Who You Are In Christ - A Heavenly Association

This morning we're going to talk about a heavenly association. As a believer in Jesus Christ, we have a heavenly association. That's not vocabulary that I grew up hearing. Nobody said I had a heavenly association. They spent a lot of time beating me up for my earthly activities. You're not good enough, you don't do well, you've sinned, you've blown it.

But as a believer, because of salvation in Christ, we have a heavenly association or a partnership with Christ. Now, when I say a partnership, that means all kinds of things to all kinds of people. So let's take a moment and define that. In a business partnership, each owner has a certain percentage that they own. That is not the kind of relationship we have. The partnership we have with Christ is kind of a 100%, 0% deal. Christ owns the whole deal. When we died, He bought us. he gets 100% except for in a business partnership if you had 49% ownership for example you might get 49% of the income or the earnings from a business whereas in with our relationship with Christ Ephesians chapter 1 he says we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing that's a that's a hundred percent kind of a blessing owns our lives and gives us life and meaning and value.

And so the partnership there is a different kind of a relationship than what we're used to hearing about in earthly terms. But really that's what it comes down to is the word of relationship. We have an association because we have a relationship. Several areas here, we have partnership with Christ in life, partnership with Christ in position, partnership with Christ in service, and partnership with Christ in suffering.

And we'll discuss all of those this morning as we go through this. I decided to take a different format today than I normally have in the past. Mostly because this is a lot of material to try to cover and so it was better to to read some scriptures and then just ask some explicit questions about those and see how those things can work together. The first section we're going to take a look at is, we are partners with Christ in life. And I'd like to go ahead and just ask that different people in the room might read the different verses. So would somebody go ahead and read Colossians 3-4 out loud and it'll be recorded.

When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. And 1 John 5, 11-12. And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. And Philippians 121, I'll go ahead and read. for me to live as Christ and to die as game. Alright, three different passages, two of which talk about us being partnered with Christ for life. We have our life in Christ.

I wanted to go ahead and ask some general questions and then we'll get into some more specific questions. When we discuss life with non-believers, what is their time frame for the conversation? When we talk about life, with non-believers, what's the scope of the conversation? We're talking about 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, sometimes as long as 50 years. What do you want to do when you retire? If you're young, you might ask that.

Bud probably doesn't talk about 50 years from now on an earthly scale. I once heard a joke that a hygienist was talking to a guy and she was discussing things and she was asking him questions and he said, she said, William, how are things going? He says, well, I don't buy green bananas. I'm not sure if he's going to be around by the time they're ripe.

But when we talk with non-believers about life and the scope of our conversation, is usually short. In contrast to that, as believers, we can talk about eternal things. What are we going to do in heaven? Stan? Again, there's two words in the Greek, which mean life. Bios, which is what the world looks at, and zoe, which is eternal life. So that's the life you have in Christ, which is eternal life. And that's not something that the world has. That's why they can only look at bios. which actually comes from biology.

But when we take a look at things, when we talk about conversations and time frames, when we talk about goals, they're all earthly. It was probably about eight or nine years ago when I realized that I had a short-term scope. for thinking about things. Usually when a trial would come up, when some kind of difficult thing would come up, my scope was almost always, what am I going to be doing in five months when this trial is over? Because I usually figured that at that point in time in my youth, nothing was ever going to last more than five months. But I started to realize that my scope as a believer was wrong.

We had 9-11 happen and suddenly I thought, wow, my whole life is going to go down the tubes. The terrorists have won and I was a pessimist. Everything was going to just be annihilated and destroyed and I was going to be living in a shack with my wife. We didn't have Abby at that point in time. Worst case scenario was just all I could think about. I had no heavenly perspective, no scope, no concept of the eternal things. was in Christ, but my perspective was earthly. I had the wrong attitude about things were being crummy and where do we go.

The next question I've got on here is, what fears do non-believers have about life and death compared to that of a believer? This question was actually inspired by a real conversation I had recently where I was talking to a gal and she said that the guy that she was dating was explicitly and tenaciously gripped by the fear of death. The fear of death was overwhelming for him. It controlled his life. Yeah? Didn't Paul say, O death, where is thy sting? Yeah. Because it means nothing to the Christian. I mean, and that's the power that Satan has lost. He always had the control over a person's life. Yeah.

