I was going back through a book which Dave used when he taught a theology class in the fall of 2005 called Foundations of the Christian Faith, written by James M. Boice.
I have really enjoyed the information and understanding this book gives me on who God is, His character, His love for us, what prayer and worship should be and so on.
I recently read a few paragraphs on pages 534 and 535 on fellowship. It reminded me of what Nancy wrote for the blog, posted on July 23. Her comments were on Mark 3:35 "The person who obeys God's will is my brother and sister and mother" (The Message) Nancy shared how thankful she is to have brothers and sisters in Christ who share her faith and support her and how important her Christian family is to her.
I feel the following paragraphs emphasize so well what Nancy wrote in July. These following paragraphs speak so loudly to me because in my past, I had tried night clubs and different social clubs that had no meaning because God was not at the center. I didn't find any real meaning to anything I tried that didn't put God first in my life. I have found so much more fulfillment and purpose in life by being involved with other Christians in our church who desire to do God's work.
James M. Boice writes: Lacking the true and fulfilling fellowship that God means for them to have, many people go about establishing an empty kind of "fellowship" based more on proximity than on true relationships. The camaraderie of the social club is one example. So is the frenzied interaction of the discotheque. These groupings of people have been popular because they substitute proximity for true community and thereby help people to forget the fundamental and tragic loss of personal identity that drives them there.
Four kinds of loss of identity are common today: loss of family identity, national identity, religious identity and personal identity. Each is supplied in the church, even though the other supportive institutions which we should ideally enjoy-an understanding and stable family and a country of which one can be proud-may be lacking.
The church was established on earth for several purposes: worship, service, organized dissemination of the gospel. In addition to these obvious purposes, another chief end of the church is the union of Christ's followers into one visible fellowship and the substitution of a social for a "privatized" Christianity. Nothing that rightly pertains to the relationship of an individual to God is set aside by that fact. On the contrary, one's relationship to God is actually to be developed and expanded by relationships with other believers.
James Bannerman, who wrote a study of the church as an outgrowth of his lectures to theological students in Scotland in the nineteenth century, declared,
There is something in the very nature of man that makes union and fellowship with other men essentially necessary to develop the whole faculties and powers of his being; and this characteristic of man's nature has been taken advantage of in the economy of grace; so that, under the power of association, believers are not merely or only units in the dispensation of God, but brethren also in the enjoyment of communion with each other collectively, as well as in the enjoyment of communion individually, each one with his Savior. According to the arrangement of God, the Christian is more of a Christian in society than alone, and more in the enjoyment of privileges of a spiritual kind when he shares them with others, than when he possesses them apart....Such, for example, is the blessing promised to "two or three" when "gathered together in the name of Christ," over and above what is promised to the solitary worshipper; to prayer, when men, even a few, "shall agree together to ask anything of God," rather than when they ask separately and alone...
The Christian Church was established in the world, to realize the superior advantages of a social over an individual Christianity, and to set up and maintain the communion of saints. In his union to Christ the Head, the individual believer becomes ingrafted into the same body, and partakes of the same privileges with other believers. He is one with them in the same Spirit, in the same faith, in the same baptism, in the same hopes, in the same grace, in the same salvation. The bonds of that spiritual union go to strengthen his own individual Christianity, the sympathy of it to call forth his own individual affections, and the incitement of it to enlarge his own personal faith and hope; so that, in the fellowship of the Church, and within the magic circle of its influence, the believer is in a more eminent sense a believer, than apart from them.
Sue W.
