“You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. When the road looks rough ahead and you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed, you just remember what your old pal said … you’ve got a friend in me.”
“... that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
Fellowship is an indispensable ingredient in the Christian faith.
Remember the movie Toy Story? Two friends, a space pilot and a cowboy, wrapped in a great adventure together. They didn’t even like each other to start with but ended the movie discovering that they needed each other all along.
It’s a shame the word “fellowship” has fallen on hard times and is dying the death of domestication and triviality. It is an electric reality in the New Testament, an indispensable ingredient in the Christian faith, and one of God’s chief means of grace in our lives.
The word was used by John when he wrote:
“That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). For John, this fellowship (Koinonia in the Greek) finds its foundation in our vertical relationship with God, but the word goes deeper still. Koinonia wasn’t a shared love for pizza, pop, and a nice clean evening of fun among the fellow churchified. It meant more like the word “participation.”
You could participate in an offering being taken for the poor. You could participate in the sufferings of Christ, and you could participate in the gospel. All of it was fellowship.
Not only did the first Christians devote themselves to the word (the apostles’ teaching and prayer), but also to fellowship or Koinonia.
But this fellowship is no chummy hobnob with appetizers and drinks and a game on the tube. It is an all-in, life-or-death joint venture in the face of great evil and overwhelming opposition.
Not only was it meant to bind them together to reach the lost better but for their mutual edification as well.
Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24–25
The remarkable thing is not the summons to keep meeting together. It is the instruction that you look past your nose to the needs of others. “Consider each other for love and good deeds.” Know each other. Get close. Stay close. Go deep. And consider particular persons, and interact with them, such that you exhort and inspire them to love and good deeds specifically fitting to their gifts.
Fellowship may be the forgotten or misunderstood middle child of the spiritual disciplines, but she may save your life in the dark night of your soul.
· When you go through the valley of the shadow of death (and you will)
· When the desire has dried up to avail yourself of His Word (and it will)
· When your spiritual energy to pray is gone (it will dry up)
He sends his body to bring you back. It should not have to be the wanderer’s own efforts that prompt his return to the fold, but his brothers’.
God has given us each other in the church, not just for the company, not only to chase away loneliness and lethargy, but to be to each other an indispensable means of his divine favor. We are for each other an essential element of the good work God has begun in us and promises to bring to completion.
As with all of the disciplines, the practice of it requires action, time, commitment, and intentionality. As with all the disciplines, it will show us our own weakness and sin. As with all the disciplines, however, it will give us a fresh look upon the face of God, who sings over us:
“You’ve got a friend in me. You’ve got a friend in me. When the road looks rough ahead and you’re miles and miles from your nice warm bed, you just remember what your old pal said … you’ve got a friend in me.”
Fellowship is one of God’s chief means of grace in our lives.