Making Fellowship Work Like It's Supposed To
Parkway Baptist
15 December 2013 AM
Acts 2:42
Translated "fellowship". The idea is to partake fully in someone or something.
Koinonia: partnership, that is, (literally) participation, or (social) intercourse, or
(pecuniary) benefaction: - (to) communicate (-ation), communion, (contri-),
distribution, fellowship.
(Matthew 28:18-20) If Parkway can expand its fellowship to include more of its
membership, the LORD will send more people for us to minister to! God has
someone for every single member to minister to! He's waiting on us!
Christian Fellowship causes all parties involved to grow! Each part supplies
something critical to the lives of the others in order for them to be fulfilled
Ephesians 4:11-16
We are affected by those we fellowship in our day to day lives. Sometimes we
have to rely on fellow Christians to help clean the toxins from our system that
come from having to fellowship with the world (1 John 1:7). You will be pulled
up or pulled down to the spiritual level of those you focus on most in your day
to day lives.The plague on our nation isn't bad government, its loss of
community fellowship. Empty nest syndrome wasn't such a problem (neither
was depression, anxiety, and menopause) in old time fellowship because
every woman in the community of believers was busy helping other women as
they raised kids together, elder ones helping the younger. Christian family is
meant to be our extended family. (Nicole, "I wanted to be with my church
family for Thanksgiving" rather than natural family because didn't have that
closeness)
Vance Packard Nation of Strangers, moving for education, money and
opportunity has destroyed the close network of the community. It's the job of
the church to restore it by creating the common bond of gathering to serve
God. Seeking true fellowship in Christ turns strangers into friends!
Problem with society's idea of "family" today, mentality that family exists to
provide for me…entitlement…started not with the government but with
absentee parents trying to make it up to kids with excess earnings (post
WWII). Soon fellowship meant fellowship with objects instead of people.
Destroyed the fabric of family and replaced it with materialism, consumerism,
and entertainmentism. Satan's World System of Selfishness.
Benefaction: 1. The act of conferring aid of some sort. 2. A charitable gift or
deed.
Because the church has abandoned its mandate from God to care for the
poor, our government makes us tithe so they can do the work of the church
because the church isn't doing what it's supposed to do!
God takes us just as we are, but He refuses to leave us there. He saves us,
He sanctifies us, He empowers us, He commissions us, He sends us, He calls
us home, He resurrects us, He rewards us.
To be fulfilled, we must be giving as well as receiving (Sea of Galilee and
Dead Sea). All too many "Dead Sea Christians" and those who are lost are
miserable because not in fellowship with believers yet relentlessly
fellowshipping with materialism, consumerism, TV, entertainers, sports, stuff,
ambition.
The Spirit first immerses us into Christ by making us part of His universal
body. But then the Spirit will always "immerse" us into the lives of other
believers so that we become co-workers.
We will never be fulfilled until we find our place in true fellowship and begin to
give into the common work using our gifts. The challenge is we are often so
busy we don't take time to find our place in the body.
Ephesians 4:1-7