1-6-08
Fellowship with God
Fellowship with God Part 4
1 John 1:3b

Summary: Fellowship with God is a supremely important topic (purpose of the Gospel). John uses the term in order to demolish the stronghold of the false teachers’ misuse of it. They taught that fellowship could be attained apart from truth, or that one should simply interpret all experiences that seem to be from God as being from God, or that fellowship with God was merely a state of being, like citizenship. John refutes all three. It is based on the gospel, it is a steady state relationship that depends upon episodes of intimacy, it is a personal, reciprocal, subjective experience in which He gives and we receive. It is closeness, but not identification. 

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have observed, and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life-- 2 that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us-- 3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Introduction
When is the last time you experienced the presence of God? You actually felt His presence in the room in such a way that you were deeply moved – not moved by music or some created thing, but by the actual presence of God Himself? That sort of thing used to happen to me maybe once a year, or even less. Now it is more than once a week, often more than once a day. And those experiences are more satisfying to my soul than any pleasure in this life. The change came about through the principle talked about in today’s passage – fellowship with God.

The Importance of Fellowship with God 
Purpose of the Gospel
Fellowship with God is an incredibly important pursuit. John says the purpose of his ministry and the ministry of the other Apostles in proclaiming the gospel was so that we might have fellowship with God. The Apostles laid down their lives in order to proclaim the gospel, and John says their purpose in doing so was so that we could have fellowship with God.
Summary of the Christian life
Paul summarized the entire Christian calling as fellowship with God. When God called you to become a Christian another way of saying that is He called you into fellowship with Himself.

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

Clearly fellowship with God is a hugely important topic so we are going to devote the entire study this morning to understanding what fellowship with God is all about.
Refuting the pagan view (taking “koinonia” captive)
To begin with we need to understand why John uses the word “fellowship.” John has certain favorite words he loves to use, and fellowship is not one of them. It was not part of John’s preferred vocabulary. He uses the noun in this passage and nowhere else in his epistle (which is very uncharacteristic for John). He uses the word zero times in the book of Revelation and zero times in the Gospel of John. But we know it was a word his opponents used. They talked a lot about having fellowship with God.
Normally John would rather used other terms to describe our interactions with God, but there is a reason he wants to use this word here. Remember what we are supposed to do with ideas and arguments that lift themselves up against the truth of God? Any idea or doctrine that is lifted up against the truth is called a “stronghold” (2 Cor.10:5). And what are we to do when we encounter those strongholds?

2 Corinthians 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

You kidnap those arguments and ideas, and force them into obedience to the truth. And that is exactly what John is doing here with the false teachers of his time. He rips the very phrases they use to describe their doctrines right out of their hands and uses them in proper ways to correct their false teaching. He kidnaps the idea of fellowship with God and uses that very phrase in a way that refutes the errors of the false teachers.
We know of at least three wrong concepts of fellowship with God that were being taught in John’s day.
The anti-intellect error
The first one we looked at last week – the idea that fellowship with God can be achieved through an emotional experience that bypasses the intellect - or that it is something that transcends the intellect. One of the ancient Gnostic writings (called the Hermetic writings) taught that a person can achieve regeneration (rebirth) through a vision in which he becomes detached from the impression of the senses. When that happens the person says, “I am in heaven, on earth, in water, in the air…everywhere…Father I see the All and myself in Mind.” What they are doing is not only breaking free from the senses but also breaking free from sense. They broke free from meaningful, sound, logical thought altogether. That’s why you get sentences like, “I see the All and myself in Mind.” People like that describe their experiences and it comes out as nonsense. 
And so along comes John and says, 

