“…fellowship of His …” Oh! that’s a bad word. “Paul, did you write that really?” Now let’s see if Paul really wrote that. How many of you know what He said there? “Oh,” you say, “now don’t get suffering all mixed up with this beautiful Christian experience! Don’t get suffering mixed in there at all, because you see suffering is a sign of failure and backsliding and you don’t know God! He is beautiful, He is wonderful and He is all powerful. And if He is all powerful,

why should we have to have anything like that?!” I told you the other night, all these things are permitted in our Christian experience. We say, “If it has been met on Calvary then I can get rid of it.” There is one thing we can’t get rid of and that is suffering. I can get rid of my sins by claiming at Calvary, but I can’t get rid of my suffering by claiming at Calvary. He left that in the pattern; He left that in the pattern. And Paul says, “I would like to know the fellowship of this.”

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Oh, we would rather have the fellowship of His joy; the fellowship of His ministry; the fellowship of all that! But Paul says, “I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings.” Wouldn’t it be strange if at one of these big meetings or conven­ tions they gave the altar call and said, “All those who desire to know the Lord and so and so, come forward.” Of course they come out. But suppose they got up and said, “All those who want to suffer; all those who want to know the sufferings of the Lord, please come forward.” They would think you had lost your head! Well, that was the thing that Paul said, didn’t he? He said, “I want to know, I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings.” We won’t go into that because that is negative and very depressing! We want only the lovely pleasing things in this new economy. But with that you want to read Romans 8:17 and 2 Timothy 2:12 as a little balance with that verse in Philippians 3:10. Romans 8:17 “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” 2 Timothy 2:12

“If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him…” How many know that our reigning and ruling is conditional? Did you know it? How many know the reigning and ruling is condi­ tional? “If I suffer with Him I shall reign with Him.” Now that’s conditional. But you see we sing this chorus: “I shall wear a crown …” And they sing it so lovely: “I shall wear a crown, I shall wear a crown…” I always want to say: “All made of tin. All made of tin.” (That’s the echo.)

But how do you know you are going to wear a crown? Why peo­ ple think that when we get to heaven the Lord will bring out a big clothes basket full of crowns, and we will stand around and He will say, “Oh dear, you gave fifty cents to the missions once, here’s a crown! And I always did like to see you, you were so gentle a creature, here’s a crown! And you were very nice, I remember you had prayer meetings three or four times, and you did a very good work, here’s a crown!” They are all souvenirs? Nol Crowns are never souvenirs. “Well, I think we look better with a crown on,” you say. No, that’s hymnbook theology. Crowns are won. Crowns are earned. Well, what is a crown? - You put a crown right on your head? No, that’s a symbol. What is the crown? The crown is the symbol of authority. They put a crown on Elizabeth’s head the other day. What for? So that she could sit around and wear a crown the rest of her life? No, probably never had it on again. Well, what was it all about? The crown was placed on her head as a symbol of the authority vested in her. The authority isn’t the crown. The crown is only a symbol which says authority is vested in you; you have this authority; this is your authority. I put this crown on your head as a little token; it’s the symbol. It isn’t to make you look better. It is because the authority is vested in you. And so in the new order there will be some who wave palm branches before the Lord; they are not crowns. What is that? They have reached a place of praise and of worship and association with Him in that. There are some who will wear crowns. There are some who do not have crowns. There are some who are going to be with Him; some are going to stand before Him. All of those are positional things.

It doesn’t mean that literally we have to do that - we may. He will put a crown on you if you think you will feel better, but I am not interested at all in it. I am interested in what the thing means. I am interested very much in that, very much, very much in­ terested in that, because after all that is only the symbol of it; it’s the idea; it’s the symbol. Now he says, I want to enter into and know the fellowship, the oneness with Him in suffering. Later he will tell you why, for, “If we suffer with Him” (we have earned through that) “we shall reign with Him,” we shall reign. So your reigning is contingent upon a condition to be met. You say, “Follette, you teach one thing then by and by you’re saying the most depressing thing. You just take my joy all away, and I cannot, I cannot bear suffering, I don’t like pain and death, I don’t like any of it.” Well, who does? Nobody does! It is contrary to nature to like it. You don’t find anybody running around saying, “Oh hallelujah, I love death!” No we don’t. Death is an enemy. He doesn’t expect us to. But He wants us to be intelligent about it and spiritually minded. He wants us to know how to interpret those factors - not just to run around like an ostrich … “Oh, I don’t like death …” Well, you got to meet it! You have to face it! Why not be a realist then, and let God tell you how to meet it; how to look at it; how to interpret it; what to do with it. It is thrown into the pattern;

it is there in the economy of God. It has to be. Paul sees it and he says, “Suffering? I want to know about that thing, because I know it has a reaction. And I know if I learn to know the fellowship of suffering with Him it is going to do something that will g-l-o-r-i1-y Him - and He will be glorified.” You say, “God glorified in it?” Certainly! Wasn’t God glorified in Lazarus dying, laying in the tomb? Certainly! Jesus said sol Jesus looked at them and said: “This isn’t death and a lot of local stuff you are tied up with. Stop it!” He says, “This dead man, stinking death, lying in a tomb, all of it, that’s to the g l o r y of God!” (John 11:4) He got glory out of it. “Well, we don’t like it,” we say. “He is in a tomb. What will we do with him?” Well, wait, -i:m the Lord brings him out! Can you see that or can’t you see it? How many can see it? How many know it’s kind of a hard pill? Of course. We will have to have an awful lot of blessings to get that one down, but you better get it down; it does something good in your system. You can’t get around it, and that is why I say let us be like men and women of faith who dare to look at the thing and call it by its name and not like these ostriches. When they see it they put their heads in the sand and make believe it isn’t. Well, you11 be a bunch of feathers later - a grease spot when the train hits you! He sees a train coming down the tracks and the ostrich says,

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“I don’t like trains, they make so much noise. Ohhhh …” The next morning there was a grease spot and seven ostrich plumes! That was all that was left of him! That’s true. - And so it is. I like Paul because he is a realist. He talked about death just the same as heaven. He talked about suffering just like reigning. He looked at all these items in God. He didn’t isolate them and interpret them in the terms of what we like. He says, “I want to know how to suffer with Him.” That’s a daring thing, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see an altar full of baptized people, and you asked them: “What do you want, brother? And what are you seeking tonight, sister?” And they would say, “Well, I want to know how to suffer with the Lordi” Wouldn’t that be something! Now listen! How many know you can’t go out and make your suffering? Don’t start in trying to prick yourself with a pin so you can suffer. No, you will find plenty in the pattern of God; you don’t need to make it; it’s there, and it will be weighed out in measures that are suitable. He will never allow it to be too strong or too much. But I will tell you, if you read church history, if you read the New Testament, if you read the life of those people who knew God in the closest, sweetest fellowship, how many know everyone of them had a life of suffering, every last one of them, every last one. But that’s the way of God; that’s the way of God. If you want to know God then you might just as well learn it: that you’ll know Him through one of these media: suffering is one of them - not all, that’s one of them. So he says, “I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings.”

Now the next. Paul says: