WEEK 1 — DAY 2
Morning Nourishment
1Cor.1:9 "God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."
Eph. 4:25 "Therefore having put off the lie, speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members one of another."
It is hard to find many [believers] who are in the reality of
fellowship. Positionally, we all are in this fellowship, but in our
daily living, very few of us are in the reality of fellowship. We may
have the matter of fellowship in name, but we may not have it in
practicality. I have tried to practice this fellowship, but I have to
admit that I have not been completely successful in maintaining this
fellowship hour after hour throughout the day. When we are not in this
fellowship in a practical way, we are out of the Spirit, out of the
Triune God, and out of the divine life. (The Triune God to Be Life to
the Tripartite Man, p. 145)
Today's Reading
Before we were saved, we were sinners living in sin and dead in sin. We
were not involved in the fellowship of life. One day someone reported to
us the eternal life (1 John 1:2), and we believed in the Lord Jesus.
From that moment we were brought into the divine fellowship. Two things
are very striking about our initial experience of the divine fellowship.
First, it is difficult to find one person who
believed in the Lord
directly by himself without the help of someone who preached the gospel
to him. Nearly everyone heard a report first and then believed. Second,
there is almost always a deep relationship between the one who reported
or preached the gospel and the one who received the report and got
saved.
Our vertical fellowship with the Lord is affected
by our horizontal fellowship with others. If we do not have a proper
relationship with those around us, it is difficult to have a good
fellowship with the Lord vertically. The reason for this is that the
divine fellowship is one fellowship. Each day we should be in the divine
fellowship, vertically and horizontally. Most of us may think that we
daily start this fellowship according to its vertical aspect, followed
by its horizontal aspect. Most of the time, however, this is not our
experience....If we have a quarrel with our wife, husband, or roommate
in the evening, we will find it difficult to start our vertical
fellowship with the Lord in the morning. We must maintain both the
vertical and horizontal aspects of the fellowship in order to be healthy
spiritually.
In Ephesians 4:25 the word neighbor refers
to the brothers and sisters. We must be right with our fellow believers
in order to be kept in the divine fellowship. In our experience we often
cannot have vertical fellowship with the Lord without first having
horizontal fellowship with other believers.
A saint who
has a proper living and who is victorious is one who is always in the
divine fellowship, vertically and horizontally, all day long. We must
learn to fellowship with the Lord more, and we must also learn to
fellowship with the saints more. We must thank the Lord for those around
us, and we
must endeavor to have fellowship with them. The brothers
and sisters should have thorough fellowship with one another, even
concerning practical things related to their daily living.
We may feel that we should only fellowship with those around us about
the messages we have read or some other spiritual activity. Of course,
our fellowship should include this. However, our fellowship should also
include many practical things. I have discovered that the biggest
shortage among us is fellowship. Our problem is that we do not have the
habit to fellowship, and many of us do not like to fellowship. We must
realize that when we fellowship, the Lord is involved. When we turn away
from fellowship or stop our fellowship with our fellow believers, the
Lord is kept away.
We should try to have fellowship with our
fellow believers as much as possible. This divine fellowship not only
corrects us; it also molds us and even reconstitutes us. This fellowship
brings the divine constituent into our spiritual being, causing a
change in our being. (The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,
pp. 145-147)
Further Reading: The Mending Ministry of John, ch. 7
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