3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 

The “we’ in v.3 refers to the ones who saw and heard and touched Jesus - the Apostles. Their purpose in proclaiming Jesus Christ as the eternal giver of life from God is so that the readers might have fellowship with the Apostles. The word fellowship (Gr. koinonia) has a wide semantic range, so you pick up on the particular emphasis from the context. In this context the emphasis is on partnership. The fellowship the readers (and we) are to have with John and the Apostles is partnership in the work of the gospel…sharing with them in the task of building the Kingdom of God. And that kind of partnership can only happen through the truth of the writings of the Apostles (the New Testament). Scripture always emphasizes the role of truth and doctrine and knowledge and understanding on the path toward fellowship with God. Fellowship with God comes through sound doctrine, not through esoteric weirdness. 
Two other wrong ideas about fellowship with God in John’s time were the Dionysian approach and the stoic approach – which were opposites.
The superstitious mysticism error
The religion of Dionysus was a religion of pagan mysticism. These were the wackos. Fellowship with God for them was a state of ecstatic frenzy. They called it enthusiasmos. That word comes from en (in) and theos (God). You get into God and He gets into you and the result is ecstatic, uncontrolled, craziness that they called “sacred frenzy.” They spoke of being “drunk” with divine inspiration. And they really did act drunk.
This is another error that is alive and well today in varying degrees. There are some who get into the bizarre extremes of the ancient pagan mysticism. There are others who buy into this error in a more subtle way. They don’t do weird, strange antics, but their encounters with God still fall under the category of superstitious mysticism, simply because they are superstitious. It is very, very common for Christians to drift into superstition. The definition of superstition is believing something without adequate evidence. If you decide to believe something and there is no sound reason for believing it – that’s superstition.
Christians often fall into this. If I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea or impression or strong sensation that I ought to do something, and I interpret that idea or impression or impulse as automatically being from God – that’s superstition. If you have a strange, unexplainable feeling or you get goose bumps out of nowhere, and you interpret that to be the presence of God, unless there is some biblical reason to believe it is the presence of God, then that’s superstition. If a coincidence happens and you interpret that as a message from God – that’s superstition. If you randomly open your Bible and see a verse that seems to speak to your situation if taken out of context, and you take that as a message from God that is superstition. And all those things are very common in modern Christendom. We have a huge problem with superstitious mysticism. 
The Stoic error (impersonal standing or status)
The stoics were on the other extreme. The stoics talked a lot about having fellowship with God (using the word koinonia), but their concept of God was that He was an impersonal force or concept. So by “fellowship with God” what they meant was a particular standing before God only – not a personal interaction or subjective experience. They thought that if they had an affinity with and agreement with the truth then they were in an ongoing state of “fellowship” with God. It was merely a condition they were in – like being a citizen of a country.
So John is writing against three errors: 
o	The Gnostic error tried to attain fellowship with God while bypassing truth.
o	The Dionysun error was superstitious mysticism – assuming feelings and experiences must be from God just because they felt like they were from God.
o	The Stoic error made fellowship a matter of status or standing, apart from subjective, personal experience. 
The biblical picture of fellowship with God
So what is the biblical picture of fellowship with God?
Begin with Truth
We found last week that the starting point must always be the truth of Scripture. The first two errors – bypassing truth and superstitious mysticism, are present today in certain extreme parts of the Charismatic movement. Not all Charismatics commit these errors, but they do tend to be prone in that direction. You often hear the Charismatic movement criticized for over-emphasizing experience but that is not the problem. Experience is a good thing. The problem is when they use experience to derive or determine truth, instead of using truth to arrive at experience. They get the order reversed. They have some experience that is deeply moving, and so they decide it must be from God. That is backwards. But the solution is not to be like the stoics and diminish the importance of subjective experience, and say that the only thing that matters is your position and your doctrine. The solution is to begin with truth, and use the truth to bring you into greater experiences with God. So let’s think through how you get from truth to experience.
Partnership
This first point I will just touch on lightly because John develops it much more later in the book. But we need to mention it here because it’s a crucial starting point. Both the anti-intellect error and the superstitious mysticism error tended to divorce fellowship with God from morality and/or day-to-day life. They would have these deep, mystical experiences with God in seclusion somewhere, but that had nothing to do with their lifestyle. So all through this book you are going to see John fight against that kind of thinking. You cannot separate nearness to God and love for your fellow man. John mixes the two together over and over again. There is no closeness to God that does not impact the way you live, because part of fellowship is partnership. Being in fellowship with God, by definition, means joining Him at His side and doing the same work He is doing. We have fellowship (partnership) with God when we join with Him in what He is doing (or saying or thinking or feeling).
It is an amazing thing to be in partnership with God. The next time you think it is a menial, trivial, meaningless task to sweep the floor or fill out paperwork at your job or do your ministry in the Church, remember this principle. Think of how great God’s work is. After He made the earth and the oceans and the sun and the moon, He sprinkled the stars in the sky for effect. What we now know are billions of galaxies He just threw out there like so much glitter. When He wants to add a tiny speck to the night sky He does it by creating and upholding a cluster of galaxies with billions of stars each. Are you great enough and powerful enough to join Him at His side and participate in His creation and upholding of one of those specks? Not even close. We can do nothing at His side to join Him in sending lightning or snow or even a gentle breeze across a mountain meadow. We cannot help with gravity or the laws of physics. We cannot help the sun rise or make the tides go out. We cannot feed the cattle on 1000 hills, nor give food and life to all creatures that have breath. We cannot even make our own hearts beat. God is so great that even His smallest, least important works are infinitely beyond our ability to be involved. 