But when Christ died was resurrected and eternal life was for the believer. Our life is where we have a partnership with Christ in His life. His life is eternal. We're unified with Him in that. We're united with Him in that. And there is not the concern over that. We died with Christ. We were identified with Him in His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. So our earthly death is of little concern. It doesn't have a grip on us because it's not the unknown that we face. I think the unbelievers also take death as the end. Yeah. When we think about like an atheist. An atheist says, when I die, that's it. My soul will be annihilated or not exist. And that's the end.

But there are a group of non-believers too that do not believe in hell and they think that because God is such a gracious, loving person that they will not, that's not where they'll go, there's no such thing. That's pretty scary. There is no hell except for Hitler and Mussolini and the really, really bad people. Yeah, and the other thing, I mean there's a lot of religions out there where there's no assurance promise that we have. If you're a believer, you're going to heaven. You're spending eternity with Christ. It's not maybe you are, maybe you aren't. As the purchased good, we can't undo that. We can't undo the purchase. He's not going to sell us again. And there's no defective return like he goes back to the Walmart human return policy. You guys have a liberal return policy.

This guy's not cutting the mustard. That's just not the way God operates. As we've talked about in past classes, his righteousness is credited to our account. So God doesn't even look at our human failures once we're believers. Those things are dealt with. The issue of people rejecting the idea of hell or saying that there is a God but he's gracious is that they don't ever go to God's word for those ideas.

They don't just open the Bible and say, well see here it says this happens. They don't show the justice of God. They don't show his character of being righteous and just. And that's why he sent Christ to redeem us. It's always just law. I believe in a good God. It's not the God of the Bible. They're never going to argue from the scriptures for a gracious God that gives everybody access to heaven. It's always their own desire. Or at least my experience so far has been that case. I don't want to make a generalization where we can find somebody who goes that way.

So it's those works? Yeah, I'm better than average. I know of a lady that, she's famous. When I die, I'm writing down all my good works. When I die, I'll be sure to take it with me. That's right. I've got my list to take to heaven with me, and that way I'll negotiate with God. Wow. You know, Randy, it's said that every person at some time asks themselves, who am I? Why am I here? And where am I going?

Yeah. And so the atheist was presumably 1% of the American public. I mean, it's 99% of people believe in God. Yeah. And as you pointed out, most people think that after death, they're in a good place, right? Sure. But the issue is Do they have this heavenly association?

Is that just assurance? Or is it lack of salvation? I presume it's mostly lack of true salvation. Well, it's a lack of true salvation. Only the Lord knows. You know, even at my brother's funeral, he denied the gospel. Yeah. After multiple presentations. The guy that did the service, who was a believer actually, assured me that I didn't really know. Wow. I guess I really don't, but you know it's this kind of warm fuzzies at death, right? Sure. And how do you do a funeral, you know, without giving some hope to the people who are still there? I'm not justifying that. Yeah, it's a complex issue, and it's very personal, and that's of course part of the problem.

How did God establish our life in Christ? How did that relationship get established? Grace and mercy. Grace and mercy. It says in 1 John 5, 11-12, and the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Okay, so God established that, that life in Christ through the work of Christ on the cross. God established it. He worked it out in His own power. We couldn't do it of our own accord, of our own self, but we can have faith in His work on the cross.

Now here's one of the crux questions for this being partners with Christ in life. What does it mean to have our life be Christ? Our life is Christ. Depends on what the definition of is is. I remember a politician asking that question once. Because Colossians 3-4, when Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Upon coming to collect his bride, we will be revealed with him in our final state. It all begins with position, correct? Yeah, our position. It's like God declares it to me.

We're going to get into that in the next section. But the world will tell us, and frankly in a lot of different religious groups and churches, you will hear all the time about alternatives to your life as in Christ. You may be saved, but then now you've got a checklist. The next question I have on here is what are some legal or works-based perspectives on the life of the believer that are contrary to what the scripture says? Do you find yourself falling into that distraction? I know that sometimes in my own life there will be that distraction. If I've got to make sure I do the checklist, I'm not going to be able to get into heaven or I might have to go and do a lot of work to make up for the shortcoming. God helps and he helps himself. There we go, good old Saint Benjamin Franklin. Father of the nation of France and the United States.

