Loving Jesus, The Beautiful Life Of Suffering

 The doorway to encounter the joy of God is becoming increasingly presented as Him wanting our circumstances to be great or to give us lots of stuff and things. Christianity is largely becoming narcissistic in the primary expression of what it means to love God. Taking up our cross is mentioned in a conversation with a new believer but lost amidst the "veteran's" of the faith. We have traded the true joy of sharing in the sufferings of Christ for a cheapened version of grace that empowers us to pursue this world and not Jesus. The primary way we can measure true doctrines is by what it inspires love for. The prosperity message and all other forms of Jesus wanting our circumstances to be perfect and give us lots of stuff can never produce a life of suffering and sacrifice for His sake.

  Jesus' very first teaching takes place in the Sermon On The Mount where Jesus instructs His followers what it means to come after Him, what kingdom living looks like. And not that it is a ticket in, but a willing submission to take up this teaching day after day. The placement of the Sermon On The Mount at the very start of His ministry tells us He was just longing to come and tell us what loving Him looks like. The most beautiful thing to God is when people willingly suffer because they choose to live as He commanded. God fully intends this life of suffering to lead us into our life of glory. See we want to enter into glory through glory, and that is not how God designed it. Do we believe in a God that smashed his own Son to glorify Him?

  The primary way Jesus meant for us to suffer is in the manner we conduct ourselves. Suffering isn't a reality in that you only suffer if your flesh is imprisoned or chastised. The first and most important suffering occurs at the expense of our pride. "Blessed are the poor in spirit."Jesus starts off the doorway into kingdom living by saying"the ones who enter in with a poor, broken spirit are the ones who will encounter the blessed life" (When we see "blessed are" in scripture we can put it like this; the ones who will be internally successful, the joyful ones, those who are encountering God.) The suffering of our desire to be exalted and lifted above others positions our hearts to love God at deeper levels. This manner of willingly laying down our lives in love also releases the joy of God into our hearts. As Jesus' messianic purpose was to lay His life down in love for others, (Hebrews 12 says it was for the joy set before Him he endured the cross) we share in this when we seek not to glorify ourselves but to die every day for the sake of others, all for loves sake. And this manner of living is painful, it stings, mainly because it is only evident when it is not easy to do, when the person we have a hard time with offends us yet again, when serving others turns into abusive use, when we have invested into people that betray us, when our enemies pretend to be something they are not and slander us again and again. This is where we encounter the true suffering of responding with love and gentleness.

 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; 

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. 
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. -Isaiah 53:7

  The Man who suffered the greatest amount of injustice and had the most reason for offense did not lift a finger or utter a word against His oppressors. He willingly laid down His life that He could lift up even those who were wrongly assaulting Him. The true heart of love suffers for the sake of lifting others up. And Jesus' desire for our life is that we would suffer and through the destruction of our pride, desires, self ambition and all other manner of self-exaltation and we would lead people into the Suffering Servant. The outward demonstration of love is sacrifice.

  Carrying our cross has a broad stroke to it, it has become so vague that we don't have to address it. But the fundamental pursuit of Christ is carrying a cross of suffering. There is but one version of Christianity and it is what Jesus did when He walked the earth. Conformity is salvation, a constant renewal into His heart. 

Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

  Through a life of prayer we encounter the need to be transformed which in turn creates a humility as we recognize the inability to change the dark areas of our life. The entrance to living as Jesus commands is the dependency learned through prayer. God has really changed the way I view prayer in that I no longer focus my prayer on the physical but on the heart. "Change my heart O God." Far more important than what we do in this life is where we go with God on the inside.

Important keys

- Suffering is daily as we seek to exemplify love to everyone around us.
- Suffering is not dreadful, it is painful but it produces Christ in us which is joyful.
- It is more important that we encounter an inward suffering than an outward one.
- We must learn to see Jesus correctly as the Suffering Servant and know it was all for loves sake.
- Prayer is the fuel to live a life of love through suffering.