However, His highest and greatest and most spectacular works – those He has enabled us to join by His side in bringing about. He does good, and we can join Him in doing good. He bears witness to His own glory and puts it on display, and we can join Him in bearing witness to His glory. He glorifies His Son, and we can glorify Him too. Jesus loves the Father and we can join Him in that and help others to do so as well. The Holy Spirit teaches and enlightens, and we can be the tools He uses. He transforms wicked hearts with His gospel, and we are the mouths He uses to proclaim that gospel. He forgives sins and makes saints out of sinners and rescues the perishing and restores the years the locust have eaten and brings justice for the oppressed and accomplishes fantastic, glorious, eternal purposes; and we can join by His side in all of that! He carries out His infinitely wise providential plan through the routines of life and we can knowingly participate in that. 
And none of that is not like the “work” we let our little children do when we give them a plastic lawnmower or a fake vacuum or toy computer so they can pretend to be accomplishing real adult work. He gives us real ability to achieve real, eternal ends (so that if we don’t do them they really will go undone). There is nothing menial done for the King of kings. Nothing is mundane that has eternal, glorious outcomes. Nothing is small that has been commanded by the Ground of all meaning. Nothing that delights the Maker and Sustainer of all things can be unimportant. Learn to delight in the sensation of knowing that in all your work you can be close by His side, joining Him in His greatest works. So the first part of fellowship is joining God in what He is doing, feeling, saying, or being.
Now, let’s think through the nature of this partnership. Is it a continuous state of being, like justification? Or is it something that happens in episodes at various times – like being filled with the Spirit or being obedient? Is it a condition that is the same 24 hours a day – like being a citizen? Or is it something you might experience at 4:00 in the afternoon one day but then not so much at 5:00? I would submit that there is one sense in which it ongoing constantly and another sense in which it happens in episodes. 
A steady condition 
Down in v.6 John speaks of fellowship with God in terms of a steady condition. If you are a true Christian then you are in an ongoing condition of having fellowship with God.
When a person comes to a point of brokenness over his sin, and instead of trying to fix himself he gives up completely on trusting his own resources and trusts the Lord Jesus Christ to save him, at that moment he enters into fellowship with God. Before that you didn’t know God, and now you are in a close relationship with Him. So there is a steady-state aspect to it, because that relationship and access to God is always there day and night.
It is a big mistake, however, to imagine that just because you are a Christian you are having all the fellowship with God that you need. The Bible compares it to the marriage relationship. When you’re married, you’re married every day all day long – whether you are paying attention to each other or separated by some long distance. So even when you are not personally interacting with each other you are still married to each other. However, if there is no personal interaction with each other at all then it is not much of a marriage. The intimacy of marriage can survive the periods of separation if and only if the times of personal closeness are good enough and frequent enough. If the times of intimacy in marriage are inadequate, then you will drift apart rather than come closer together. Your official position and standing of being legally married is not enough, by itself, to build or even maintain relational oneness. 
Periodic Episodes
Fellowship with God is the same way. It is something that can survive those times when you are not paying any attention to God because you have to focus your attention on something else – but only if the times when you are paying attention to God are good enough and frequent enough. For that love to stay alive and increase it has to be attended to – just like in a marriage or any other love relationship. So don’t think of fellowship with God merely as a condition or state of being or legal status with God. The focus of this concept of fellowship is not mainly on the status of the relationship, but the activity of the relationship.
Subjective Experience
So what is that activity? Is it just the activity of doing good deeds, obeying God, serving in ministry – external actions; or does it involve internal feelings and subjective experiences – feelings that take place inside your heart? If you just have a feeling and interpret that as being God’s presence for no good reason, that is superstitious mysticism. But if you dismiss feelings and subjective experiences as being unimportant, that is the stoic error.
Is it possible to feel God’s presence? And if so, what does it feel like? How do you sense the presence of God? The Bible does not tell us to sense it through goose bumps or butterflies in your stomach or cold sweats or a quiver in you liver or anything like that. But Scripture does tell us how we can sense His presence, and it is indeed through feelings. There are many feelings Scripture associates with the presence of God. One of them is joy (Ps.16:11). Another one is peace (Nm.6:26). Another one is fear (Jer.5:22). Another is comfort (Ps.23:4). Another is satisfaction of soul (Ps.17:15). Another is confidence & security (Ps.30:7).
Scripture speaks a great deal about subjective experiences. What could possibly be meant by things like hearing God, beholding God, listening to God, enjoying God, eating and drinking God, being satisfied by God’s presence if they are not subjective experiences? What else could those images be meant to describe? They are the most experiential concepts there are. They have to refer to some sort of experience. In Philippians 2, Paul labors to persuade us to be humble and loving toward one another. And he begins his argument by saying, “If you have received tender care from God, then let that motivate you to be humble and loving toward one another.” That’s the argument. But when he says the part about receiving tender care from God, he doesn’t just use a single word to describe God’s tenderness. He uses several words to really drive home the point of how kind and gentle and loving and tender is God’s care for us. Here’s what he says:
Philippians 2:1-2 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

