September 13th, 2017
Philippians 3:10
"I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised Him from the dead. I want to suffer with Him sharing His death,"

I want to know Christ. I say this with conviction and an urgent pleading so that it may come true. I want to know Christ. I want to dwell in His presence, I want to be intune with Him. When He moves I want to move, when He speaks I speak. I want to be so intune that I don't even have to pray for confirmation. I am constantly experiencing God and His mighty power, He is constantly on the move and working. When ever some one comes to Christ that in itself is a miracle. There are so many influnces in our world, so I am not surprised when people start to go down a bad path. When I meet people I usually assume that they aren't saved. When you really think about that it is really sad. We assume that God isn't present so often. There is so much darkness and oppression going on in our world right now it is hard sometimes to see the light of Jesus. This is why I crave to know Him, so that when I feel overcome by the darkness and overwhelmed by all that is going on around me I will look to him.

It says I want to suffer with Him sharing His death, but is that really what I wish for. Am I willing to suffer with Christ for what he has done for me? What does this suffering even look like? When I first read this I thought of physical suffering but as I reread it a couple of times I started to realize that maybe it isn't suffering in the way I first percieved it. Maybe it is talking about suffering in this world. We are more than likely deem suffering as something that is different than God does. Since we place so much weight on materialistic things He gives us we might consider it suffering when we loose a job based on our faith or He may call us to sell everything and become missionsaries which the world would deem for us as loosing everything. There is an important part to that sentence though that make I left out at first, it says so that we may share his death. This isn't talking about a physical death but the death that comes with allowing Jesus to consume you. He wants to fill you and use you but inorder to do that you need to die, metaphorically, with all of your desires. By putting yourself to death, your flesh, you then can become more like Christ. What comes with that sacrifice is consuming joy and peace and that promise of deliverance from eternal suffering and death.