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| "Today you will be with me in paradise"-- Jesus |
Imagine being on that cross and still having the sacrificial mindset to bring one more person to Christ. None of us will ever die on a cross or suffer to the extreme that Jesus did, but as Christians we should expect to experience traumatic events that cause a lot of deep pain and suffering.
The verse that caught my attention this week is from Philippians 3:10-11,
"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..."
Like Paul, if I want to be more like Christ, I'm acknowledging that I will experience a great deal of exhausting trials as Jesus did. "He (Jesus) is the revelation of God's design for human life. Consequently he is the judge, the standard agaisnt whom we are measured and into whose likeness we will be conformed" (Stanley Grenz. Theology for the Community of God 339). Yes, I want to be conformed to be more like Christ and with that comes discomfort, but it's definitely worth it because Paul also wrote that in becoming like him we also "attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:11).
"By definition, pain is unpleasant, enough so to force us to withdraw our fingers from a stove. Yet that very quality saves us from destruction. Unless the warning signals demand response, we might not heed it" (Philip Yancey. Where is God When it Hurts 34). Pain and suffering is a characteristic of the world that lets us know that things aren't right. It should tell us that this world isn't a place that we want to continue to live. It should force us to think and act more heavenly even amungst the low valleys in life. If you have been mocked for standing up for your faith at work, depressed about how another Christian has treated you, or maybe you don't understand why something bad happened to you or someone in your family, know that we also share in His comfort.
If you're praying to be more like Christ, expect to experience some pain and suffering. However, we also get to share in His comfort. Paul wrote to church in Corinth, "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows" (2 Corinthians 1:5).
We don't live isolated lives, but in a community with other people that go through trials as well. We know people who are going through a lot of problems, but what are we doing to save them? It's like watching someone put his hand on a hot stove but not saying anything to him. We could reach over and help him remove his hand, and sometimes we do, but sometimes we just sit and watch without reaching out. Right before Jesus died on the cross, he spoke the words to the man on the cross right beside him, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). He saved one more person right before his death. As we go through our own difficult trials lets not forget to reach out to just one more person so that he too can live in paradise with us some day.
