Purpose Driven Life: Day 18

EXPERIENCING LIFE TOGETHER



POINT TO PONDER:

I need others in my life.


VERSE TO REMEMBER:

"Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." [Gal 6:2]


RICK WARREN'S THOUGHTS:

Life is meant to be shared.

God intends for us to experience life together. The Bible calls this shared experience fellowship.

Real fellowship is so much more than just showing up at services. It is experiencing life together. It includes unselfish loving, honest sharing, practical serving, sacrificial giving, sympathetic comforting, and all the other "one another" commands found in the New Testament.

"For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." [Matt 18:20].

In real fellowship, people experience:

+ authenticity;
+ mutuality;
+ sympathy; and
+ mercy.

Mutuality is the heart of fellowship: building reciprocal relationships, sharing responsibilities, and helping each other.

The Bible commands mutual accountability, mutual encouragement, mutual serving, and mutual honoring.

You are not responsible for everyone in the Body of Christ, but you are responsible to them. God expects you to do whatever you can to help them.

Sympathy meets two fundamental human needs: the need to be understood and the need to have your feelings validated. Everytime you understand and affirm someone's feelings, you build fellowship.

There are different levels of fellowship, and each is appropriate at different times. The simplest levels of fellowship are the fellowship of sharing and the fellowship of studying God's Word together. A deeper level is the fellowship of serving, as when we minister together on mission trips and mercy projects. The deepest most intense level is the fellowship of suffering, where we enter into each other's pain and grief and carry each other's burdens.

Fellowship is a place of grace, where mistakes aren't rubbed in but rubbed out. Fellowship happens where mercy wins over justice.

"Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." [Col 3:13].


D-MONK'S THOUGHTS:

Fellowship has always been a challenge for me and my spirituality. I tend to be an introvert when it comes to the spiritual. I like to look for God in solitude, reading, meditation, and deep thought.

But community seems to be where we as people grow and find meaning. There is definitely something to the thought that "Life is meant to be shared."

I think about this often when I travel. The real disappointment of a business trip is not being able to share certain experiences. If I am in Washington, DC, St. Louis, or Las Vegas, I really want to be able to share what I am seeing with someone else, either my Beloved or a close friend. These types of experiences mean much more when shared.

So it makes sense that fellowship is a key component to the Christian life. God wants us to share the experience of redemption and grace.