Fellowship

I preached on fellowship yesterday. Unfortunately for most people when they think of fellowship in connection with the church the first thing that comes to mind is the image of food. However, that is a far cry from what the bible describes as fellowship.

In his book “The Body” Chuck Colson states the following:

Surveys show that the number one thing people look for in a church is fellowship. But what most modern westerners seek is a far cry from what the Bible describes and what the early church practiced. No term in the Christian lexicon is more abused than fellowship.

A biblical description of fellowship is found in the book of acts describing the early church. Acts 2:42-47

42They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

In the New Testament the word fellowship literally means “a communion”, a participation of people together in God’s grace. When we have fellowship it should be based on the fact that we live for and serve Jesus Christ.

Here are three of the benefits that we receive from fellowshipping with other believers.

1. Fellowship meets a basic human need, people to live with.
2. Fellowship provides us a family for living.
3. Fellowship gives us an emotional benefit, support.

We talk about having the light, “Well, I used to do so-and-so but I saw the light and now I don’t do that anymore.” Paul talks in the book of Ephesians about having eyes of our heart enlightened or illuminated. Even the cartoonist describes a thought as a little light bulb. To say that God is light means there is nothing that God does not know either about us or about anything else.

Morally it speaks of the holiness of God. If you wanted to use one word to describe God it would be Holy. The bible says, “Be holy as I am holy.” God is absolutely holy! John said, “God is light.” That is a positive. Then he uses the negative, “In Him is no darkness at all.”

In the Greek it’s a double negative. There is no, not any, none, not a shed of darkness in God at all. The basis of fellowship is this light.

If we are to have fellowship with God, we must walk in the light, we must walk in the light because God is light.

As far as the service itself we had a ton of people out sick. There has been a stomach virus going around OKC, my family and I had it all week, and we only had 69 people in worship.

The big news of the day is that it seems as if our church has found a worship minister. When I came to Mayfair as pastor last July there were no staff members here. We have since call a youth minister, missions and outreach minister and a family minister but we have struggled in finding a worship minister.

After much prayer and consideration several committees got together and met with a man yesterday afternoon for the second time and decided to recommend that our church call him as our minister or worship. I am really happy and excited about this!