Romans 8:17 (NKJV)

“…heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”

While it is glorious to be an heir of God, there are implications that may not be so glorious, one of which is that we are called to suffer with Him. As joint heirs with Christ, Jesus has brought us into the glory of God, and as partakers in that glory, we are invited into an unimaginable life of “godness” However, this life of Christ requires that we also “suffer with Him” as part of the inheritance with Him. We are not called to suffer “for Christ” but suffer with Him, for as we live and walk in Him, there will be a suffering that will naturally come upon us and be attracted to us. There is no glory until we accept to be full partakers of the joint-heirship of suffering in Christ.

And this is where we often fail. We want the glory but we do not want the suffering. Because Jesus embraced the suffering of His calling, He reentered into the fullness of His glory, a glory He had before becoming a man, and a glory He re-entered for us all, having overcome suffering in the flesh. In this new re-entering, He opened the door for us to participate in and to embrace all of God’s glory if we can accept the pains of suffering with Him in the flesh. There is a suffering to atone sin, and that’s not what we are called into. We are called into a suffering from the world of sin around us, a suffering that we do not ask for, but which comes to us because we are co-heirs with Christ, and the spirit of this world will direct suffering to us because of the nature we bear in Christ. Don’t flee this pain, for it is the natural result of being in His glory; and surely enough, it will pass away as it did with Christ.

“Lord, I don’t want pain but I accept suffering as part of my inheritance in You. Give me Your divine enablement to pass through it as the natural pathway to my eternal glory in You. Amen.”