True Fellowship With Christ

“And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved” (II Cor. 12:15). There are a lot of folks who feel that they can identify with these words of the apostle Paul about some of their situations in life, probably most frequently about their children or someone in their family whom they have spent themselves for. But the truth is there are few who can truly identify with Paul in these things, according to the reasons for which he experienced it. The only way that this scripture passage can really apply is if someone is demonstrating God’s love and speaking nothing but his truth to those that they are doing good to and being ‘spent’ for. Nonetheless, when it does apply it is quite a sobering and sad reality to see these things come to pass in your life in real time. The scripture surely is true that states, “and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me” (Psm. 69:9). This was written of Jesus, but it applies to all who truly are led by his Spirit and walk in his footsteps thereby (Rom. 8:14; I Jn. 2:6; Lk. 6:22). If you do actually follow hard after the Spirit of God in your life, and show forth his love to those whose paths you cross, you will surely find out how God feels about how so many of his own people try to make a ‘crisis God’ out of him. It is a thing of much godly sorrow and grief, I can assure you; even as the scriptures so describe Jesus: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53:3). Everyone thinks they are following Jesus. I’m afraid a lot of folks think the faith of Christ is some kind of religious game where they get to set the rules. I can tell you that one of the rules Jesus set was this one: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake” (Mat. 5:11).

I couldn’t count the times that the Lord has given me an answer of truth for someone’s dilemma that delivered them from their trouble, or directly answered my prayer to resolve someone’s crisis for them; only to see them go right back to what got them in trouble to begin with, and just basically forget me. Then there are the situations where I have given someone a great deal of help in an extremely needy and desperate situation, and been absolutely thrilled for the opportunity to do so; only to have them eventually turn and think me a villain because I continue to speak only the truth to them (Jn. 8:40; Gal. 4:16). But lest any would wrongly gather from these statements that I feel self-pity over any of these things, understand that the grief experienced in these situations is a wonderful thing, because it increases my true fellowship with the Lord, knowing that he has and does endure all such things in far greater measure (Philip. 3:10; I Pet. 2:20,21). In fact I wouldn’t trade these experiences in my life for any cheer or pleasure that this world has to offer, because the sum total of everything this world has to offer is emptiness and futility; whereas the end result of truly suffering with Christ is eternal life and immortality in a world so glorious that the scripture says of it; “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (I Cor. 2:9). Not only so, but if we do NOT identify with these adverse and undue responses from men, in return for our love for them in Christ, we simply cannot inherit eternal life: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us” (II Tim. 2:12). In truth I do as the scripture says, and rejoice in these things, counting it a thing of untold privilege (Acts 5:41; Lk. 6:23). Amen.