The Fellowship of Suffering

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Phillipians 3:7-11

Is your focus on the suffering or the fellowship?

If we are willing to face the suffering, we will find fellowship. The fellowship could be a present sense that those who are also suffering for righteousness sake are sharing in our spirit of suffering. “And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.” (1 Peter 3:13-14). When we are unafraid of threats, we will find that others will stand up with us in a bond of fellowship. 

The ultimate fellowship we will experience is the fellowship of the resurrection. As we become conformed to Christ’s sufferings and ultimately death, we attain the ultimate fellowship of the resurrection. “Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.” (1 Peter 4:1-2). Even though death is the ultimate suffering we will experience in this world, when we focus on the fellowship we will have with Christ, the weight of that suffering fades. Focusing on the suffering or the fellowship will make the magnitude of the other grow smaller by comparison.

The stories you know will be the stories you retell and the stories you retell will be the stories you know. 

The stories in our life that we tell and retell become the stories that shape us. Although there are many stories in our life that we could tell and retell, we generally focus on a few stories. As we repeat those stories over and over again, they become more firmly planted in our identity and shape who we become. It is a self feeding process as the stories we repeat also become the stories we know the best, which makes us want to repeat them more often. When we focus on the suffering in our stories, we will find more suffering and those painful stories shape us. When we focus on the fellowship we have in our stories, we will discover how God joins us in every trial and gives what we need to walk through the suffering.

You shape your stories.

How we tell and retell the stories changes shapes what they mean to us. If I were to tell and retell the story of a big man knocking a little man down, I would cultivate a sense of suffering and angst every time I went to retell the story. If I were to tell and retell the story of a big man knocking a little man down before he stumbled off the cliff, I would cultivate an entirely different reaction to the story. The way we tell our stories shapes what they mean to us. We will get a completely different reaction from our stories if we focus on the suffering or the fellowship. God wants us to experience His fellowship, and if we focus on that, the suffering becomes less important.