I shouldn't have said that. If you're a history buff, you'll know what that means. It's recorded. Yeah, it's on the internet now. Anyways, so some of the common perspectives basically are that you have to participate. It's not just the life of Christ. It's not just the work of Christ. You are doing it of your own will and your own accord and your own power and strength. And that's just, that's not the biblical model. Our life is in Christ.

Well, I think part of that too is that we constantly have this need to validated to go, you know, you're doing okay, you're doing okay, and if there's no, like you said, there's no checklist. There's nothing that says, okay, I did a good job today. We just have to have that peace of Christ. Yeah, one of the things that I found to be interesting as I've studied the body and the believer and how we work together is often that while there's no checklist.

Often the Lord will work in our relationships together so that edification happens. It's not like we get brownie points or merit badges or anything like that, but the Lord works in our lives in such a way that there have been occasions where I've done something and the last thing on my mind is You know, oh, am I making some checklist? Am I doing this thing because it's really God's awesome, powerful move in my life? And it'll be after the fact, what if the Lord shows me that He was working through me at that time?

I was just walking in fellowship with Him. This last week, Jeremy was teaching in the counseling class, and he mentioned something that I had done that had encouraged him that wasn't even on my radar. that it was going to help him in any way. I wasn't even thinking about it and he mentioned me and I was like, wow, that's embarrassing. But the truth of the matter is that I was just walking in my relationship with the Lord and I happened to edify. I wasn't thinking, oh, I'm going to get some kind of recognition or anything else for it.

Because my life is in Christ. He was just, give us an opportunity. Yeah, Randy, you know, scripture does give us, we're not to live by law, we're under grace, but it does reveal the life of the believer and it tells us to abide, to rest. I mean, there are plenty of information, not like it says you just believe and then you're left at your own to figure out what that means. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Scripture spends a tremendous amount of time telling us what our life should look like in Christ and how that life is to glorify God. Plenty of information out there for us to know and understand.

I'm sorry if I didn't specify that. I was also wondering, did I see that? No, no, no. We were kind of going down that path. It's not just, well, I have faith in Christ and he's just going to work it out. We have tremendous information, tremendous insight into what God desires in our lives. Now, we can approach that legally or we can approach it by faith. Yeah, faith and grace.

Last night in Bible study we were dealing with this very topic, and we were in 1 John 3, so let me just read a few verses. In verse 16 it says, By this we perceive the love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whosoever hath this world's good, and seeth this brother hath need, and shutteth up his compassions within him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God. I mean, in a sense, that's exactly what you're saying. I mean, you know, we laid out our life for the brother. How are you doing at that? Right.

Are we meeting all the deeds that God presents before us? Well, we're going to get into that a little bit, but well, I mean, but the issue is, I like the last two verses here because if our heart condemns us, God is greater than heart and know of all things. That means if the Spirit's moving us, we've got to respond to that, right? I mean, that's what God's calling you to do. But if our heart doesn't condemn us, I guess that's not the Lord who's working in us to either be aware of that need or meet it. I mean, it's still a life. And that life, by faith, leads to works, right?

Yeah, the result will be works, but it's not motivated by the flesh, it's motivated by the Holy Spirit. And that's one of those things that's interesting, is that if we're being carnal, sometimes we'll see every opportunity as a requirement. Oh, I've got to do that, there's an opportunity. if we're resting in Christ, sometimes the opportunity will come up and it's like, nope, I don't want to do that.

My dad used to want to go on mission trips really bad. All the time he'd talk about being a missionary. Gotta be a missionary. Missionary, missionary, missionary. And I'd be like, oh, here comes another missionary story. I'm joking, it wasn't that bad. But we'd talk about mission stuff all the time and someday maybe the Lord will let me be a missionary. Well, he got hired on here to be a co-elder and Suddenly an opportunity for missions came up. And he said, no! I can't do that. I'm shepherding this flock. Being a missionary, the Lord will provide somebody else to fulfill that role. I need to shepherd this flock.

And so here his whole goal for a long, long time was to be a missionary and then suddenly the Lord opened up a different opportunity and showed him that his perspective had been Slightly askew in the past and the Lord helped him say oh, this is an opportunity. My life is in Christ Just because there's the opportunity there. It doesn't mean I've got to do it. Oh There you go. My peripheral vision. You got a shot. It's great.

