PHILIPPIANS 3:10

March 11, 2012FIRST BAPTIST CHURCHJACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

GOING DEEPER with GOD CONFERENCE

Led by Dr. Greg FrizzellSunday, March 25 & Monday, March 26

*On Sunday, March 25 ALL ADULTS will meet in Fellowship Hall East. *This will take the place of our Sunday School class on March 25th at 9 am.

Greg Frizzell said on page 73 of his book: How to Develop a Powerful Prayer Life “that in 1981, God led him to begin praying daily through all nine fruit of the Spirit.

To this day, he has never found anything that comes close to the power of daily praying these character words for his own spiritual growth.”

"Praying For Our Jerusalem" Acts 1:8Praying For Our Jerusalem is a prayer effort by which we attempt to go into every home of our church family

for the sole purpose of praying with the people in that home. No gimmicks, no signing up for something, just to pray. Prayer Warriors will visit in

four homes and pray with our church families from April 1-30. *If you know someone willing to serve as a Prayer Warrior, who is willing to go

into 4 homes during April 1-30 and pray with our church families, please call Trish Jenkins at (601) 949-1941 or e-mail her at:pjenkins@fbcj.org

BREATH OF LIFEA SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS FOR THOSE WITH A CHRONIC COUGH*TIME: 8 AM APRIL 15th*PLACE: ROOM E423

Thank You for Serving banquet to honor waiters & waitresses at: The South, 627 East Silas Brown Jackson, MS 39201Monday, April 23rd 6-8 pm

MARK THE DATE. . .

FRIEND DAY

SUNDAY, APRIL 29th

The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Copyright © Moody Press and John MacArthur, Jr., 1983-2007.

*Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

*Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

*J. Vernon McGee's Thru The Bible

Wiersbe Expository Outlines

Philippians 3:10

10“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;” Philippians 3:10

“that I may know Him”:

*Personally (intimately)*Powerfully (resurrection)*Passionately (sufferings)!

It is Christ's resurrection power that sanctifies us to defeat temptation & trials, to lead a holy life, and to fruitfully proclaim the Gospel.

Because we know Christ and have had His righteousness imputed on us, we have been given the Holy Spirit. *The same spiritual power that raised Jesus from the

dead now enables us to accomplish the work God had sent us to do. *The resurrection was and is the greatest display of Christ's power! (Rom 1:16)

Romans 1:16

16  “ For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,”

Acts 1:88 “ but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all

Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” Acts 1:8

“that I may know Him”:

*Personally (intimately)*Powerfully (resurrection)*Passionately (sufferings)!

Philippians 3:10 c

“and the fellowship of His sufferings,”(know Him passionately).

The deepest moments of spiritual fellowship with the living Christ are at times of intense suffering; suffering drives us to Him.

“If thou art willing to suffer no adversity, how wilt thou be the friend of Christ?”

Thomas à Kempis

“Self pity comes when you lose the intimacy with Jesus.”

Stefan Salmonsson

Elisabeth Elliot:“Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.... The love of God did not

protect His own Son.... He will not necessarily protect us either - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and

chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.” 

Elisabeth ElliotElisabeth Elliot's Website 

David Wilkerson:“Jesus didn't save you so you could cruise to heaven in a luxury liner. He wants you to be useful in His kingdom!

The moment you got saved, He enrolled you in His school - the school of suffering and affliction.” David WilkersonWorld Challenge,Inc. Online 

Paul Billheimer:“All born-again people are in training for rulership. Since the supreme law of that future social order, called the kingdom of God,

is agape love, therefore their apprenticeship and training is for the learning ofdeep dimensions of this love. But deep dimensions of this

love are only learned in the school of suffering. Purity is one thing, and maturity is another. The latter comes only through years of suffering.

If we suffer, we shall alsoreign - because where there is little suffering, there is little love; no suffering, no love; no love, no rulership.” Paul Billheimer

“If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him”

2 Timothy 2:12 KJV

Lee Strobel: "The universe is a soul making machine, and part of that process is learning, maturing, and growing through difficult and

challenging and painful experiences. The point of our lives in this world isn't comfort, but training and preparation for eternity." Lee Strobel

Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God.

Joni Eareckson Tada "Programs, systems and methods sit well in the ivory towers of monasteries or in the wooden arms of icons. Head knowledge comes

from the pages of a theology text. But the invitation to know God - truly know Him - is always an invitation to suffer. Not to suffer alone, but to

suffer with Him."

Joni Eareckson Tada

Joni Eareckson Tada:“Even though I have rough moments in my wheelchair, for the most part I consider my paralysis a gift. Just as Jesus exchanged the

meaning of the Cross from asymbol of torture to one of hope and salvation, He gives me the grace to do the same with my wheelchair. If a cross can become a

blessing, so can a wheelchair. The wheelchair, in a sense, is behind me now. The despair is over. There are now other crosses

to bear, other "wheelchairs"in my life to be exchanged into gifts.” 

Joni Eareckson TadaJoni and Friends 

"God loves you enough , trusts you enough, to let affliction come into your life to see whether you will exercise the muscles of faith while your physical muscles begin to atrophy." Rev. John Howe

Vance Havner said that we need: “to comfort the afflicted & to afflict the comfortable.”

"There are no crown bearers in heaven that were not cross bearers on earth."

Spurgeon

C. S. Lewis:“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in

our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

C. S. Lewis

Our problems are opportunities to discover God’s solutions. Unknown

“You may never know that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have.”

Corrie Ten Boom

Sadhu Sundar Singh:“Should pain and suffering, sorrow, and grief, rise up like clouds and overshadow for a time the Sun of Righteousness and hide Him

from your view, do not bedismayed, for in the end this cloud of woe will descend as showers of blessing on your head, and the Sun of Righteousness rise upon you

to set no more for ever.” 

Sadhu Sundar SinghShort Biography Malachi 4:2  

C. S. Lewis:“The great thing with unhappy times is to take them bit by bit, hour by hour, like an illness. It is seldom the present, the

exact present, that is unbearable.” 

C. S. Lewis 

“God never gives strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the minute.” Oswald ChambersMy Utmost for His Highest 

Walter A. Maier:“This is the purpose of pain for the redeemed: it is one of your Father's ways of speaking to you; it is the evidence of His limitless

love, by which He woulddraw you farther from evil and closer to Him, the divine remedy which can cure you of pride and help you lean more trustingly on the

Lord.” 

Walter A. Maier

Peter Marshall:“It is a fact of Christian experience that life is a series of troughs and peaks. In His efforts to get permanent possession of a

soul, God relies on thetroughs more than the peaks. And some of his special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.”

Sadhu Sundar Singh:“During an earthquake it sometimes happens that fresh springs break out in dry places with water which quickens the land so that

plants can grow. In the same way the shattering experiences of suffering can cause the living water to well up in a human heart.”  Sadhu Sundar Singh

Brother Lawrence:“The sorest afflictions never appear intolerable, except when we see them in the wrong light: when we see them in the hand of God,

Who dispenses them; whenwe know that it is our loving Father Who abases and distresses us; our sufferings will lose their bitterness and become even a matter of

consolation.”

Brother Lawrence 

Billy Graham:“Even if we may not always understand why God allows certain things to happen to us, we can know He is able to bring good out of evil,

and triumph out of suffering.” 

Billy GrahamBilly Graham Organization

Peter Kreeft:“The greatest Christians in history seem to say that their sufferings ended up bringing them the closest to God - so this is the best

thing that could happen, not the worst.” 

Peter Kreeft Website