The Cross

The first time I listened to Smail's tape, I cried and wept. I felt the comforting presence of the Holy Spirit. U know at times when we don't understand why we suffer, or go thru trials, ple tell us we must have FAITH to pray for our breakthrus and to believe in God. And we are really discouraged when we don't get our breakthroughs. Is it cos we don't have enuff faith? But could it be that the world is simply not perfect, and that "God's purposes in such situations is not always to take us out of what is threatening to hurt or destroy us, but is sometimes rather to take us through it. Our ultimate victory comes not from escaping evil but from being given the ability to endure and bear it..."

Find some of the answers here as u struggle thru!

Abstract from Tom Smail- The Cross and the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Renewal

Toward a Theology of Suffering
There is, however, another whole area in which the Paschal model
has much to offer. As well as opening up, as we have just been seeing,
a fresh approach to renewal and healing in their relationship to Christ's
cross, it also makes possible a new understanding of unrelieved suffering
and failure to heal. These are always a great problem for the Pentecostal
model, which is exposed to constant temptation to a glib triumphalism
that arouses in people expectations which it is only sometimes able to
fulfill, with the sad result that many people are left in deep guilt because
they did not have enough faith to be healed, or else in disillusionment
because the promises so confidently made to them have not been kept.
When we expose this whole dark area to the light that comes from
the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we can begin to see that God's
purpose in such situations is not always to take us out of what is
threatening to hurt or destroy us, but is sometimes rather to take us
through it. Our ultimate victory comes not from escaping evil but from
being given the ability to endure and bear it, the way that Jesus bore it
on the cross, so that the death that was its ultimate destructive onslaught
upon Him became the way to His own Easter victory and to the world's
salvation.
When God's own self-giving love gets into the midst of a situation
dominated by sin, suffering, and death, the way it did with Jesus on the
cross, it acts creatively and transformingly on that situation. What is
in itself totally destructive can become, by Christ's presence in it, salvific
and redemptive. Christ does not rise on Easter day in spite of His
sufferings and death, but rather because of them. The risen Jesus is still
the wounded Jesus; in His resurrection He does not leave His passion
behind Him; He bears the marks of it still in His body and displays them
as the trophies of His triumph. His suffering is the very stuff out of
which He fashions His glory.
The New Testament makes it clear that the way of the Master is
the way of the disciple. He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him.
That means that we have no guarantee of immunity either from the
kind of suffering that is a direct consequence of our discipleship or from
the accidents, misfortunes, illnesses, and disabilities that afflict other
people and are as liable to afflict us as well. Paul was imprisoned in
Philippi as a direct result of his Christian witness there (Acts 16:23),
but equally the ship on which he sailed for Rome was not spared the
storm and the shipwreck that were the normal risk of all Mediterranean
seafarers at that time of year (Acts 27). He was rescued from neither a fresh approach to renewal and healing in their relationship to Christ's cross, it also makes possible a new understanding of unrelieved suffering and failure to heal. These are always a great problem for the Pentecostal model, which is exposed to constant temptation to a glib triumphalism that arouses in people expectations which it is only sometimes able to fulfill, with the sad result that many people are left in deep guilt because
they did not have enough faith to be healed, or else in disillusionment
because the promises so confidently made to them have not been kept.
When we expose this whole dark area to the light that comes from
the cross and resurrection of Jesus, we can begin to see that God's
purpose in such situations is not always to take us out of what is
threatening to hurt or destroy us, but is sometimes rather to take us
through it. Our ultimate victory comes not from escaping evil but from
being given the ability to endure and bear it, the way that Jesus bore it
on the cross, so that the death that was its ultimate destructive onslaught
upon Him became the way to His own Easter victory and to the world's
salvation.
When God's own self-giving love gets into the midst of a situation
dominated by sin, suffering, and death, the way it did with Jesus on the
cross, it acts creatively and transformingly on that situation. What is
in itself totally destructive can become, by Christ's presence in it, salvific
and redemptive. Christ does not rise on Easter day in spite of His
sufferings and death, but rather because of them. The risen Jesus is still
the wounded Jesus; in His resurrection He does not leave His passion
behind Him; He bears the marks of it still in His body and displays them
as the trophies of His triumph. His suffering is the very stuff out of
which He fashions His glory.
The New Testament makes it clear that the way of the Master is
the way of the disciple. He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him.
That means that we have no guarantee of immunity either from the
kind of suffering that is a direct consequence of our discipleship or from
the accidents, misfortunes, illnesses, and disabilities that afflict other
people and are as liable to afflict us as well. Paul was imprisoned in
Philippi as a direct result of his Christian witness there (Acts 16:23),
but equally the ship on which he sailed for Rome was not spared the
storm and the shipwreck that were the normal risk of all Mediterranean
seafarers at that time of year (Acts 27). He was rescued from neither
persecution nor misfortune, but was brought through both to fresh
opportunities for the gospel.
So for Christians today there come times when Jesus calls us to
follow Him in the way of the cross, where the delivering signs and
wonders do not happen, where the trouble from which we pray to be
freed is neither removed nor alleviated, but becomes the material out
of which God fashions us into richer and deeper realms of renewal,
which, looking back, we see could not have been reached in any other
way.
Very relevant to all this is the saying of C. S. Lewis, "Miracles are
for beginners." I take this to mean that, when we are in the early stages
of the Christian life, where faith most needs to be confirmed and built
up, God will often show himself to be the rescuer, who gets us out of
our trouble. When, however, we become stronger and more mature,
He will often honor us, not by giving us the deliverances we ask, but
by calling us to follow Jesus through the dark, even deadly places where
no relief comes, to the new life that lies on the other side of whatever
Jordan of suffering and affliction we have to cross. And, of course, none
of us will in the end escape the ultimate Jordan of death, which is the
only access to the final glory that awaits us.
We need not take too literally the time-scale implied by the Lewis
dictum. It is not only at the start of the Christian life that faith and
confidence need to be built up, and God's wonderful rescuing deliver-
ances can come at any time and in any situation, as in His wisdom and
freedom He may choose. Nevertheless, Christian growth toward ma-
turity comes less from seeing miracles than from being taken through
suffering and learning to trust God to work out His good purposes in
and through what we have to endure. If we can see Him at work only
when we are rescued from evil, and cannot trust Him when the signs
cease and the wonders do not happen we shall be in danger of remaining
permanently in the Christian nursery instead of learning, as Paul put it
to Timothy, "[to] endure hardship ... like a good soldier of Christ Jesus"
(2 Timothy 2:3).
The New Testament paradigm for all this is undoubtedly the way
Paul understands what he calls his thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians
12:7-9. Much ink has been spilled in trying to identify what exactly he
was talking about, and commentators have suggested everything from
epileptic fits and eye trouble to the harrying of persecuting Jews. That
debate is bound to be without conclusion since the relevant evidence
is almost entirely lacking.
Nevertheless, Paul does tell us quite clearly that, whatever the
precise nature of his trouble may have been, it was something that on
the face of it fulfilled no obvious useful purpose. It gave him continual
pain and played into the hands of Satan by at least partially disabling
him from doing what God had called him to do. That much can be
inferred from 12:7, "There was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger
of Satan to torment me."
Paul's response to this situation was to pray that he should be set
free from this disability, and to persist in this prayer when its request
was not immediately granted. "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to
take it away from me" (v. 8). The answer to that prayer, when at length
it came, was a very specific refusal of the deliverance he asked for. To
put it in current charismatic jargon, Paul was given a word of knowledge
to the effect that he was to live with his affliction and not expect to be
freed from it.
God was going to lead him by the way of the cross, by not rescuing
him from the trouble, but by using it to bring him into even closer
dependence upon himself. Paul had had sensational spiritual experi-
ences, which he hints at in the verses immediately before this passage,
and there was a danger that he might be carried away by them, so as to
depend on them rather than the God who gave them—always a temp-
tation for those who have had charismatic experiences, even of a much
lesser kind. In such circumstances he needed his affliction to drive him
back continually on his dependence on God. "But he said to me, 'My
grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' "
(v. 9). A disabled apostle depending on God is far more usable than a
healthy apostle living out of his own spiritual capital.
It is as if God had said to him, "Your thorn in the flesh must remain,
for although Satan put it there, I can use it to make you keep relying on
me and so to outwit Satan. For when you rely on me in your wound-
edness, you are far more powerful in my service than if you were
brimming with physical health, psychological balance, and spiritual self-
sufficiency." The way that Paul goes on shows how well he has learned
that hard lesson: "Therefore 1 will boast all the more gladly about my
Weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for
Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in per-
secutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (vv. 9-10)

