1 Corinthians 1:9 God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

I personally feel this is an extremely important verse, and unfortunately the Japanese translation greatly masks the impact. In Japanese it says, “You have been brought into fellowship with Christ by God’s calling.” I think that mutes the reality that the very purpose of our being called by God is to have fellowship with Him. In a sense, that’s the biggest, or even the only, thing God gets out of having created us. It’s not like there was anything He couldn’t do without us, except fellowship with us. That’s why the Old Testament speaks so many times about God being a “jealous” God: if we close our hearts to Him by going after one lie or another, we are denying Him the very purpose of our creation. That’s also why He gave us free will, because you can’t really fellowship with something that has no will of its own. When people say they are “in love with” inanimate objects, we treat that as a mental/emotional aberration. (There was even a woman who “married” the Eiffel Tower, for example.) When we were created and called to fellowship with God, nothing less is going to satisfy fully, but the vast majority of mankind runs around trying to be satisfied with all sorts of other things. (And yes, I include most Christians in that statement.) Those other things might not be intrinsically bad at all, but if they come ahead of fellowship with God in our hearts, they are idols. Fellowship with God takes many forms. Just as a happily married couple doesn’t spend all their time in bed together, we don’t have to be in church, or even actively praying, to enjoy fellowship with God. The more we experience fellowship with God, the better we understand Paul’s statement that “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) The message of the whole Bible can be condensed to this call to fellowship, and what God has done to make it possible.

As the song says, “The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.” As a pastor, my desire and my task is to guide others into the fellowship that I enjoy, and more. My greatest heartache is that so few seem to value such fellowship. When we have tasted any real depth of fellowship with God, it puts everything else into focus. However, some people are afraid of that very thing. They think that surrendering to the love of God – to our Lover God, if you will – will deprive them in some way, because they recognize instinctively that it will make everything else pale in comparison. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. For example, I enjoy almost anything more when I can do it with my wife, rather than by myself, or even with someone else. Fellowship with God makes everything about life richer and more enjoyable, when we make fellowship the primary thing and realize that everything else is just a vehicle for that.

Father, thank You for opening up this subject and letting me start writing on it. I could write a long time, because the subject is so deep! Help me continue to grow in obedient fellowship with You so that I may be increasingly effective in drawing others into that same fellowship, for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!