plans, not ours. It means we will have to be broken and the self has to be eradicated etc. The end result will mean fellowship, oneness, pride left behind to embrace humility, deeper worship and love for Him and so forth.

Being compelled to go forward is a work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is a work of grace and there is no way left on our own we would understand the need to go forward with Him. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how all of it relates to each other. Through receiving Him I received the light. If I receive the light and I am no longer the “old me”, then I need to learn how to live the new life. While the Church put together discipleship classes and preaching the Word to get us to understand this new life, but it is my duty to hear His call to come up higher. When we go forward to become His disciple, all we are doing is making a commitment to study with the Master. Why do we need to study with the Master? Because not only He needs us to accept our position as His pupil, He also needs our total commitment so that He can make real in us the work He has started, meaning Salvation.

So, God’s call and wooing to come up higher along with Christ giving us a choice to take up our cross and follow Him, plus we have Romans 12:1 where Paul told us to surrender ourselves to Him, are all the same. Meaning same goal, same purpose and all of it is wrapped up in a commitment to this life through His grace. When you live according to His standards, all of it is there in black and white, there is no need to hold a debate. Everything we have in this Christian walk build on each other. The whole thing is like building a foundation for a house where Christ is the builder and He is putting the materials needed together to build this house. While this house starts with Salvation entering our hearts and souls, but we cannot separate it from the builder and the materials needed to erect the house.

This post was meant to be Sunday’s post. But this morning in my quiet time with Him I read Oswald Chambers, I knew this was not a coincidence and that I had to switch the post. So, instead of ending with a prayer, I will end with copying Oswald Chambers devotion for you.

Keep in mind that the second chapter of my book which is about commitment to this life is available for you to download for free. Go to my website

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Here is Oswald Chambers today's devotion

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me . . . —Galatians 2:20

These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “. . . for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.

Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable— “I have been crucified with Christ . . . .”

The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

One student a year who hears God’s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?

Why Does Paul Seemingly Ask For More Afflictions

Excerpt From The 3rd Chapter Of My Newly Released  Christian Book

 "Apprehended & Apprehending"

W

hen you really think about it, it appears that Paul’s desire in Philippians 3:10 to know God in the fellowship of His sufferings was a strange one. Since his life was already plagued with sufferings, why would he want more of it? This is the reality of being truly Christian. Paul’s desire is the fruit of his faith in Christ, His love for Him and part of the true meaning of working out your Salvation with fear and trembling. Before we can get to a real desire of the fellowship of His sufferings, we have to learn obedience to the point where suffering with Him and for Him becomes natural to us—as natural as it was for Christ to obey His Father! Jesus left Heaven and His position as His Son and made Himself a nobody for our sake and the glory of His Father. As His ministry advanced Christ said in Matthew 26:38

“…My soul is exceedingly sorrowful…”

While I have no doubt no one can ever experience the depth of His sorrow—not even Paul—mimicking Christ and Paul also means getting through this very path of suffering. Christ will decide the intensity of the sorrow in our soul. Scriptures made it clear to us that Christianity is about persecutions and afflictions. Christ could not say it clearer when He said in Mark 8:34,

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Paul also said in 2 Corinthians 1:5,

 “…we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ…" 

It is important to understand first of all that it is not our idea of what the cross might be  but Christ’s idea. The cross in this verse is simply Christ’s Cross we have inherited through our identification with Him. As we move forward with Him, the deeper we go, the more sufferings within our sufferings is to be expected if we wish to be prepared for His purpose in our lives. Paul is not just talking about sufferings in this realm. There is a kind of suffering that we go through within our suffering that is so heavy, we literally have a hard time walking and talking in this realm. We go on with a  heavy sorrow in the soul and it is not up to us to say when it is enough or when we get out of it. 

In the meantime God is having His way with our soul. We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that death is being worked in us—we are dying to self, inwardly, as we learn to take up the cross of Christ, not our man-made cross. This kind of sufferings can never be explained, only except experienced. There is no earthly pain to match it.  The first time I experienced this kind of pain was when I went through the biggest crisis in my life. My life was falling apart completely, and I was losing everything. Only then did God feel it was time to bring on that pain. Even though I was new to this kind of spiritual training and sanctification process, I  knew the sorrow in my soul was spiritual. After He confirmed that I was regenerated, He explained what the pain was about a few days later. This exceedingly heavy sorrow in my soul was Him dealing with my soul while using the Word as a double-edged sword. To that revelation I replied, “Wow! You made provisions for everything in the Bible!” It was that day He illuminated my mind to understand what He meant when He said, “His word will not return void.” I started understanding how precious each word in the Bible is to our soul and to our Salvation, here and now.

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Personal Relationship With Him!

Excerpt of My Book Apprehended & Apprehending" From Chapter 2

There is such a misunderstanding among Christians about what a personal relationship with Christ means. Personal relationship with Him is not about going on through our cultural type of Christianity while mimicking Christ. Think about it. There are comedians out there making a living on mimicking well known and famous people, but just the fact that they imitate other people does not make them someone else nor do they become good friends with those they mimic. Our lack of understanding of the Scriptures and lack of walking in the Spirit cause us to think that it is okay to go about doing the external things that the apostles and Christ did when they were on earth. The footprints to imitate them are found inwardly in the person of Jesus-Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.  We tend to forget that, before we are judged for our work, Christ will look at who we are in Him first. If you do not know Him, there is a strong indication that He does not know you either. Our work has to be an extension of who we are in Christ, and if I do not have enough faith, obedience, and love to go forward in getting intimate with Him, then who’s doing the work? And why? What is the purpose? What is behind that misplaced zeal?

Our personal relationship with God starts with our personal story of salvation according to non-watered down Gospel. We become grounded through acquiring sound biblical doctrines through the body of Christ, yes, but it comes primarily through the Holy Spirit expounding the Word of God to us. Through the right understanding of these doctrines, we find ourselves at His feet in fear and gratitude for His goodness to us and for who He is. Then we move forward in utter abandonment to Him in complete trust. We are told in John 7:17 that the key to knowing God is found in our obedience to Him. Therefore, before we go on with our Bible rituals, it would do us good to resolve to obey His Word by any means. I do not have the slightest doubt that if we do not have sound doctrines from the Holy Spirit Himself, our relationship with God will be off.

I was told by a few people who are serious about their walk with God that they keep my book like a reference book and go back to it over and over again. So, please get the book. I give you my word that you will be glad you did. It is an amazing thing to have intimacy with Him!

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