The Fellowship of His Sufferings

Hey y'all... it's been more than a month since i last blogged... haven been updating my cronicles either... had attachment and all that stuff and den got somewhat lazy and all... oh well...

today God was teaching me some valuable stuff about how to get breakthrough freedom and deliverance in your life... many times, we turn to methods of self-scrutiny and even trying to recount and analyse which areas are messy in our lives and all that stuff... but understanding the problem doesnt mean that we've solved it yet.. and that's another problem in itself cos many times we think that when we do find out and realise what the problem is, then we're on top of it... but that may not be necessarily true.. again how are we changed? by beholding Him.. Pastor Ban reiterates so many times that when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.. yet many times, when we sin against the Lord we spend lotsa hours recounting, retracing and analysing where we've gone wrong and what is presented before us is a gloomy picture of how much a failure we are instead of how great our God is who loves us in spite of our misgivings and shortcomings...

The solution? simple. worship. As we worship, the yokes come right off us.. as we worship, the labels come of.. as we worship, the cloud of opression lifts and we break through unlocking an open heaven, not just in our lives but over our churches, countries.. our relevant spheres of influence... we dun need to spend hours trying to figure out what went wrong and mulling over it.. we dun need a deliverance team trying to tackle every detail in our personal and family history.. we dun need quite need counselors (though of course there is a place for all these as well).. we give them too much credit and sometimes we become too dependent on them.. this is somewhat of a flaw taught to us by a service-oriented society.. but when we worship, God deals with hat is known and what is unkown.. what is chartered and what is unchartered... sins and hurts and bondages that we know of and those that are much much deeper for us to have been aware and conscious of.. and we begin to align with His holy order as things in our lives are subjected to His lordship and surrendered.. we just go straight into worship and healing takes place, deliverance takes place and we receive our breakthrough.. where heavens are open and we have unhindered access to the blessings and the comissionings of God to execute His will and appropriate and express His heart not just in our lives and the way we live but also in our sphere of authority...

having said that, i spent some time worshipping in church today on the keyboard... after singing some songs, Holy Spirit came upon me so powerfully that i started to weep as He was doing a deep work in my life.. i saw the Lord on the cross and in the light of His sufferings, i knew that He had taken my sin and shame and bore it upon Himself.. and the revelation of the cross gave me a revelation of my freedom in Him because now that i've seen it up there and my Lord having taken the punishment of God's wrath on my behalf, i know that it's no longer upon me anymore... it has already been borne by my Lord and therefore i can worship Him freely and with a clean conscience... And that's how worship changes us.. that as we behold the Lord, we also behold our freedom...

And then i saw that cup again and i knew that the Lord was again asking me to drink that cup of joy and suffering.. to know Him by the things He suffered.. to walk with Him and to go through with Him the things He went through... to take up that cross with Him... He was calling me to bear His cross with Him like Lucius from Cyrene who carried the cross with Jesus...

I have come to learn that we wont fully know the life of Christ until we experience a measure of the things He suffered.. that's the mystery of the Kingdom of God.. advancing through blood... the proof of love through suffering and sacrifice... it's about laying something down to know His life and to know Him by experience...cos if we are to know Him and His life, we have to do as He did and love as He loved.. if we dun know this element in our walk, then our walk wun be complete and we wun have a full and proper revelation of the life of Christ... in Singapore's sedated society, how many people are awake enough to tread beyond their comfort zone and know the intense passion of the Lord and bear it upon themselves to lay down what the Lord would require of them? How many would pursue the dance of danger.. that adventure with our Divine Lover that bids us to lose ourselves to know Him? What price are we willing to pay?... Buenaventura De La Cruz... If we should gaze at His face, losing all to tread that path will be paved with abundant grace.. the grace to yield, the grace to die... will this ever be a message that the Singapore church will embrace? Will she awaken to know both love and pain.. and beyond that, the heart of her Bridegroom King that calls her to suffer the same that she may be perfected?...

Fill my eyes, O my God
With the vision of the cross
Fill my heart with love for Jesus
The Nazarene

Fill my heart with Thy praise
Let me sing through endless days
Take my will, let my life
Be wholly Thine...