Am I Made Yet?

Jn. 1.23  "I am the voice...crying in the wilderness."

My father used to say that the main thing lacking in the church is passion.

John the Baptist was passionate.
He not only transmitted the message - he was the message.
     Where there is passion there is identification.

Somehow, in the spiritual world when a man carries a burden to the point of complete identification, he becomes the thing he carries.
He cries not for himself, but for the burden he carries,
which has now become his burden..

The person carrying a weight does not have to be convinced that it is real.

"Moses said unto the LORD, ...  thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? (Num. 11.11)

It wasn't something theoretical, it was something real.

I can't really pray for something when I don't feel its dimension within.

     Identification is a vital thing in prayer.
          It is not just one more gimmick,
               or just one more way to leverage mediocrity.
And we soon run into the question: how far does our identification go?

How sad to find ourselves praying when  the doctors have given up hope for a life,
     and to realize that for us it is "somebody else's pain."
          How sad to know that the needy one will die -
               but that we will live on in our little spiritual world.

How far have we gone, how far can we go -
     in our appropriation of what we pray for?
Are we able to feel the pain, to sense the confusion, to measure the heavy burden?
     Are we able to feel it as our own? 
          Can we feel that we "are" the person we are praying for?
 
Jesus 'bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows.' (Is 53.4) 
He not only bore the burden, but was "made sin for us" (2 Cor. 5.12)
     "It is the way the Master went,
          should not the servant tread it still?"

Paul sums up his goal saying: 
"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings..." (Phil. 3.10)
It is not just the Resurrection power, but the sharing of the Burden which Paul longs for.

The two things go together - and can we really know the one if we are ignorant of the other?

     We can be sure that if we find the fellowship of His suffering, of His burden,
          God will come in the power which answers the burden of our seeking.