The Lighthouse Devotional
Author: Rochelle Lashley
SCRIPTURE VERSE
“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:10–11 NIV).
PERSONAL REFLECTION
Knowing Christ is of higher value than any other thing. Paul, in this passage, describes a knowledge of Christ that surpasses details gained through research. He points to an understanding born from a shared experience—a fellowship with Christ. This passage leaves me with the hanging question: Do I want to know Christ like that? Do you?
SCRIPTURE REFLECTION
Paul’s desire to know Christ extends beyond a factual exploration to a desire to experience what Christ experienced. We learn the power of Christ’s resurrection only through the experience of complete self-sacrifice. Paul says that we have died, and our lives are now hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3). For this reason, a life in Christ focuses on much higher ideals than the comforts that we seek in life—the things that fill our eyes.
Patience in suffering is a theme that we hardly ever hear in sermons and prayers. Who wants to suffer, far less suffer long? No one has ever endured the extent of Christ’s suffering. However, Paul says that knowing Christ requires a fellowship with his suffering. Christ learned obedience through the things he suffered (Heb 5:8). However, our contemporary Christian experience is about abounding, so much so that the idea of suffering often produces distrust and disobedience in us. As a result, many depart from the faith, embracing the thought that a good God would not allow us to suffer.
It is hard to reconcile the promises of abundance with the experience of suffering; however, we know that it was for the joy set before Jesus that he endured the cross (Heb 12:2). In the same way that we mourn, we are to endure hardship with the understanding that God is good and that suffering for the sake of Christ is not meaningless. God does not make hard things easy or painful things pleasurable. He gives us a higher goal than comfort—that of glory. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor 4:17).
EXHORTATION
Do you want to be resurrected in Christ? Do you want eternal life? This is life eternal—to know God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3). Therefore, though we may wish to avoid even light affliction, we may have to drink from its bitter cup, knowing that there is no other path and recognizing that God suffered most. Let us, therefore, say “Yes” to death and suffering for the sake of knowing Christ.
PRAYER
God, show us the joy set before us so that we may, like Christ, endure suffering, and one day we too shall rise with him in glory. Give us a desire to know You above all else, even at the cost of every comfort. Give us the grace to endure. In Jesus’ name, Amen.