God, Me, and Community

There are three parts of fellowship, God, Me, and community.  The first part, God, can have fellowship within the Godhead – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and worship Himself on His own, 24/7.  Of course, God desires others to participate in this fellowship and He created the angels to join in.  It is hard to imagine the angels failing God, but they did.  Lucifer himself rebelled against God (Isa 14) and led a third of the angels astray (Rev 12).  God knew that this would happen, and He did not stop there.  God created man in His own image to join in the fellowship and worship of Himself, the Most High God.

This brings us to the second part of fellowship, Me.  Me, by myself, and you, by yourself, can worship with God 24/7 if we care to.  We can worship God when we get out of bed in the morning by reading His word and spending time in prayer.  We can worship Him by singing spiritual songs in the shower if we are so inclined.  We can have a devotion before or even during breakfast.  We can worship on our way to work, and we can make our work, whether at home or away, a form of worship as we dedicate our skills to God’s service.  In fact, wherever we are, God is there too, and we can fellowship with Him and worship Him as we go about our day.  Of course, we fail in this and tend to get distracted by ourselves, kind of like Lucifer, and we sin against God and break our fellowship.  But God is faithful and just and God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to redeem us, forgive us, and bring us back to Him.  As a born-again believer, we can worship and fellowship with God anywhere, everywhere, and at every time, but there is one more part necessary to make this fellowship complete.

The third part of fellowship is the community.  Throughout the Bible, man worshiped God with others as a community of faith. God intended for Adam and Eve to do this in the garden.  God had Moses demand that Pharaoh let God’s people go so that they could go and worship together.  God gave instructions for Israel to worship as a community when they would enter the Promised Land.  Elijah and Elisha, David and Solomon, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezra and Nehemiah, they all called the community together to worship.  When Jesus came, there were times that He was alone by Himself and there were times when He was alone with a disciple, but over and over and over again, Jesus would gather the community together on hillsides, sea sides, and even in the temple to teach God’s word and minister to the needs of everyone.   When the church was formed on Pentecost, there was a great gathering of believers, and they continued to gather for fellowship, preferably on the first day of the week.  And when we look ahead to glory, how will our fellowship and worship of the Most High God take place? 

“Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: ‘Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!’  And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!’”  Revelation 5:11-13