Building up believers and the New Testament church

Principles of Spiritual Fellowship

Spiritual Fellowship--God's Way

I Corinthians 13 speaks of charity. Charity, or love, we know to be embodied in God, because God is love. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind. Charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." This verse embraces the principles of spiritual fellowship. If our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, our lives together must be structured in God. They must find an expression in the living reality of the Holy Spirit as He would build us together for the glory of God and for the highest purpose God has created us for. "Charity rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Charity beareth all things"--a serving. This is causing the one who is weaker to be lifted up. "Charity believeth all things; hopeth all things; endureth all things."

I believe all true Christians desire fellowship, but many are hindered because they lack understanding. They are destroyed because of this lack. But with understanding and direction, as our lives are built and strengthened in the Lord and in the principles of life, we will start to enjoy our fellowship with God. In enjoying this fellowship we will also be in communion with those who are enjoying the same fellowship.

In John 8:12 Jesus said, "I am the Light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life." Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, has now come to give the world light that the world might walk in truth. There is no darkness is God, no variableness or turning in His ways, but the Lord is straightforward. His ways are ways of righteousness.

He is upright, and the work of grace in the hearts and lives of those who have come to know the Lord as their Savior will also be upright. We will not look to one another, but will have eyes only for Him. Jesus Christ is the Lover of our souls, and we should seek to know Him and Him alone. Our fellowship is not with one another in the beginning. Our fellowship is with Christ, and only then can we know fellowship one with another in that which we are experiencing.

God has created us in Christ Jesus to enjoy Himself and to contain His life. He has said that we are being built as a habitation for God, and we shall be with Him for eternity. He will be in our midst for eternity, not only these individual bodies, but the Church--the body of Christ brought together in Him by faith. So allow your lives to be structured in God; allow these principles of Christian fellowship to be strengthened as the Spirit of God is wooing and leading you. That anointing will not leave you, but will teach you all things. Let us not draw back, but let us press on into this fellowship.

If there is one thing the devil would like to rob us of, it is our time and fellowship with God. He would have us involved in religious activities, without a real flow of the life of God in our hearts and through our lives. He would get us working for God, but not having fellowship with God. Fellowship takes time. Fellowship takes a work of the Cross. Only as we continue in this life we have in Christ, and enjoy Him, will we come to the highest that God has ordained for us. He will not stop short. It is up to us to submit our spirits to Him, humble ourselves and then by faith take hold of His promises.

We are partakers of His divine nature through these promises, knowing Him and experiencing the depth, the height, the breadth and the length of all that God has done in Christ Jesus, and the going on together to comprehend the love of God which passes all understanding. This is not a natural working--not man understanding God in his natural mind. This is man in the Spirit enjoying the Lord, comprehending and knowing God and His power and strength, moving in the authority that He has given to us in His Son that He may be glorified in all things.

Jesus said, "I can do nothing of Myself," and this should be the testimony of every born-again Christian: that as we stand in faith we can do nothing of ourselves. We can know nothing of fellowship unless the Spirit of God would give us this sweet communion and bring us to a place that we can enjoy together what God has given to us in His Son.

God has made us with an ability to choose, and the freedom to choose Him and His way. The Spirit has come to lead us into all truth. He will discipline, chasten, guide and train us in the way of righteousness. So let us by faith take hold, and let the Lord wash us with His word. Let the word become living to us and then we shall rejoice in God and not in the pleasures of this world. We will not look at the sufferings but count it as all joy that we may attain to that higher plane. that God has purposed for us in His Son. We will rejoice to know that we have been counted worthy to suffer for His sake.

This rejoicing can only come out of true fellowship with God, and then fellowship together in what God has done in us and is doing through us. Let us walk in the light as He is in the light, and then there will be no darkness. We will speak the truth in love because we will have come up to that place in which we do not look to man. We will not be centered in self, but we will have found life in its fullest expression in Christ Jesus our Lord.