FELLOWSHIP

Our Sunday School lesson for this week was titled, “Fellowship with God and each other”.

One of the definitions our Pastor gave for fellowship was: Participate.

I thought that it was an interesting definition. You can’t just “show up” for church and say, “I’ve done my part”. You have to participate! How? By communicating. By being active.

We communicate with God through pray. But communication also involves listening. We need to listen to what God has to say to us. Through his word, the preaching, teaching… and learning how to listen to that still small voice.

We are active in our relationship with God through worship, pray, Bible study, meditating on the scriptures, witnessing, helping our fellowman/woman, and living a Godly, dedicating, Holy life before Him and others.

Not only do we need to participate in our relationship with God, but also with each other.

I’ve heard that marriage is a 50/50 proposition. I’ve never been married, but I don’t agree with that in the least. The husband must give 100%. The wife must give 100%. Any of you married folks out their disagree with me, let me know. I believe we must give 100% in any relationship. Our relationship with God, spouse, children, siblings, etc…

The church needs fellowship with each other. For encouragement, strength, guidance, etc…We are not in this fight alone.

I’ll end this post by quoting a portion of our Sunday School lesson:

“Fellowship is vital to believers in Jesus Christ. Constant and ongoing fellowship - both with God and with fellow believers - sustained the early church. The book of Luke reveals that the growth of the early church included their continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers…

…Many people have mistakenly thought they were to be isolated, like an island unto themselves. This wrong thinking has created many casualties among Christian believers.

The plight of believers is similar to that of a group of porcupines that the famous philosopher Schopenhauer once used to illustrate a point.

A group of porcupines were marooned one bitter cold night in the middle of a large frozen field. There was no way to escape the biting wind. They could not burrow into the frozen ground. They huddled together to keep warm, but their sharp quills began to pinch and hurt one another. The close they moved together, the more the pain increased until some of the animals who could not bear the pain drew apart to sleep alone. In the end they had frozen to death. They needed each other.


In our humanness there are times when we hurt each other, and we tend to pull apart to go it alone; but Christians must resist this tendency. The scriptures often encourages us to walk together in agreement….Through fellowship with God and with each other, we learn to tolerate one another. Through fellowship we learn to appreciate our differences.”

God Bless,

Douglas