I Think that's because he knew this block somewhat by then well, I'm sure there's You know well and God knows exactly what to do for all of us because he knows all of us. We don't know everyone, but he knows everyone. Yeah, and he brings about situations for, I mean every situation has an opportunity for us to grow and learn. And the Lord had put him through the right grow and learn situation so that when the opportunity came up it was an easy choice. and it wasn't difficult.

What I saw in that was his love for us as a body, as a co-shepherd. He's like, no, I love you guys way too much. I need to make sure that my focus doesn't get distracted. Let's move on to the next section here. We have taken a significant amount of time on that. The next section we have here is Partners with Christ in Position. We have a heavenly association And our position is part of that. Now, when we talk about position, there's a few folks that are new faces in the group, so I want to do a quick chart on the chalkboard because I like to draw with the chalk.

Would somebody, while I'm drawing this chart, go ahead and read Ephesians 2, 4 through 6 out loud, and then somebody follow them with Colossians 3, 1. by God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our transgressions. He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Can somebody read Colossians 3?

Therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, for Christ is seen. All right. The terminology that we use at Holly Hills regularly is position and condition. So here we're going to have position, and this is just in the scope of the life of the believer, and condition.

So when we talk about position, it is, in the heavenlies we're seated with Christ, as Colossians 3.1 says, and condition is the things that we experience on the earth. When the day comes of rapture or death, our position and our condition will be unified, and they will be the same place. Any questions on that, as I'm trying to be brief, but I also don't want to be overwhelming with the concept. But our position is with Christ. Spiritually, we are seated with Him in the heavenlies. Now, any other partnerships give you that kind of access to God the Father? Any other partnerships give you that kind of thing? They can't do it.

The first question I have here is, what position do other religions have with their gods? If we talk about Islam, or we talk about Hinduism, or various things like that, What kind of position do you have in those religions? You absolutely have no position in Islam. And in Hinduism, you never know where your position is. You can get lucky, so to speak. Maybe you'll get reincarnated into the Dalai Lama next time. You have no position in other religions.

Christianity is unique in its presentation of your position when you become a believer is with Christ, who is seated in the heavenlies. That kind of an association is pretty radical and contrary to the way that any other religious teaching tries to cover. The next question I have here I already answered. What position do we have with Christ specifically? We're seated in the heavenlies with him. Now how does that position affect our day-to-day life? How should that position affect our day-to-day life?

It's wonderful assurance and peace. Okay, assurance and peace. the way the pressure takes the stand. I would say that the most important part is the filling of the Holy Spirit because that's what empowers you. So once you are saved and you're positioned in the heavenlies, you still have to have something that motivates this old man of the flesh. And like we've always said before, Satan's power was broken at the cross. But still, we have to be able to fight the spiritual battle here. And we do it because we're empowered and we're gifted. Yeah, we're given the Holy Spirit. Based on Colossians 3, what is the Holy Spirit going to do for our thought life? What is the Holy Spirit going to cause to have an effect on our thought life? First of all, he convicts us of sin.

You can seek that position rather than just dwelling on that position. Yeah, he says, keep seeking the things above. The things above. Now, for me, that was always this ambiguous thing in the past, when somebody would say, oh, Colossians 3.1, seek the things above. What does that mean? What does it mean to seek the things above? Actually, right, in a way, that's a collective 33 riches of God's grace for covering at least nine months or so. That's our position in Christ, if you will.

The wonderful blessings. And it's funny how, when somebody, you think of a few of them like, well, I've seen with Christ in the heavenlies, but it's taken us nine months to go through, week by week, all those blessings. And in a way, it's almost uncountable. Yeah. And that's the answer I was looking for.

Part of this series that we've been doing, The 33 Riches of the Believer, or Who We Are in Christ, Setting your mind on those things, it gives us a sense of direction in this life to know, oh okay, I'm adopted by God. But that adoption is a very special thing. We're co-saints together. We've been called, we're destined to be conformed to the image of Christ. All kinds of things.

