Jesus did all that he did for you and me. He suffered for us. He brought many sons to glory. “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8:29) Like a soldier with stripes, the badge of authority for Christ are the wounds in his side and hands and feet. He kept those in his immortal body. It was by suffering that he became great. In the kingdom, this is a little unknown fact, but anytime you are entering a season of greatness, it will almost always be preceded by a season of intense pressure or suffering.
Why? Because through much tribulation we enter the kingdom. The squeezing we go through and the pressure we feel is defining us. An intense season of pressure is a prophecy of a coming season of promotion.
Christ is the captain of our salvation and the ruler of our sufferings. Jesus sees us as brothers and sisters because he made us sons of God. When we worship God in the midst of our pain, when we are praising Jesus, when we are pressing into the Father, he comes and joins us. In those moments we are to “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2) We are the joy that Jesus died to obtain. We are the treasure, the trophy, the result, the effect, the cause, we are the reason he did what he did.
