The joy of fellowship

As we reach the end of 2016 and we slow down on the pace of the busyness of life, we see how families and friends gather together and catch up on time missed throughout the year. It is a time where people choose to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and with this season comes the fellowship around tables of food and great company.

Lately, I have been enjoying the fellowship of familiar, old and new faces. Altogether this is such a great joy as I dig deeper into relationships I had with people for years and meet some really cool people.

As I fellowship with people especially from the same kingdom I come from, I see how much the Father has placed His heart in theirs. It is amazing that through fellowship God shows off a very small part of the greatness of who He is.

The power of fellowship goes far beyond intense conversations or crazy fun of joy and laughter. It carries such power that I physical flesh cannot really understand. Firstly, fellowship in Jesus is founded on Love Himself. Secondly, we are living out the second commandment to love our neighbour as we love ourselves founded in the gospels.

Fellowship comes with the package of being a follower of Christ. It has the power to break past cultural, racial and religious barriers. This is one of our tools in evangelism - it is fellowship. People want and they need to see the true us, because if they do not they will think being a follower of Christ is all high up in the clouds and founded in perfection. Instead, we are everything but perfect yet. I think this is beautiful because we begin to see that Jesus alone is perfect, we embrace the imperfection like a mosiac piece and lastly we use our imperfection as one of our tools to reach the lost.

Beloved, if we do not fellowship with one another what will become of us?

All my life I had this desire to work for the kingdom as both a ministry and a job. I have pursued and I have experienced glimpses and yet I have not reached that place yet. However, lately I have been surrounded with people who are in full time ministry and boy oh boy is it such a beauty. Through fellowship and spending time with such people, I am learning a lot from their lives and how they bring balance to both the natural and spiritual aspects of their jobs. So now when I reach that place I would have some sense of understanding of the every day life of those in full time and now I have sources of who to talk to when those moments do not always end up being so great.

This is one of the examples of how fellowship can help us live a more fruitful life. Yes you might not want to be in full time ministry, but maybe you are struggling with sexual issues or maybe you do not know how to deal with simple situations. Fellowship is the key.

Jesus Christ himself surrounded Himself with twelve disciples. He sends the disciples out and says they must go two by two. Even scripture says that two is better than one, and a threefold cord is not easily broken. Before the foundation of the earth, God had met with Jesus and Holy Spirit. He was not alone. We are not alone.

Yet some of us cut ourselves off from people. As we cut ourselves off from people, we begin to cut ourselves off from power. For when one is weak, the other helps that one up to strength and visa versa.

There is this really cool movie called, The Shallows. I hope you all watched it. It is about this young woman who visits this secret beach and she ends up alone in the middle of the ocean with a shark fixated on her. This shark stops at nothing to enjoy the taste of human flesh. This movie had me almost crying because I tried to put myself in her shoes. For majority of the time spent out at sea this young woman spends her time fighting alone. Until she reaches the point of befriending a seagull who helps keep her sain. Despite the challenge of fighting for her life she ends up half unconscious on the shore of the beach, waking up to her friend the seagull who she helped to shore before she knew she would be okay.

I think to myself, how much strength must she have mustered to stay sain in her mind because no one was there to speak her through this process and there was no one to draw strength from in this time of desperation.

Often times, just like in this movie, we end up in the drowning waters of the valley seasons of our lives and the enemy draws us away from our brothers and sisters in Yeshua Messiah. Through this process we see how many people actually spiritually fall away because of the lack of love and help from people who were sent to be an aid on this journey of life.

As I am typing this, I begin to get the revelation about the great falling away in the last days. I see that the great falling away will happen because of the fading away of love, the fading away of fellowship.

The enemy sows discord and brings disunity. He delights in it, as much as God delights in the power of unity.

Let us embrace and fight for fellowship of our brothers and sisters, through holy affection and pure love. For there is great power and great joy in fellowship.

Show me someone who is miserable and I will show you that he has no friends.

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