"My power is made perfect in weakness"; "When I am weak, then
I am strong." Those who understand what is happening to them in these
terms are those who have entered deeply into the mystery of the strange
power that God in Christ exercises from the apparent powerlessness
of^the cross. They know that when we assess these things in terms of
a theologia cmcis, weakness and power, suffering and triumph, defeat and
victory, rejection and acceptance, death and resurrection are not con'
ttadictory but complementary, impossible as that may seem from any
-other standpoint.
As the Church of England Doctrine Commission report We Believe
m the Holy Spirit puts it, "Jesus and his passion represent for us the
touchstone of the power of which we speak, its effects when poured
out, and its confrontation with other concepts of power abroad in the
world."3 In other words. God's power is understood in accordance with
what we have been calling the Paschal model, it is the power of the
cross, of the crucified and risen Lord.
That is why Paul can cope with God's refusal to remove his thorn
in the flesh. He has learned at the cross not just about a rescuing God
who takes people out of trouble but about a saving God who can use
their trouble for their remaking, just as He used the awful suffering of
Jesus for the remaking of the world. The Pentecostal model can offer
us a theology of healing and triumph, but it cannot provide the basis
for a theology of suffering and failure, which we need just as much. For
that we have to turn, with Paul in his own suffering, to the Paschal
model, with its center in the cross.

