Isaiah often streamed into the testimony of Jesus, as the Spirit tends to do, but it was into His Suffering that people typically notice the most. The Suffering Servant passage reveals that part of Jesus in ongoing suffering to accomplish the things of THe Father. The film The Passion has this same seed within it, and is entering people worldwide. Last week it entered Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and beyond.
To know Jesus as He Suffers is to know Him also in His Resurrectional Force. They go together and are being co-released so to speak in the Spirit! The Power in Him is connected to both His suffering and His triumph. The Cross is again being preached in the most vicseral and directly impartational manner. The Cross is our entrance into heaven now, as well as into what is meant by “resurrection life”. I still like this term, the abundant life, though its been overused–what it means to me, is to enter more of The Actual Life of Christ HERE ON EARTH. Lots of us are having much more daily heaven experience, not just occasional worship moments, but ongoing vision and incarnate awareness of His Presence in our every day. But the focus is not just on experience, it is being returned to the Cross, and actually moving in what it opened us to.
I think that this is the right focus, as it is the single act which revealed the Father most overtly in history, and it is also the actual path into heaven right now for every person. There is no other way to enter heaven, but through the cross.
David goes into this over and over even before the cross had occured in space and time–confession itself, is based on the reality of the cross. We confess assuming that the cross and its power is real and can be made ours.
So as many are ascending higher. Many are seeing angels, and really hearing God on new and practical levels–not just as an upper storey mystical experience, but as a daily diaper changing one. As this happens, God starts preaching the cross. This film comes out, and His People are riveted to His Side!