We cannot endure the process of judgment except as we keep counting ourselves dead with Christ and raised with Christ. When we try to cling to some relationship, some thing, or some circumstances, we suffer. We suffer because God wants us to let go of our idol so it will not hinder our future joy.

All depends on our faith in God. The righteous of all ages have lived and yet live by faith in God's willingness and ability to bring us to the fullness of joy.

From life to death to life. From temporary life to death with Christ to eternal life. This is the only path to the Kingdom of God and fullness of joy.

Sometimes the Gospel, at least in America, is preached as though it is God's plan to make our first personality happy on earth and then to bring us to Paradise when we die. This is a religion like all the other religions of the world, not the Christian Gospel. Christianity is the only plan for bringing human beings and their environment down into death and then up again into eternal life.

It is not that we go to Heaven, it is that Heaven is going to be clothed with us. We see the picture of this as the fullness of Heaven clothed with flesh and bones emerged from the cave of Joseph of Arimathea.

Get ready to die that you may live forever. Whatever you do, do not clutch your present existence. If you do you will lose everything. Will you trade your threadbare rags for a royal robe? Are you so doubtful about God's character that you do not dare to trust Him?

The pathway to life is always through death. There are many portrayals in the Scriptures of this truth.

The greatest portrayal occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane. Where would Christ be today if He had refused to drink the cup of death? Where would we be?

Except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains as it is, which isn't very much! The original Christ was much indeed. But look what He is now!

The story of Abraham and Isaac probably is, after Christ, the greatest portrayal of the fact that you cannot keep anything until you receive it twice.

In the first place, Isaac did not appear on the scene until it was impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have children. The twenty-five years they waited was a death in itself. Many of the heroes of the Scriptures came from mothers who had been barren. "Rejoice, O barren. More are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband." Something like this.

God waited until Abraham's soul was totally entwined in Isaac. Then God asked for Isaac back.

This is the way God deals with us. He brings us into the world and gets us all entwined with the present creation. Then He asks for it back. Until God does this our possession is an idol to us. Without realizing it our treasure has become a chain preventing us from being free in God.

To be continued.