Gabe Fluhrer

That is anything that you are undergoing right now,

that is done for the sake of Christ or done in union with him.

In other words, why do we struggle with depression and anxiety?

Why do we have such fracturing of our personalities, of our families?

Why is there so much hostility and hatred, evil?

Why do we as Christians profess one thing with our lips and our lives tell a different story?

What about the hypocrisy?

What about all the things that are wrong with our lives, all the psychological discomfort we experience, all the discomfort from our own sin, our indwelling sin that we experience?

What about all of that?

And Jesus and Paul would say to us, I think, to be filled with the Holy Spirit does not mean to speak in an unknown language.

and hoot and holler and whatever else.

To be filled with the Spirit is to be one who's entered into the sufferings, the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ.

Not redemptive in any way, but to understand that in union with Christ, he will give us a cross or crosses to bear, as it were.

That's what he means by taking up the cross daily.

He means that there's a daily death that has to happen in our lives.

And the resurrected life always begins with death.

And you know, when I do weddings, one of the things I'll say, and I'll have to warn the couples beforehand so I don't put them off because it's not usually what you'd say at a wedding, is that every wedding really is also a funeral.

The wedding ceremony is also a funeral ceremony because two individuals are now dying to themselves in a way they would never have died before.

and coming together by God's call to be one, one flesh.

And so it is in our lives, the moment that we come to our bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, the death begins.