Setting your mind on things above, when you know what those things above are, is a powerful, encouraging and motivating The Holy Spirit draws us to those facts in our lives as different events come about. That makes setting your mind on things above an encouragement, rather than you need to be spiritual, which is basically what I thought that meant before someone explained to me what it meant. You need to be spiritual. Oh man, there's a lot of people on television that claim to be spiritual. What's the truth? It's belief in the facts.

This is our resume, if you will. We're reviewing our resume. People like to do that. So the Lord asks us to review our resume as we live this life. And you think, wow, that's Christ's resume. And it's just mind-boggling what we have. In fact, I think part of the problem is even though we go over this, we still fail to grasp the awesomeness of what we have. If we truly believe it, we can truly rest because we're secure in Him. Well, and that's one of the wonderful things about understanding our spiritual growth as progressive.

We learn the Lord deals with us today on this area. Hey, we're going to deal with this issue. The next question I have here is how does that position affect God's view of us? And I think we just kind of answered that. God's view of us is He sees His Son Christ in our lives and evaluates us on that level. He's not looking down at us, He's embracing us. And that's a powerful contrast to what we see around us.

In Ephesians 2, 4 through 6, what are three characteristics of God and how should we respond to them? In 2, 4 through 6, which we've got there on the first page, what are the three characteristics of God that are shown there? Mercy, Love, and Grace. And so mercy, love, and grace, three characteristics of God. Not all of God's characteristics, but three of them.

And how should we respond to this? We've been partnered with Christ, who has these characteristics. We need to believe it. Have faith that those things are there. And then the Holy Spirit will work in our lives and cause various things to work out in our lives. The next section we've got here is Partners with Christ in Service. Now this is one of those areas where it's easy to get caught up in semantics and get caught up in terminology, but let's keep this simple.

We are partners with Christ in service. That is, service is going to be works. We're not saved by works. We're not saved by the things that we do. But because we are partners with Christ, He has works planned for us to do. Because our time is running out, I'm just going to go ahead and read the three passages, and then we'll dig in.

1 Corinthians 3.9, and I've got just the first part of the verse. For we are God's fellow workers.

2nd Corinthians 6 4 but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God in much endurance in affliction and hardships in distress Ephesians 2 10 for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them First question I've got on here is when you're being carnal not that anyone in this room is ever carnal, but just, you know, if you're being fleshly, how do you evaluate the worthiness of a task to estimate whether or not you should do it? What's your criteria for saying do I do it or not if you're being fleshly? What credit will I get? What's in it for me? That's usually my criteria. I want it or I want to do it. Yeah, I want it. I want to do it. Bud? You're not your own because you were bought by the precious blood of Christ. No, no, no. That doesn't answer the question. That's the biblical answer. But that's the truth. We're not our own. We're bought by Christ.

And so, being carnal is thinking of, in a selfish way, what do I get out of this? Period. Even if it's, you know, I can remember thinking, about Boy Scouts, you know, oh, they're going to help the old lady with the grocery bags across the street was one of those things I grew up hearing about. Well, you've got to do it because that's what's expected of you. There's a social pressure. You're not doing it because of the Holy Spirit. There's a social pressure that you've got to do it. Stan? I think a perfect example is Paul.

Prior to the Damascus Road, he's doing the work for the church, right? He's out persecuting these churches because it's not a good to be having these people out there practicing Christianity. So Paul takes it into his own hands and he's saying, I'm doing all this wonderful work for God. The Pharisee who's following the law and works. When he meets Christ and he finds out the true perspective and the true knowledge, then he changes to a man of service instead of a man of law. And he can see, first thing he sees is how he was wrong in the He just follows what God wants him to do. He's been doing service. I have to agree with you. That's a pretty darn perfect example. I think that's why God gave us Paul. It's such a great illustration.

Now, contrary to the first question, the second question I have here is when you're abiding in the life of Christ, how do you evaluate the worthiness of a task to estimate whether or not you should do it? You simply submit your life to Christ. And if the scriptures say, hey, don't do that, then you know, hey, probably not a good choice. But often the Holy Spirit will open the door and make it obvious. Again, the missionary thing was an open door. It was an opportunity.

How did my dad evaluate whether or not it should be done? He looked at what the Lord was doing in his life. What's God working in my life right now? I'm co-shepherding at Holly Hills. this missionary thing will be a distraction from the actual task the Lord has put before me. You know, you come before the Lord and you bring it there and you look at the criteria that he's put in your life.