Think about that list: encouragement from Christ, comfort, tenderness, compassion, and, right in the middle of that list, fellowship with the Spirit. That tells us something about fellowship with the Spirit doesn’t it? It fits in the same category as things like encouragement and tenderness from God. Fellowship with God is something very sweet and soothing to the soul. It is not a theoretical encouragement or comfort that is not really felt in the emotions. Encouragement that is not felt could hardly be called encouragement. The same goes for fellowship with God. It is real and deep and is felt as profoundly as any physical sensation. It is more than a mere feeling to be sure, but it is not less. The character of God’s very being is such that if a person is near Him that person will feel encouraged and comforted. In fact, it is only by His nearness can you be encouraged in your spirit. 

Ps.62:1 My soul finds rest in God alone.

Present Tense (mystical better than physical)
Look back for a moment at v.1. See all the past tense verbs? Now look at verse 3 – what tense is that? (present) Think about the significance of that. All the seeing and touching and hearing and beholding of Jesus that John describes in v.1 is in the past. Back when Jesus was walking on this earth during His earthly ministry – that is when they touched Him and heard Him and saw Him. But the fellowship in v.3 is in the present. 
Think about the fellowship the Apostles had with Jesus during His earthly ministry. During those years those 12 men had an experience that every Christian fantasizes about. What Christian hasn’t daydreamed about what it would be like to have the kind of interaction they had with Jesus Christ when He walked this earth? And it is doubtful that any of them enjoyed fellowship with Jesus during His earthly ministry in a more profound way than John. Not only was he in the inner three, but John was the disciple Jesus loved, who leaned against Jesus’ chest at the last supper. He was the one to whom Jesus entrusted His own dear mother. He was Jesus’ best friend. 
What an amazing thing! This man who is writing this was the man who was closer to Jesus during His earthly ministry than anyone. If John wants to talk about fellowship and closeness with Jesus Christ he could tell some mind blowing stories about what he experienced as a young man. And yet, instead of pointing to that as most significant, when it came to fellowship with Jesus John pointed to his present experience of fellowship with Christ. 
And the reason is the present is better than what John had experienced in the past. The fellowship that we can enjoy with the Father, Son, and Spirit now is more profound than the fellowship the Apostles enjoyed when Jesus was physically present. The night before Jesus died He comforted the Apostles by telling them that the relational closeness that they would have with Him would be greater than what they had enjoyed in the past.

John 14:17-21 The world is unable to receive [the Spirit of truth] because it doesn't see Him or know Him. But you do know Him, because He remains with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. 19 "In a little while the world will see Me no longer, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live too. 20 In that day you will know that I am in My Father, you are in Me, and I am in you. 21 The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him."

He said, “I’m leaving, but I’m not leaving you alone. I will come to you. Then the Holy Spirit will not just be with you but in you. And you will see Me in a greater way than you see Me now. I will be so close to you I will be in you, and you will love Me and the Father will love you, and there will be a union and oneness and closeness that exceeds what we enjoy now.” And then He went on in ch.16 to explain that this new, greater kind of fellowship with Him would produce a joy in them that could not be lost.

John 16:22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

That is how Jesus comforted the Apostles the night before He died. And now, after decades of experiencing this deeper, greater fellowship with Christ and with the Father, John writes about his experience with Christ and switches to the present tense when he mentions fellowship. He had experienced both kinds – fellowship with the physical Jesus on earth and fellowship with the risen Christ spiritually, and he knew from experience that the latter was greater than the former. So fellowship with God is a real, actual, subjective experience that you can feel – not a theoretical abstraction. 
Personal
Another error the Stoics made was the fact that they did not believe God was a person, and so they thought of fellowship as an impersonal phenomenon. Just carry out the actions of religion and that equals fellowship with God. And so John points to a fellowship that is personal.

3 …our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ

The Father is a person and Jesus Christ is a person. Fellowship is a personal interaction. It involves things that take place between persons – like communication and love.
There are some Christians that fall into the same error as the Stoics. They reduce fellowship with God down to just gathering information and agreeing to a set of propositions, and then carrying out the deeds of the Christian life. They claim they believe that God is a person, and yet they do not pursue personal interaction with Him. They have developed a mechanized approach to their faith. They read their Bible and pray and go to church and serve in ministry and have their devotions and memorize Scripture and a host of other things, and they do all that with hardly any personal interaction with God. They think reading your Bible and praying every day is kind of like working out. If you do pushups every day for 15 minutes your muscles will get stronger. It doesn’t matter what your attitude is, whether you enjoy it or not, what you are thinking about at the time, all that matters is that you do them, and you will get the benefit. Spending time with a person is not like that. If you try that with your wife – just discipline yourself to put in the time and take her on a weekly date, but you have no personal interaction with her, your love will decrease, not increase. 
That’s one reason God is called “the living God” in contrast to dead idols. Our longing is not mainly for the stuff God can give us, but for God Himself.

Psalm 42:1-2 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Fellowship with God is a two-way exchange of love and relational interaction between a worshipper and his God. 
Closeness, but not identification 
It is not the distant, impersonal, theoretical “closeness” of the stoics. Nor is it the Gnostic pantheistic idea of becoming so close that you melt right in to being part of God – like an ice cube melting into the ocean. We enjoy oneness and close union with God in fellowship, but the distinction between Him and us always remains. We never become God or part of God. But we do seek nearness to Him.
When you experience the nearness of God’s favorable presence to bless it is an experience in which you are acutely aware that God is right there in the room. And that is something Scripture tells us to seek.

Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near to God

James 4:8 Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.

