Last week I talked about one great way we can deepen our personal faith – by taking time out from the busyness and noise of life to be still and be with God.
This week I wanted to share another thing that someone on my Belonging table shared a couple of weeks ago to help us deepen in our faith.
We called it intentional fellowship. Fellowship is one thing. We fellowship whenever we gather with Christians. But intentional fellowship means something more than just the act of gathering with God’s people, as precious as that is. More than “doing church” or “having a Bible study” together – as great as those things are for our faith. And it means more than just building relationships with other Christians. More than sharing food or fun times together with our brothers and sisters.
Intentional fellowship is where we connect with our brothers and sisters over the deeper things of God. Where we share our struggles with sin, doubt, and stress. Where we speak words of encouragement or rebuke, with gentleness and respect.
How do we do this? You can’t manufacture it. It usually takes time, but we can also use time as an excuse “I just don’t know these people well enough.”
Here are 2 key ingredients I reckon we need for intentional fellowship to happen.
1. Trust. The kind of trust that can only be established between two people who share a deep personal trust in Jesus, who know that they don’t have it all together, and know because of Jesus that’s ok. Gospel-shaped, grace-fuelled trust.
2. Intentionality. When trust is established between two or more people, it usually just takes one of those people to move on from talking about the weather or work or the world's problems and start talking about the things of God. It could be a question - “hows your walk with God going?” or "what has God been teaching you lately?". Or it could be just one of you opening up and sharing something a bit vulnerably “i don’t what God is doing with…” or “something God has put on my heart lately is..”
How might you be a bit more intentional in your fellowship with your church whanau? Why not give it a try this Sunday.
Yours in Christ,
Andy