Someone else may have looked at the missionary opportunity and said immediately, that's it. I need to go do that. The Lord has opened the door. He's given me the call and the desire and I'm ready to go. But that's not That wasn't the best choice for my dad to make at that point in time.

When labor is involved, when service is involved and we abide, what is the outcome of the completed task? Glory to God. Glory to God. Any other things that are the result of the work of the Holy Spirit are alive in service? Could it be edification for other believers? A lot of times, you don't even know you're doing it. I think if it's a true, inspired work of the Spirit, You don't even know it. It's an example. Many times there won't be any, you won't have this glowing sense of I'm doing something right.

Now there may be other cases like if there's a need, like some church group may go to New Orleans and help in some kind of restoration project. They're going to know this is edifying and beneficial. But their motivation, if it's the Holy Spirit, result in the exact same thing. I think it's like when you go for the rewards and the lady who was saying that she's going to take the rewards with her like the list. I think when you're there, the ones you're going to get rewards for in most cases are something you didn't even know you did. And you're going to look back and you're going to go, wow, come to tears because that was something that you were motivated to do. Yeah, it's going to be because of relationship with God, not because of selfish motivation. Bud?

Yeah, it's not always said a lot about, but there's a scripture that says not to be unequally yoked with anyone, ungodly, and to compromise. And a lot of times, as Christians, we're forced with that, a long ways down the line where it destroys our else but it's very rarely touched. I actually heard a really legalistic sermon on that passage once. So when it comes to things about being unequally yoked there's a lot of that's a principle with a lot of application in various areas.

Again, if we're abiding in Christ and our focus is on Him, we're going to say, wow, okay, I'm a believer and that girl's not a believer. Like, I had a girlfriend before Jessica. If we had gotten married, it would have been an unequally yoked scenario. My life was focused on Christ and hers was not. And I'm glad it ended. It was a little awkward when it ended, but it was good for that to have taken place. But the unequally yoked could apply to business, it could apply to any number of things.

But in real practical terms, if we're abiding in Christ, if we're walking in that relationship with Christ, He's going to make it obvious that these are things that need to be done. The next question I have here is how much should our being partners with Christ in service impact fear in our lives? Now we don't normally think of works and service and tie that into fear, but that's an area that I've found actually I'm personally impacted by and maybe other people deal with worries and worst case scenario and fear regularly. I tend to think that way and be a pessimist.

For example, Randy, if the Lord leads you into some task that turns out to be, in your mind, a failure, the goal that you thought was to happen never happened, then, you know, if you're truly walking with the Lord, you say, well, Lord, I mean, I had this idea in mind, this is how it's going to work, but it didn't work out that way, and you must have had a different idea. Yeah. I mean, it should give you reassurance that if you're, quote, partnered with Christ in service, that it's actually his work that he planned beforehand and it may be that that was the outcome that he desired. Yeah.

But again, if we're partnered with him and he has provided those works, then we don't have to worry about missing them. We don't have to worry. That was the thing that used to concern me is, oh, I'm going to miss it. There's going to be the opportunity to happen to do something and I'm going to miss it.

Particularly when I was younger and participating in a body that was charismatic. I mean we would do what we would call putting out the fleece, you know like Gideon. Was it Gideon? Wait a minute, did I get my Bible characters right? I was like, wait a minute, I've got mine. Gideon putting out the fleece there and he said, okay God, make it wet one day and make it dry the next day with the dew. We would do that all the time because we were full of fear that we were going to screw it up or God would present an opportunity but it wasn't really God, it was Satan. We played mind games with ourselves in a big way.

So our service, because of our partnership with Christ, we can be confident in those things. The next question I have here, outside of fear, how much should this impact joy in our lives? We have a partnership with Christ in service. How will this impact joy in our lives?

Joy should come from the things that are of Christ, not the things that are of anything else. Sure. We're going to get joy out of works that isn't there when the flesh is doing works. I asked, you know, how are we evaluating whether or not this should be something I want to do? The Lord brings joy out of things that are not building up of your ego.