What does it mean to “draw near” to an omnipresent God? It means you pay attention to Him and are aware that He is attending to you. You experience His attributes (His love and faithfulness and power, etc.) and you recognize them as His attributes and you enjoy the experience of them. That is fellowship with God, and it should be our only desire. So the reason a Christian should go on vacation is to experience fellowship with God in unique ways. The reason a Christian should want to spend time with his family is to experience fellowship with God through them. The reason a Christian should eat an ice cream cone or go bowling or read the newspaper or come to church or take out the trash is to experience various aspects of fellowship with God. When we read the Bible we can have the fellowship of being personally tutored by God. When we pray we can have the fellowship of pouring out our hearts to Him and being listened to by Him. When we worship we can have the fellowship of rejoicing in Him. When we love those He loves we can have the fellowship of joining by Him in His affections. When we serve in ministry we can have the fellowship of joining by His side and working with Him in partnership. When we carry out the duties of life, like going to work or cleaning the house or getting new tires for the car, we can have fellowship with Him by carrying out that which He specifically called us to do. When we lie down to sleep we can have the fellowship of experiencing God as a refuge and giver of peace and rest. When we engage in recreation we can have the fellowship of being renewed and rejuvenated by Him.
None of those are automatically fellowship with God. If you go on vacation without paying attention to God you miss the fellowship you could have had. And that is true for taking out the garbage, or serving in ministry, or reading your Bible, or praying, or singing worship songs at church. None of that is automatically fellowship with God. If you do it without attending to God it does not bring you into closer communion with Him.
It is reciprocal
One of the ways Scripture highlights the personal emphasis is by always describing fellowship with God in reciprocal terms. Fellowship with God is two-sided, not one-sided. In that way it s different from things like justification or forgiveness. Justification is one-sided – God does everything and I do nothing. Forgiveness is one-sided. God forgives and all I do is get forgiven. 
But the word koinonia means mutual sharing. John consistently emphasizes the reciprocal nature of our relationship with God. We are in Him and He is in us. We know Him and are known by Him. We remain in Him and He remains in us. We have Him and we are His. Fellowship is a decidedly two-sided exchange of love. We offer our love to Him and receive His love from Him.
He gives, we receive 
Now obviously the love we offer Him is very different from the love He offers us. We love Him mainly by needing, depending on, and delighting in what He supplies. He loves us by delighting to be the supply for our needs and desires. That is why fellowship with God is in the same category as grace and love from God.

2 Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Those three go together. His fellowship is like His love and His grace – it comes to us from Him as a gift.
He is always the Giver and we are always the receivers. There are hints of this even in human relationships. A man shows love to his wife by desiring to see her beauty and taking delight in that, and the wife shows love to her husband by becoming beautiful for him and enjoying in his enjoyment of her. He gets the enjoyment of seeing her beauty and she gets the enjoyment of being enjoyed and being regarded as beautiful. You show love to a wise man by asking him questions, and he shows love to you by answering questions. He gets the enjoyment of dispensing his wisdom and you get the enjoyment of receiving his wisdom. Little baby Priya loves her mom and dad, and Andrew and Danelle love their little daughter. Priya loves mainly by being held and cared for and fed and nurtured by her parents, and Andrew and Danelle love it when Priya sees them and smiles real big and wants to come to them.
Our posture in loving God is a posture of receiving. When we have an exchange of love with God we have the enjoyment of receiving all the benefits that come from being in His presence, and He receives the glory of being shown to be an all-sufficient, soul-satisfying spring of living water. So the love in both directions is based on desire and delight. For us, we desire and delight in being the beneficiaries of all that comes from being in God’s presence. And for God, He delights in being the great Benefactor who has infinite supply of grace.
So all the various kinds of fellowship we have with God - Scripture, prayer, worship, serving in ministry, loving people - in order to be true fellowship, must come from a perspective of receiving from God rather than giving to God. Even when we serve Him in carrying out ministry, we are receiving much more than giving. 

Isaiah 26:12 all that we have accomplished you have done for us.

