The importance of fellowship!

1 John 1: 1-10

“that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.” (1 John 1: 3-4)

There are so many passages that I could use in regards to fellowship and how important it is, look for yourself as Paul makes reference to this in numerous letters to the early church, but this conveys to me why we need fellowship and what it means.

The Greek word for fellowship is:  κοινωνία Koinonia means communion, joint participation; the share which one has in anything, participation, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution, etc. It identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ. (source: Wikipedia)

This is the fellowship that I want to speak of; this something more than just meeting together on a weekly basis, it has to do with more than just the people and their conversations but something much deeper than that. This is the fellowship that is severely lacking in our church circles and our walk with God. It is all about unity, participation and contribution! How many of us can actually say that they have all of this on any day in a given week? How about in a month? I will be the first to admit that I know that is not very prominent in my relationship with God or fellow believers. We may have one or two of these in our fellowship on Sundays but I think if we are all honest with ourselves it is very rare that we have all three.

So why is it so important to have this koinonia? And what happens when we are lacking in this communion of fellow believers?

The importance of this lies in one thing, and that is relationship. It all keeps coming back to this. It is about relationship with one another and with our heavenly Father. We need the support of fellow believers, we need their encouragement their understanding and every once and a while that kick in the butt to put us back on track. This is the unity, participation and contribution that I talked about. When we share and build relationships with one another we can have unity with each other, when we care enough about each other we contribute to our fellow believers walk with God, and when we hold each other accountable we participate in the growth of faith in one another.

In all of this we also build up our relationship with God and “our joy may be full” (1 John 1: 4). Unity with others gives us unity with God and the plans that He has for us, and to the great commission that He gave to us. When we contribute to others lives we contribute to God’s kingdom and He in turn contributes to our lives with His love peace and understanding. When we participate with other Christians we participate with God and what He wants to do in others lives and in our own life.

So what happens when we are lacking in koinonia?

We lack growth.  Your Christian walk begins to become stagnant and stale, you start to lack direction and you are no longer unified with the body of Christ. I have experienced this myself time and time again, I am just as guilty of this as the next person is. When I lacked true fellowship I stopped reading the Word, I stopped spending personal time in worship with God and my prayer life was seriously lacking.

This leads to other things seeping into your life, things that can get you completely off track of where God wants you to be and where your relationship with Him begins to falter. If you do not have koinonia with God your light can start to fade.

 Remember when you first became a Christian and you couldn’t wait to go to church on Sundays? You couldn’t wait to talk to other people about the things you learned from reading Gods Word or what God had revealed to you through prayer? Do you remember how good that felt? I miss that feeling a lot and it all comes back to fellowship.

Hebrews 10: 24-25 “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching”

Meeting and encouraging one another! Koinonia!

There is joy in fellowship, and in fellowship there needs to be unity, participation and contribution. Meet together with other Christians, help each other to grow in God’s grace and understanding, make it something more than the ordinary! Make it about relationships!

Forgive, forget and have fellowship! Let Gods will reign in your life!