That's kind of what we talked about last week and that's that once you have the fellowship or the mindset then joy comes out of that and works as a part of that but the primary goal is the fellowship. And the Lord gives us joy in places that we would have never seen it before in the flesh and that's really one of the awesome things in that I'm going to jump to the next section, not to race through it, we'll just go through it as we have time.

But the last section here is that we're partners with Christ in suffering. Now this is one of those topics that when I was younger, if you had said to me that suffering was part of the life of the believer, I would have told you that you were crazy. And it wouldn't have mattered how many Bible verses you showed me that said otherwise. Because I had been told that if I was doing the right things, I would be rewarded with earthly things, and everything would be roses and happiness. Instead, Paul writes about our being partnered with Christ in His suffering. And that's something that should cause us to sit back and think, if you've thought otherwise. Let's take a look at the Bible verses since those are most important for gathering theology.

Philippians 1.29 For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

1 Thessalonians 3.3 and this one is a humdinger. So that no one would be disturbed by these things, for you yourselves know that we have been destined for this." Paul had written about going through suffering just moments, verses before. They were destined to suffer. Don't worry about it. We're not worrying about it. God's destined us for suffering.

Romans 8.18, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. So, here we have three verses and there were many other ones to go to, but I picked three so that I thought these were terse. We're partnered with Christ in suffering. How does the world view suffering? When you see Oprah, when you get in conversations with people, how does the world view suffering?

Disastrous. You must be sinning. Punitive, yeah. Punitive, okay, yeah. It's a tragedy. Tragedy. You can often become angry with God because of this. Sure, yeah, people say, I'm angry with God, I'll... He can fix the situation and then I'll be friends with Him again. Sense of entitlement not fulfilled.

Yeah. One of the things that's interesting on a philosophical level, when you take God out of the equation, people have to deal with things. Friedrich Nietzsche, you may be familiar with that name, he was a philosopher from the 1800s. He said, and it's popularly quoted in its English translation, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

That was his way to turn a little positive spin on suffering without God. It was an attempt. It was a little short of what the scriptures described. One of the things that we need to see in suffering, and it's not so obvious particularly in these verses, but if we look at trials in James, he talks about trials being for our growth. And we should see the value in the trials or the suffering because God is using it.

Romans 8.28, ten verses after Romans 8.18 that God works all things for the good of those who love the Lord. So the world sees suffering as a negative thing. The Jews in the Old Testament saw suffering as a problem.

You're sinning. You must be doing something wrong because if you're not, God's going to bless you. And it's all earthly material. Job goes through a tremendous amount of suffering. How does God answer Job? in the Old Testament when Job goes through the suffering process. He says, trust me, I'm still here. You're focused on the wrong stuff. And then God blessed him in orders of magnitude.

The next question I hear is, how does suffering with the perspective of our partnership with Christ impact our view of suffering? We're suffering in this partnership with Christ. What bonds us to our citizenship, in a sense, remember Christ left the throne, not like us.

This is world system stuff we're part of here, right? It's conditional and it's temporary. It's, you know, position and condition. It's conditional. It's temporary because at some point in time, death or rapture, we're going to go be with the Lord and these things are not going to be a problem. Which is Paul writes in Romans 8 18 for I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that we're going to have when we're dealing with God. I was going to say for the unbeliever the condition and position is on earth.

Yeah. And so that's all they've got. Whereas with Paul he's talking about Yeah. Isn't there some place that says suffering is a test of our faith? Oh, there's all kinds of passages that present that principle. For sure. 1 Peter 6 or 7 he says that it's to prove out God's character in our lives.

There's more questions here but we don't have time to go over them. In the end, our heavenly association is going to impact our daily life if we understand that, hey, God's going to use this scenario, God has worked out things in our lives for our growth, and the distractions that the earth throws us are really not eternal. They don't have a long-term impact for eternity. It may have a lifelong impact. My dad has Lyme disease for his whole life. I've got a bad back. It's going to probably stay that way until I go to be with the Lord and then I'll get a new body and then I won't have to go to the chiropractor again.

But our heavenly association is going to bear earthly fruit in our lives. We may not always see it. We will not always see the rewards for it. But the Lord is going to use us because we have this heavenly association. Let's close in prayer. I've gone over a few vows here. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you for giving us a heavenly association with you. Thank you that your life can work through us and that we can reflect you. We just thank you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.