Devoted to the Fellowship
Phil Schaefer
9/14/08
Key Scripture: Acts 2: 42
Introduction:
We are teaching on a vision for who we are as a church, of creating a compelling future that leads to a present day pursuit. It’s about living life in the radical middle, not on the edges, not to the extremes, but coming together in the middle.
Acts 2:42: Our vision is to be a people who are “devoted to the Apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread, and to prayer, calling all to salvation thru Jesus Christ.”
Today we are talking about being devoted to the fellowship. Devotion to fellowship is being devoted to these things, not by guilt or obligation, but by seeing the Holy Spirit at work in us, and by grace creating new desires in us, and by looking for the goodness of God towards each one of us. It means seeing, looking, and waiting on God together and having our lives enriched together.
Fellowship means- (Gr) =koinonia, from koinos= common, shared in common, koininokis= generous
1. Fellowship is the common life of the church, seen in two ways.
- What we share in together
- What we share out together
- What we give as well as what we receive
- Our mission is to receive God’s love continually that we may give His love graciously.
2. Fellowship is what we share in together.
- 1 Cor. 1:19- “called into fellowship of His Son”
- 1 John 1:3-“ our fellowship is with the Father”
- Phil. 2:1- “the fellowship of the Spirit”
- Koinonia is engaging in what the trinity experiences, it is a Trinitarian experience.
- Phil.1:5 –“ your fellowship( partnership) in the gospel”
- Phil. 3: 10- “the fellowship of His sufferings”
3. Fellowship is living as companions of faith. We are:
- Fellow heirs
- Fellow laborers
- Fellow prisoners
- Fellow servants
Rick Warren- “Real fellowship is experiencing life together. We must have relationships to grow. It is a medical fact that from birth to old age, our health depends on the amount of social connection that we have with people. Physical, emotional, and spiritual health depend it. People connected to other people thrive and grow, while those not connected wither and die in their spirits.
4.The stages of fellowship:
- The teenage years- the self-awareness era:
- Experimenting, and an awareness of others
- Our social lives begin to develop
- We’re beginning to get a sense of who we are
- Our issue: acceptance
- The 20’s- the discovery era:
- You’re wrestling with degrees, jobs, mates, children
- Your wrestling is between staying young or becoming an adult
- Whatever choices you make, you are determined not to become like your parents.
- Our issue: naivete
- The 30’s- the responsibility era:
- It’s about how much you can take on
- You’re fighting for control, in your family, work, marriage
- You thought mom and dad didn’t know what they were doing, now you’re beginning to sense that you don’t know either
- Our issue: fighting for control
- The 40’s- the maxed-out era:
- You are saturated with mortgage, teens, and a diminishing return on job satisfaction.
- You thought life would go smoother than it has.
- A certain amount of cynicism and disappointment is getting stored up.
- Our issue: burn-out and drop-out
- The 50’s- the reflective era:
- Un-forgiveness and bitterness can become entrenched.
- Unresolved issues from childhood, marriage, and friendships begin to have a real affect on your thinking.
- You become more insular so as not to be further disappointed.
- Our issue: un-forgiveness and bitterness
- The 60’s- the settled era:
- Disengagement from others
- Nothing new to be experienced- “been there, done that”
- Dreams have faded
- Our issue: loneliness
- The 70’s- the slowness era:
- Your confidence is no longer there.
- Your family is consumed with their lives.
- Our issue: fear
None of these negative issues can be avoided. Acceptance, naivete, fighting for control, burn-out, and drop-out, un-forgiveness, and bitterness; these all come with the territory of life. You can’t avoid these but we need each other to navigate through these stages.
5. Fellowship is not problem solving, but problem- sharing.
- Fellowship is not to solve people’s problems, or take away the pain, but to help one another see the grace operating in the midst of it all.
- “ It’s hard to do, because our whole culture is going the other direction, saying if you’re smart enough and got the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems. Most of life’s problems are not there to be solved. They are there to see and learn how God’s grace works in our lives.” Eugene Peterson
- “ Fellowship is living before one another and saying, ”I screwed up, I sinned, I rebelled, I did this stupid thing.” And yet find that there is grace that comes out of all these things.” E.P.
