As we continue to look positively following Easter, one thing that I hope spurs you on is the thought that soon we may be able to see people again in church having fellowship.
Fellowship was a real hallmark to the first church as it tells me in the Bible:
And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Acts 2:42
Who would have thought at the beginning of last year that we would not be allowed to see people? If this was a film we would be talking of a Big Brother scenario, but this is not a film, it is a real-life scenario!
Jesus knew how important fellowship is. Listen to what the Bible says. “When we got there, we saw that a fire was kindled and fish were frying over it, and there was bread.“Bring some of the fish you’ve just caught,” Jesus said. So Simon Peter went out and dragged the net ashore. By his count there were 153 large fish; and yet the net hadn’t torn. “Now come and have some breakfast!” Jesus said; and none of us dared ask him if he really was the Lord, for we were quite sure of it. Then Jesus went around serving us the bread and fish”.
Jesus wanted fellowship. He knows we were created for that. I hope you have missed your church family? It is a hallmark of belonging to Jesus.
Why not today start preparing for the return by contacting people from your church and encouraging each other as we await the possibility of that return?
The word fellowship is the definition of the Greek word ‘koinonia.’ It means to be a sharer, a companion, one who is a partaker, a participant in communion.
I am sure you have seen this illustration before but let us remind ourselves again.
A pastor went to visit a man who had been absent from church for some time. When the pastor arrived at the house he found him sitting by a fire of glowing coals. The man fully expected his pastor to rebuke him for his non-attendance at services. But instead, the pastor drew up a chair alongside the fireplace where the man was sitting just looking into the fire.
With the tongs, the pastor reached into the fire and took one of the red hot glowing coals and placed it by itself out on the hearth. In no time at all the coal began to lose its glow and in a few minutes, it was cold and black. The man looked up into the face of his pastor who hadn’t said a word and he said “I’ll be there next Sunday.”
There are many analogies for the Christian disconnected from a church, a football player without a team, a soldier without an army, a sheep without a flock, but the most understandable and Biblical picture is that of a child without a family. In the New Testament, believers call each other brothers and sisters and, in his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul writes:
Now you…are not foreigners or strangers any longer, but are citizens together with God’s holy people. You belong to God’s family.
Ephesians 2:19
While we may not be at church next Sunday it is going to come so let us be determined to be red hot coal, not a dead cinder.
Stay safe and Blessed