1 Peter 4:11 If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

So whatever you are doing to have fellowship with God, whether it’s prayer, worship, Bible reading, ministry, spending time with your kids, dying for His name on the mission field, coming to a church work day, or putting money in the offering plate – all of it should be done from the perspective of a thirsty soul coming to a mountain spring. When you carry out some difficult ministry, it should not be you giving something to God, but rather you coming hungry to His feast. When you put money in the offering plate, it should not be you supplying a needy god, but rather you coming thirsty and drinking from His fountain. All of our fellowship with God is receiving. And all of His fellowship with us is giving. 
Summary: 1) Join, 2) Attend 3) Receive 
Now, if all that is a little overwhelming and you are thinking, “I can’t remember all that. Just tell me the bottom line about what fellowship with God is,” here goes: you have fellowship with God when you do three things. Just think of JAR (Join, Attend, Receive). 
Join God in what He is doing, feeling, saying, or being. That’s the partnership aspect. If He is working to establish the Kingdom of heaven, then you join Him at His side and work along with Him. If He is working to saturate the lives of His people with His Word, then you join Him at His side in doing that. The things He says in His Word you say. The things that are detestable to Him you hate. Those He especially loves, you especially love. 
Do so with a conscious intention of seeking to experience His presence. (Attend) None of that is fellowship unless you are consciously attending to God – paying attention to Him. That’s the relational and experiential aspect. 
Maintain an attitude of receiving from God as a beneficiary (Receive). You do it all in the posture of an open-handed beggar before a generous, rich king. All day long – Join, Attend, and Receive. And all of that must grow up out of the soil of the truth of God’s Word. You go from truth to experience. Information for the sake of insight for the sake of intimacy. Never stop short of intimacy with God. 
Conclusion: A day in the life of a Christian
One of these days I plan to preach a sermon titled: “A Day in the Life of a Christian.” I don’t have time to preach it now, so you need to just preach it to yourself. Take some time and figure out what fellowship with God all day long would look like in your case. I have a sample in your bulletin so you have an idea what I’m talking about. You just think of all the different kinds of activities you do during your day. (Wake up, have devotions, get dressed, eat, work, spend time with your family, do church ministry, rest, watch the news, recreation, go to bed.) And for each one of those fellowship is a little different.
Wake up – Let your first thoughts be “Good morning dear Lord.” Commit your day to Him and remind yourself that the day’s main goal is to have as much fellowship with God as possible.
Devotions – Spend time seeking hard after a rich experience of His presence. This is more important than anything else in your devotions. Either memorize a passage of Scripture, write one down, or print one out (or ask your pastor for some pre-printed ones). This passage of Scripture will be the centerpiece of your fellowship with God all day long.
Personal preparation/care (dress, shower, etc.) – The principles you focused on in your devotions from Scripture will be very quickly forgotten unless you rehearse them in your mind right away. Refer several times to your slip of paper. As you shower, rejoice over having been cleansed from all the sins you committed yesterday! As you get dressed, remember the spiritual armor. A very real and very lethal enemy will try to catch you off guard today, and you really are in grave danger. Be on your guard! 
Eat – Scripture calls us to sanctify our food by seeing it as a gift from God. Compare the enjoyment of the flavors and the strength and all the other enjoyable aspects of eating with the corresponding effects on your soul that will take place when you have fellowship with God. That is why Scripture compares fellowship with God to eating and drinking so often – it’s a very good illustration.
Work – Think of your work as activity that is being carried out right at your Father’s side – so that all day long you are bumping elbows with Him. The reason you work (at home or for an employer) is because the Lord of the universe called you to do that. So you are doing His work along with Him at His side. Any time you have a few free seconds, take a glance at your paper and throw some logs on the fire of your fellowship with Him.
Family – Enjoy the members of your family because of the delight God takes in them, and because of the delight He takes in your delighting in them. Give them one of the greatest gifts you could possibly give them by sharing with them what you have on your paper, and by telling them of the experiences of fellowship with God that you had during the day. Serve Christ by serving them and fix your attention on Christ’s response more than on their gratitude or ingratitude. Just take delight in the smile of God as your serve Him by loving them.
Ministry – Remind yourself that ministry in the Church has eternal significance that transcends even the family in importance (marriage and family are temporary – for this life only). Exult in the privilege of serving at the pleasure of the great King as one He personally called. 
Rest – The better it feels to sit down in a comfortable chair or lie down on a couch the better illustration it is of what it is like to experience God as a refuge and shelter and Giver of rest. As you delight in the rest let your soul either delight in rest in God that you already have or crave rest in God that you are seeking from Him.
News – As you observe all that God is doing in His world, talk to Him about it and marvel at His wisdom.
Bed – Kneel at your bedside just for a moment before getting in and recall God’s faithfulness that you experienced all day. As you lie down ask God to protect you through the night from evil thoughts and dreams that might be a hindrance to you tomorrow. For the next several hours you will be at your weakest and most vulnerable, and the enemy doesn’t sleep. Then take delight in God’s promised care for you.

Psalm 4:8 I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.

Benediction: 2 Cor.13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Devotionals
Fellowship with God
1 John 1:3-4 Day 1

1 John 1:6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

In one sense fellowship with God is something a Christian has at all times. If you are a true Christian then you are in an ongoing condition of having fellowship with God.
When you come to a point of brokenness over your sin, and instead of trying to fix yourself, you give up completely on trusting your own resources and trust the Lord Jesus Christ to save you. At that moment you enter into fellowship with God. You finally come to a point of saying, “I am ready to let go of this old life and turn my back on it altogether and turn to God.” (This is called repentance, and it always happens when there is true faith.) You say, “I am going to stop clinging to these old sins that I’ve cherished – they have given me nothing but grief; I’m done trying to find satisfaction for the desires of my soul in this world – nothing here satisfies long term; I’m done rationalizing about how I’ll probably make it into heaven because I’m not as bad as the really bad people, or because God is a giant Santa Claus” and your eyes are opened to see what a marvelous, delightful, satisfying treasure Jesus Christ is, and you give your whole life to Him and bow to Him as the Lord of your life, then you know there is faith in your heart. That is what it means to become a Christian.
And the moment you do that, all your sins are forgiven completely, and you are considered perfectly righteous by God, because the moral perfection of Jesus is credited to your account, and all your sin is credited to Jesus’ account (which is why He had to die on the cross). At that moment you are born again, you become a new person on the inside, and you enter into a relationship with God that enables you to have fellowship with Him.