Renewal in the Spirit and Sharing the Cross
Far from advancing beyond the cross when we are renewed in the
Spirit, needing to return to it only when we sin and need pardon, the
Paschal model shows us that the more we are filled with the Spirit, the
more we shall share in both cross and resurrection, again and again.
The triumphalistic expectations of uninterrupted release and constant
victory which the more naive part of the charismatic constituency has
sometimes chenshed and even taught are contradicted by both Scripture
and experience alike.
For our New Testament example of this we need only remember
Stephen, who is introduced to us in Acts 6 as a man -full of faith and
of the Holy Spirit" (v. 5) and "full of God's grace and power (v. 8)-a
model charismatic indeed! Precisely because he was so full of the Spirit.
Stephen saw that the gospel of Christ could not be contained within
the bounds of Jewish exclusivism, but that through it God was moving
out in grace from Israel to the whole Gentile world. Such a message
roused against him a murderous Jewish opposition that contrived his
stoning. Just as it had contrived the crucifixion-But because
the Spirit who filled Stephen was the Spirit who had filled Jesus on the
cross he met his death in the same forgiving love to his enemies and
trust in God. so that the last words of the martyr echo Ac last words
of the master:-Lord. do not hold this sin against them (7:60); Lord
Tesus, receive my spirit" (7:59).
But as death and defeat were not the end of the story for Jesus,
neither were they for Stephen. Luke tells Stephen s story in a way that
brings out quite clearly how his tragedy was used to bnng about his
triumph both in heaven and on earth. We are told how in the midst of
his suffering he had a charismatic vision of the glory that awaited him
with God- "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right
hand of God" (Luke 7:56). Professor William Manson used to point
out to his Edinburgh students that this is the only place inthe New
Testament where the exalted Lord is said to stand at the Father s right
hand. In all other references he is said to szt, because sitting is the
attitude of regnant majesty. But when the martyr who has followed the
Lord all the way to the death comes, to receive him and to honor him
the Son of Man rises from His throne. Almost, "Stand up, stand up for
Stephen!" That is indeed triumph in heaven.
But there is tnumph for Stephen and all that he died for here on
earth as well. Luke tells us that -Meanwhile, the witnesses [to Stephen s
stoning] laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul (7:58),
who was soon also due to meet the exalted Lord on the road to Damascas. There he would be asked why he was continuing to kick against
the pricks, why, in other words, he was resisting the growing conviction
that, in persecuting the Christians, he was persecuting their Lord. If we
ask what had begun to shake him in his old hostility and prepare him
for his coming conversion, the answer, at which Luke at least hints, is
that it was the way Stephen died.
Thus the death of Stephen was a powerful factor in initiating the
taking of the gospel to the Gentile world through Paul. The very thing
for which the martyr had died was beginning to happen in a way and
to an extent of which he could never have dared to dream. Stephen
moves from being filled with the Spirit to a sharing of the cross, and
through that sharing of the cross to triumph both with God in heaven
and with God's mission here on earth. That is the Paschal pattern of
Christian life in the Spirit.
That pattern prevails equally in the more restricted world of the
spiritual gifts in which modern charismatics are most interested. Mother
Basileia Schlink of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary used to say that
all the gifts of the Spirit are marked with the sign of the cross. To
exercise a ministry of healing involves suffering with those who suffer
and having to bear all the insoluble mysteries of why one is healed and
another is not. Furthermore, if we desire to prophesy, we had better
remember all the biblical evidence that the popularity rating and indeed
the life-expectancy of authentic prophets has never been high!

Conclusions
It is time to summarize our conclusions. The central thrust of the
argument has been that renewal in the Spirit urgently requires a theology
that will do justice to all that is involved in it—a map of the journey to
God's land of promise that has clearly marked on it both the power and
the love, the failure and the triumph, the weakness and the strength,
the suffering and the healing, the dying and the rising again. We have
tried to show that a theology that will more adequately fulfil all these
requirements will be one that has at its center not the experience of
Pentecost only, but the Paschal mystery of the death and resurrection
of Jesus, to which the Spirit who came to the Church at Pentecost bears
witness in all His works and ways.
Of course, no theology can ever be finally adequate to the uncon'
trollable Spirit, who, as John reminds us, blows, like the wind, wherever
He pleases (John 3:8); but in all His incalculable freedom He remains
the Spirit whom the Father gave to us through the Son who was to die
and rise again. That is why the Spirit can so often be seen to be working
within the rhythm of Christ's cross and resurrection.
Paul says all that I have been trying to say in Philippians 3:10, where
he delineates the shape of the only renewal in the Spirit that at the end
of the day matters: "I want to know Christ and the power of his
resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming
like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection
from the dead."