DIVINE FELLOWSHIP

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Dear friends, if our conscience is clear, we can come to God with bold confidence. And we will receive whatever we request because we obey Him and do the things that please Him. And this is His commandment: We must believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as He commanded us. Those who obey God's commandments live in fellowship with Him and He with them. And we know He lives in us because the Holy Spirit lives in us.

1 John 3:21-24

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Fellowship is a word we hear used a lot in Christian circles, especially within the church. At its most foundational level, believers come to understand it as a friendly connection between believers as they join together to form a family of faith as they worship or serve the Lord. If you want to get really technical about it, Webster's dictionary defines the word as companionship or a company of equals and friends.

I don’t know about you but personally, I cherish fellowship and the special blessing it has brought and continues to bring to my wife and me. This is because there is a special level of caring, loving, and kindness found in Christian fellowship that you don’t find elsewhere as you are related with others who share a devotion to Jesus and are committed to treat others as He would. Ultimately, I have always felt a personal comfort zone within any place of Christian fellowship and maybe you can relate.

Well, today's scripture passage takes this concept of fellowship to the highest plain possible for in it we find John discussing fellowship with the One who is the Master Maker of it, the One who has created us in His own image so to have a common place to form fellowship here on earth. Look again at those words here:

Dear friends, if our conscience is clear, we can come to God with bold confidence. And we will receive whatever we request because we obey Him and do the things that please Him. And this is His commandment: We must believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as He commanded us. Those who obey God's commandments live in fellowship with Him and He with them. And we know He lives in us because the Holy Spirit lives in us. Vv.21-24

Note here that in order to properly exercise fellowship here on earth, we first have to “live in fellowship with” God. In other words, our primary relationship in life needs to be with Him first, and Him alone. Jesus affirmed this when asked about the greatest commandment. He said this:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30

Straight from the mouth of Jesus, God incarnate Himself, we learn that Christian believers are to give their fullest mind’s attention and heart’s devotion to God and God alone. Genuine fellowship starts with Him.

So how do we properly enter into this fellowship with the Lord?

The scriptures tell us it starts with being obedient to His commandments, doing whatever pleases Him. We can do this by following the leading of the Holy Spirit who dwells within every single person who places their belief in Jesus as Savior. This committed divine relationship with God, coupled with a dedication to trust in His Son with a willingness to live in His ways, results in us relating to one another properly in fellowship as we love as our Lord loves us.

We also learn of two other wonderful benefits we gain beyond earthly fellowship when we make divine fellowship our number one priority.

Did you catch it in the scripture passage?

There we read this:

Dear friends, if our conscience is clear, we can come to God with bold confidence. And we will receive whatever we request because we obey Him and do the things that please Him.

When we surrender ourselves to God, giving him all our heart and mind and soul and strength, then we allow His will to be our own. We don’t do anything separate from what He wants us to do and He will never lead us into sin, therefore, we can come to Him with a bold confidence born of a clear conscience. When we allow God to lead us to full time righteousness, then there’s no space for the shame of sin to enter in because we turn away from all transgressions.

And as if living with a clear conscience isn’t great enough, note that we also can count on receiving “whatever we request” from the provider of every good and perfect gift (James 1:17) because we will only ask for the things that the Lord wants us to ask for. Later on in this letter, we’ll be covering this passage but here’s a great place to introduce it. Here’s what we find in chapter 5:

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him. Vv.14-15

Some people want to treat the Lord like He’s some kind of “drive thru” provider of blessings. All you need to do is ask Him for anything you want and He will give it to you. Many pastors who preach a prosperity Gospel are misleading Christian believers with this false teaching so don’t buy into it because the scriptures are clear. We are to pray for the Lord’s will to be done through us and then pray for what we need in order for that will to be done. When we do this, the Lord will give us what we ask for.

Friends, we serve such an awesomely good God, a Heavenly Father who always wants the best for us. He wants us to have a faithful, devoted relationship with Him, a relationship grounded in obedience to His will and way which can and will produce a clear conscience within us. And when we have a committed relationship with Him, we then in turn can share the fruits of it with others, loving them as our Lord commands in the spirit of true and divine fellowship.

My prayer is that you will join me in doing just that, every single day.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.