Thank You, dear Father in heaven, for salvation and forgiveness of sins. Thank You for sending Your Son to die for me. Thank You, dear Lord Jesus, for giving Your life to bear my sin that I might have life in You. When I think of the wickedness and rebellion in my heart against You – living my life as though worthless things were more precious than nearness to You – Oh, wretched man that I am! I deserve eternal punishment at Your hand, dear God. And yet You have given Your servant life and fellowship with You! Oh thank You, dear God!
You have given Your servant access to Your presence 24 hours a day. At any time I can experience nearness to You to such a degree that my joy will be greater than my sorrow. What a privilege! And how often I have neglected it or treated it as though it were a small thing. Oh Father, teach Your servant to live in a way that shows how precious and desirable is Your presence. Let the intensity of my seeking match the desirability of Your presence. 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God who fellowships with His people
Promise to trust: He will commune with me
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Joy, abundant life
Fellowship with God
1 John 1:3-4 Day 2

2 Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

It is a mistake to imagine that just because you are a Christian you are having all the fellowship with God that you need. The Bible compares our relationship to God with the marriage relationship. Married people are married every day all day long – whether they are paying attention to each other or separated by some long distance. Even when they are not personally interacting with each other they are still married to each other. However, if there is no personal interaction with each other at all then it’s not much of a marriage. The intimacy of marriage can survive the periods of separation if and only if the times of personal closeness are good enough and frequent enough. If the times of intimacy in marriage are inadequate, then you will drift apart rather than come closer together. Your official position and standing of being legally married is not enough, by itself, to build or even maintain relational oneness. 
Fellowship with God is the same way. It is something that can survive those times when you aren’t paying any attention to God because you have to focus your attention on something else – but only if the times when you are paying attention to God are good enough and frequent enough. For that love to stay alive and increase it has to be attended to – just like in a marriage or any other love relationship.
Fellowship with God is a real, personal, subjective experience that results in benefits that are actually felt, such as joy (Ps.16:11), peace (Nm.6:26), fear (Jer.5:22), comfort (Ps.23:4), satisfaction of soul (Ps.17:15), confidence & security (Ps.30:7), to name a few. As you draw near to God and receive these benefits, your love for Him will increase.

My soul finds rest in You alone, dear God. You alone are my Rock and salvation and refuge. You are my Lord, and I have no good besides You. Only one thing do I ask – that I may dwell in Your presence and behold Your glory, because the nearness of my God is my only good. My soul hungers and thirsts for You. Please, dear Father, let me see more of Your glory today. Open my eyes to wonderful things in Your Word that my soul might be fed and my spirit might exult in God my Savior. 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God who fellowships with His people
Promise to trust: He will commune with me
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Joy, abundant life
Fellowship with God
1 John 1:3 Day 3
Attribute: God whose nearness gives encouragement, comfort, fellowship, tenderness and compassion. 

Philippians 2:1,2 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 

Paul uses understatement here as a rhetorical tool to magnify God’s love in a wonderful way. When he says, “If you have any at all…” the reader wants to object: “What do you mean any? He has shown that grace beyond measure!” Bringing the reader to a point of thinking that way is exactly Paul’s purpose. 
What is wonderful about this attribute:
For the Christian these benefits are constants to some degree, but they also come in measure depending upon how close our communion is with Christ at a given moment. The closer one is to Him relationally at a given moment, the more of these things will be enjoyed, because they are benefits that result from His nature. The character of God’s very being is such that if a person is near Him that person will feel encouraged, comforted, etc. 
In God alone is encouragement and strengthening. What a wonderful image – you struggling and being in need, and the Lord drawing close alongside you and speaking words of comfort and encouragement to you to strengthening and motivating you and giving you comfort. Only by His nearness can you be encouraged in your spirit. 
This list teaches us something about the meaning of fellowship with God. Is fellowship with the Lord to be thought of mainly as a condition or state of being, like forgiveness or justification? Or is it a personal, subjective experience in which one encounters God? The fact that it appears in this particular list points to the latter. Fellowship with the Holy Spirit is something that is very similar to being encouraged by Christ, being comforted by His love, and receiving tenderness and compassion from Him. Fellowship with God is not a theological abstraction. It is a real, personal experience – a two-way exchange of love and relational interaction between a worshipper and his God. And when that interaction takes place – when a child of God interacts with God through prayer, through laboring at God’s side, through having affections that are like God’s affections, through contemplation and enjoyment of the experience of God’s attributes, through listening to God speak through His Word and being tutored by Him, through receiving discipline from Him, through fellowship with those whom He loves, through ministry, or any other variety of fellowship with Him; the result is comfort and encouragement in the soul. Just as getting close to a fire makes your skin warm, having fellowship with God makes your heart warm. It is not a theoretical encouragement or comfort that is not really felt in the emotions (comfort that is not felt can hardly be called comfort!). It is real and deep and is felt as profoundly as any physical sensation. 
Whenever you feel the need for encouragement, remember that it only comes through fellowship with Him.
Whenever you want to encourage someone else, remember that it will only be successful inasmuch as you are able to enable that person to experience fellowship with God.
Whenever you feel encouraged, realize that it is because you have been in God’s presence! (Sometimes God grants an experience of His presence even when you haven’t sought it.)
And when you receive all these benefits, let them compel you to obey verse 2. The more grace we receive from God the more unity, oneness, and love should result in our interactions with one another in the Church. 
When a baby starts crying for hunger, he may be distracted for a few seconds with his favorite toys, but not for very many seconds. He may not even know that what he wants is milk. All he knows is he does not feel good, and his toys don’t help, being held doesn’t help – nothing but milk helps. But when he gets milk he is the picture of contentment. 

