Pieces week one

WHAT IS FELLOWSHIP?

If someone were to ask you, what does it mean to be the church, how would you respond?

Being the church can mean a number of things. Next week we are going to talk about some of those things, but I want to begin where being the church should begin and that is operating in fellowship.

What is fellowship?

Fellowship is 3 things:

It is connection

We connect when we are together. It is mean to bring people who share similarities together to embrace our differences so that as a unit we can connect.

Fellowship is natural

From the very beginning of time, God was partaking in fellowship. The father, son and Holy Spirit live together in a fellowship of love and pour out that love in the form of grace.

Lastly, we said that fellowship is present.

the only way to practice fellowship is to spend time together. Getting to know one another and beikng there for each other.

In the letter to the corinthians (or any letter for that matter) Paul usually spends time praising the churches for what they have been doing and he spends the majority of his time correcting the church so that it knows what it should be doing.

When Paul was writing 1 Corinthians, he is writing to a church that been divided. The main thing the church is fighting about is who they should follow. Some of the leaders of the church are saying that they are following Paul. Others are saying they follow Apollo, some Cephas, some Christ. They are all trying to figure out who’s teachings they are really following.

Paul starts the letter off by reminding them of what they have been called into.

1 Corinthians 1:4–9 ESV

4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Understand this… Fellowship is something we have been called into.

If we are called into it, we are to act on our calling. There are three ways we do that.

LETS PRAY

JH you are dismissed.

Act in gratitude

Romans 1:8–12 ESV

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you 10 always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— 12 that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

Every time Paul starts a letter he gives thanks to God for the church he is writing too. In Philippians Paul talks of contentment and how he has learned what it means to be content. He demonstrates this by thanking God at every turn. If you read through the 13 epistles for God, they all start by thanking God for the people is he writing to.

As a matter of fact, he commands this of the Thessalonians when writing the first letter.

At the end of the letter he says

1 Thessalonians 5:16–18 ESV

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

In order to practice fellowship, you must first make the attitude of gratefulness your default.

Act in gratitude.

The second way you can practice fellowship is by comforting one another.

Someone read:

2 Corinthians 1:3–7 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

What word do we see in there quite a bit?

Comfort.

When we are in a community of people, we are called to comfort as God has comforted us.

Story on comfort

But notice what the purpose of that comfort is. It is for comfort and salvation. The end goal remains the same. We comfort so one can believe. Our fellowship is meant to be one that ultimately leads people to Christ. But what chance do we stand of doing that if we do not first comfort one another?

You practice fellowship by comforting one another.

Lastly, we practice fellowship by embracing each others differences.

Story about this

Romans 12:4–5 ESV

4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

Though we are all connected by one thing, there are a million things that make us so different.

We spend so much time debating who is right and who is wrong. Or looking at people funny or different because of what they look like or what they like to do or where they are from. The reality is that God made us all so different. It is actually what I love most about the job that I have. I get to interact with so many different people. From a 6th grader who LOVES fortnight to a 9th grader who is into martial arts, to a 12th grader that loves the outdoors to a college student who is into music all the way up to people that who have travelled the world to more places that I can even dream of.

We are all different and a good fellowship is one that takes those differences and embraces them. Uses them as part of a bigger puzzle that we get to be a part of. The Mosiac becomes beautiful when broken pieces are put together to serve a purpose it could never accomplish alone.

We practice fellowship by embracing differences and worrying more about the whole vs ourselves.

To recap:

We practice fellowship by:

Acting in gratitude

Comforting one another

Embracing each other’s differences

Let’s go do that in small groups. Let’s pray.