The cross stands between us and the power that Christ has assigned to the Church. The suffering and death of the cross casts out our self-will, our self-seeking, our personal ambition, our desire for self-aggrandizement, our self-centeredness, our willingness to manipulate all persons and circumstances—even God Himself—in order to achieve our own desires.

Paul was seeking glory and honor, but he was seeking glory and honor in God's way, that is, by the route of the cross of Christ. Paul was seeking the power of an endless and incorruptible life, but he understood that the abundant spiritual life Christ promised springs forth within us only as the dead fleshly appetites and soulish ambition are pruned back, are circumcised, by painful experiences.

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body (II Corinthians 4:8-10).

Paul was given visions of God. On the heels of the visions came the messenger of Satan to pierce his flesh. Christ explained to Paul that this suffering was necessary if Christ was to be exalted in Paul's life and ministry.

We may be seeking power. God is seeking to fill all things with His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are brought down to death by trouble, by perplexity, by persecution, by blow after blow falling on us. God keeps on raising us up, and the power that raises us spills over onto other people and raises them up.

We always are being pressed into Christ's sufferings, pressed into the mold of His death on the cross. It is the death of pain, of weakness, of helplessness, until we grow accustomed to trusting in God alone for all things, for all our needs and desires. Christ raises us up, thereby filling us, and all persons and circumstances related to us, with Himself.

God will never give His glory to another person. If we would receive the Glory of God we must die so that Christ can live in us. We must become an eternally inseparable part of God through Christ.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one (John 17:22).

The Glory of God has been given to the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus has given that Glory to us. The fact that Jesus has given His Glory to us is so staggering in its consequences, so completely beyond anything we could imagine or desire, that we shall not understand the value of what has been given until we are well into the Kingdom Age. (from A Study Guide for the Book of Philippians)