How often, Lord, I am like a crying, hungry baby seeking after every toy in the house to make me feel better when the only thing that will satisfy my soul is the pure spiritual milk of Your presence – Your river of delights. 

What is the greatest thing that prevents you from seeking fellowship with the Holy Spirit? What could you do today to destroy that impediment? 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God who fellowships with His people
Promise to trust: He will commune with me
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Joy, abundant life
Fellowship with God
1 John 1:3-4 Day 4
Attribute: The God who fellowships with His people

Ps 42:1-2 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? 

What is wonderful about this attribute:
The psalmist specified that he longed for living God. He did not just want some benefit from God; he desired an actual, direct encounter with a personal God. Those who long for their cherished idols long for whatever feeling or benefit they think they can get from them, but they never get fellowship. All idols are either dead, non-personal things, or they are lying demons with whom any supposed “fellowship” is a deception. The psalmist does not focus on a feeling or a benefit as the ultimate object of his desire. He wanted fellowship with the living God – interaction with a Person. We want to appear before His face.
What criminal longs to appear before the judge? Even though God, in His holiness, is the greatest threat and most severe danger in existence for an unholy being; still the longing of His people is to be in His presence. Because not only is He the greatest threat, He is also the only source of joy and deliverance from that threat. God is such a joy that even as our Judge we long to appear before Him.
Experiencing this attribute:
We sometimes think seeking information about God from His Word is the same as seeking after God. It is not. Information alone is not fellowship with God, it will not satisfy the soul, and it does not have the power to rescue you from sin. Never be content to merely receive information from God’s Word without actually seeking a personal interaction with Him. Instead of seeking after a God who wrote – a God who communicated thousands of years ago; seek after the God who is – the God whose face is there right now in your prayer room for the seeking. What He wrote thousands of years ago was written to enable you to experience fellowship with Him now.

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God who fellowships with His people
Promise to trust: He will commune with me
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Joy, abundant life

Fellowship with God
1 John 1:3-4 Day 5

1 John 1:3-4 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched…3 what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 

All the seeing and touching and hearing and beholding of Jesus that John describes in v.1 is in the past tense. But the fellowship John describes in v.3 as being in the present. It is doubtful that anyone enjoyed fellowship with Jesus during His earthly ministry in a more profound way than John. John was the disciple Jesus loved, who leaned against Jesus’ chest at the last supper. He was the one to whom Jesus entrusted His own dear mother. John was Jesus’ best friend. John the Baptist was considered the greatest man who ever lived up to his time just because he had the privilege of announcing the coming of Jesus. If that was a high privilege, what about being Jesus’ best friend? If John wants to talk about fellowship and closeness with Jesus Christ he could tell some mind blowing stories about what he experienced as a young man.
Yet instead of pointing to that as most significant, when it came to fellowship with Jesus, John pointed to his present experience of fellowship with Christ. And the reason is the present is better than what John had experienced in the past. The fellowship that we can enjoy with the Father, Son, and Spirit now is more profound than the fellowship the Apostles enjoyed when Jesus was physically present. The night before Jesus died He comforted the Apostles by telling them that the relational closeness that they would have with Him would be greater than what they had enjoyed in the past.

John 14:17-21 The world is unable to receive [the Spirit of truth] because it doesn't see Him or know Him. But you do know Him, because He remains with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. 19 "In a little while the world will see Me no longer, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live too. 20 In that day you will know that I am in My Father, you are in Me, and I am in you. 21 The one who has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me. And the one who loves Me will be loved by My Father. I also will love him and will reveal Myself to him."

He went on in ch.16 to explain that this new, greater kind of fellowship with Him would produce a joy in them that couldn’t be lost.

John 16:22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

That was how Jesus comforted the Apostles the night before He died. And now, after decades of experiencing this deeper, greater fellowship with Christ and with the Father, John writes about his experience with Christ and switches to the present tense when he mentions fellowship. Because he had experienced both kinds – fellowship with the physical Jesus on earth and fellowship with the risen Christ spiritually, and he knew from experience that the latter was greater than the former. 

Attribute to behold, desire, experience & enjoy: The God who fellowships with His people
Promise to trust: He will commune with me
What will result if I experience this attribute today: Joy, abundant life