I think about many times in my life, I want to relieve the tensions and discomforts that come but it is at such a cost!!

These thoughts are encouraging that the glory is much more worthy than the temporary relief.

I wonder how is this hunger transferred to other believers and the church as a whole?

I think many people want to hunger for God and his disciplines but the passionate hunger just isn’t a driving force and the seeking isn’t there…

It’s evident that we live in a culture that promotes an answer/solution driven mentality. So, striving to ask the right questions which leads to Sola Christa aids in reducing the personal clutter sometimes associated with searching for truth.

It may also be beneficial to consider how well equipped we are to even ask the right questions consistently throughout our lifetime. Even in asking the right questions we’ll measure how right they are by our own tainted scales. In the center of suffering, where questions are endless, maintaining that resolve to ask the proper questions may prove to be a challenge. Then, for some, asking questions is a practice to be avoided at all costs. I believe asking questions, however proper, perfect or misguided, provides an opportunity to have a discussion with God.

When God enters the conversation His revelation is not far behind. The writer Christopher Morely was quoted saying “I had a million questions to ask God; but when I met Him, they all fled my mind; and it didn’t seem to matter much anymore”. How true it is that when everything we know, or think we know, is compared to the revelation of God’s presence and majesty we find ourselves speechless and at peace.

Your heart is already where mine is going as I write into a future that I have not yet traveled. I suspect it is one seldom traveled by many American Christians?

There is a discipline of purity that I am beginning to long for that exceeds some religious rigor that is simply the putting off of sinful vices; rather, one that in grace accepts the pure righteousness that comes from Christ alone…the reality of “Christ in me”…one that passes the litmus of the “hope of glory.”

That fulfillment may come simultaneously with participation in the sufferings of Christ or it may even be necessary before one can be entrusted with true suffering?

The sufferings mentioned by Paul and other martyrs, though excruciating physically seems to emote differently than might be the case if endured by Christians today?

Was physical pain in those early believers felt, but over-ridden by some inner quality we know little of, their pain somehow muted by the joy set before the suffering ones?

I recall the cries of John Huss in the midst of his painful burning at the stake, his neck pulled against the pyre with a chain after He prophesied of Luther: “Christ has borne the chains of my sins; surely I must bear this rusty one for Him!”

He surely must have been at a different place in relationship with Christ than this aspiring writer?

As I enter the last leg of my journey, now 61 year so age, I believe that participation at the level described by Huss, Paul and others is a privilege and may be the final layer of reward to those who have “violently” journeyed with Christ.

These may be the ones who will truly know peaceful passage from death unto life, mortality to immortality, vs. those who at best practice religion yet always fear death, avoid suffering and despise loss on this earth!