- Our real mistake in dropping out of fellowship, is in not sticking around long enough in the story of one another’s lives to see the work of redemption that God will perform. We stop at the point of struggle. We need others to come alongside and take us on through.
- Illustration: A huge cargo ship carries the cargo across the ocean, but when it comes to the harbor, the Captain stops the ship, and calls the harbor pilot to come meet the ship. He comes with a tugboat, takes the helm, and gets the ship into harbor without disaster.
6. The book of Ruth is a perfect example of fellowship and sticking around for the redemptive story.
- It possesses no miracles or much to command our attention.
- It deals much with the ordinariness of life, and the heartache of life.
- It opens with a famine, the death of three husbands, and three widows left alone.
- Naomi, the widowed mother enters the story by complaining to God. She tells her widowed daughters-in- law to return back to their people. They were Moabites, not the type of people that Israel was to mingle with. No sons were born to them. Naomi says she is returning back to Israel. Ruth steps up and says she will not leave Naomi, that she will go where she goes.
- Upon arriving back to Bethlehem, Naomi says, “ don’t call me Naomi (pleasant), call me Mara (bitter), because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.
- Ruth meets Boaz, who is Naomi’s nearest relative. He marries Ruth and they have a son.
- In her old age, the women say to Naomi, “Praise be to the Lord, who to this day has not left you.” He has not left her in the place of bitterness.
- The child’s name was Obed, who became the father of Jesse, who became the father of David, who was in the lineage of Jesus.
- In the Hebrew geneology in Matthew 1, it is typically only the men who are listed, but thee are four women listed, and one of them is Ruth.
7. Fellowship brings every person’s life into the redemptive story.
- It takes the muddled marriages, the mid-life boredom, the adolescent confusion, the emotionally distressed, and teaches us how to wait on God. We want to jump ship, but if we stay we will see the redemptive hand of God show through.
- Fellowship:
- Shares life with the man whose wife has left him for another,
- Looks into the pained eyes of the mother whose teenager is full of rebellion
- Sits down with the executive who has lost his job and is bitter
- Hears the anxiety of the person tense with anxiety
- Feels compassion for the alcoholic’s defeat,
- And the desperation of those who are doubting their faith
- And the secret shame of the adulterer’s heart
8. How can we be devoted to the fellowship?
- We need fellowship that is small enough so that our participation is natural.
- Corporate worship- seeing God in the big picture
- Fellowship- seeing God in the details
B. We need fellowship to be consistent in order to build up trust.
It takes 1 yr. to gain a level of trust,
There is no such thing as instant trust.
Trust has to be developed. Trust is walking through things together over time.
Trust is developed by being let down along the way, so that we can learn to love one another in God
Consistent trust is “ a long obedience in the same direction.”
- We need for fellowship to take place regularly, so that you are not always restarting.
- Regular, consistent, on-going basis
- The more we are involved in one another’s lives, the more we have in common.
- We need fellowship to be open to outsiders.
- So that we don’t become self- absorbed
- We need fellowship in order to become what Christ would have us become.
- Fellowship shows me how to live unselfishly.
- Fellowship shows me how to share my life honestly.
- Fellowship shows me how to serve practically.
- Fellowship shows me how to give sacrificially.
9. Fellowship is learning how to express our story of redemption and how to listen for the redemption story of others.
- It’s all about the grace of God.
- We are richly blessed by being in relationship with one another.
Discussion questions:
Why do you think that God created human beings with a need for close relationships with others?
Why is it so important that we be in consistent, regular, on-going, open fellowship with other believers?
Share one experience that you have gone through with other believers that made a real impact on your life.
What stage of fellowship/life are you in right now, and what is the main issue that you are dealing with?
Why is it easier to drop out of fellowship when you are going through struggles, and why is it so important to stay?
Read Ruth 1: 16-18. How might this type of devotion to fellowship with your brothers and sisters in Christ affect your life?
Why do we need to be devoted to fellowship with others in order to become what Christ wants us to be?
Are you devoted to Christian Fellowship as a church, and to regular fellowship with the people there? Why or why not ?
