As missionaries, life isn't always easy as a missionary because you're doing everything basically that a pastor is doing, but you're doing it in another language that you master and you're doing it in a cultural context that you don't fully understand. So there are times when you're just blindsided and you just don't really understand what's going on. One of the biggest problems that we face as missionaries is the issue of creating and of nurturing and of fostering genuine Christian fellowship. And to seek to do so in a cross-cultural context in a foreign language, very difficult. It's very difficult often to create that even in our own home countries. Yet it's a very, very important issue, a very, very important subject. In Ecclesiastes 4 verse 10 we read, Woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. We need each other. We need a body of believers. Yet the subject often comes up within the context of missions at two different levels. In the first place, new missionaries arriving on the field are often disappointed. Disappointed in our ability to form teams that meet their expectations. There are different cultural norms and expectations and missionary teams can be very, very multicultural. Our WEC team, even our WEC team in Turkey for instance, we have Germans and Swiss and Dutch and Americans and Canadians and There's a Filipino and there's a couple of Koreans and they all bring their own cultural expectations to the table in terms of forming a team. And then we haven't even begun to talk about all of us trying to adapt and relate to the host culture, to the Turkish culture, the Arab culture or whatever it might be. Trying not to step on this culture's or that culture's toes, sometimes it all just gets to be too much. Furthermore, New Christians are also often disappointed. People that we're seeking to minister to are new people. They come to a church, they begin to attend, and they're often disappointed as well. Particularly in some of these countries, like the Middle East, other parts of the world, they may have been rejected by their families because they started attending church, because they self-identify as Christians, and then they join a church, or a little group of believers, and they expect it to become like a surrogate family. In other words, now the church will take care of them. Now this new family will help them find a job, and will help them find a spouse, and may help them get a visa to travel to the West. And when some of these things aren't forthcoming, they can become very, very disappointed. Furthermore, in normal life, we get to choose our friends who we relate to. in missions and also within the church context, I have to have fellowship with you whether I like it or not. The Lord has brought us together and we have to make this work. That is the norm. That's the way it's supposed to be. So what I'd like to do with you this morning is just take a brief look at this whole subject about Christian fellowship. What does the Bible actually teach about Christian fellowship? Now it's a huge subject and we cannot cover all aspects of it. Furthermore, if you're not a Christian, you're not going to relate to anything about what I'm about to share. This is about Christian fellowship. But if we don't, as Christians, don't have a clear idea of what the scripture teaches on this subject, we will have worldly ideas about what to expect and we will be disappointed because the world, in the end, inevitably disappoints. Well, first then, genuine Christian fellowship is not natural. Genuine Christian fellowship is a gift of grace. The natural forces of this world, they seek to disperse, and they seek to scatter, and they seek to blow apart. Yet one of the reasons we Christians were born again was in order to have fellowship with God and fellowship with His people. But, in this sinful fallen world, things are often messy, until Jesus Christ comes again. All kinds of forces are seeking to prevent Christian fellowship from taking place. And the first of these forces is Satan himself. Satan hates Christian fellowship. He's real. He's powerful. He's the accuser, we read in Revelations 12.10, who seeks to set people apart, who seeks to set people against each other. Christ himself calls him the prince of this world in John 14, 13. That's why we experience this world as a place where, for now, Satan wields genuine destructive power. We experience this in daily life. That's why we walk by faith. Faith. God, through Christ's work on the cross, has overcome sin and death, and that there is a partial victory in time right now. The victory over this force of dispersal that would set us against each other. And it will be a total victory when Christ comes again. We walk by faith and we live as a vigilant people, not unaware of the enemy's strategies to sow discord and to sow disunity. How can you know whether a particular issue leading to disunity and leading to friction between brothers and sisters in Christ has its roots in some kind of evil spiritual influence. I think probably when there's no good reason for it. Sometimes friction, tensions, they come at you from left field. As a missionary or as an elder in a church you wonder, what is this all about? Where is this coming from? Some big issue, you look into it, it's just some kind of a big, you know, nothing burger, right? And yet it causes disunity and it causes strife. Where does this come from? It's probably a spiritual attack by the enemy seeking to create disunity. And all we can do is come together and pray. in oneness of spirit and say, Lord, if this is the enemy seeking to cause destruction, in Jesus' name, give us that victory and restore that unity of spirit and overcome, Lord, help us. So the first thing that seeks to scatter and to blow us apart as Christians is the enemy of our soul, Satan. The second thing that seeks to blow us apart and sow disunity and friction between the body of believers is just the general effect of sin in a fallen world. Not all Christians can enjoy blessing or fellowship. The imprisoned cannot. The sick often cannot. Those who are sad, living under oppressive anti-Christian regimes People who long for genuine Christian fellowship, but the circumstances of life in a fallen world prevent them from doing so. Like the psalmist in Psalm 42, verse 4, he says, These things I remember as I pour out my soul, how I used to walk with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God. How he longed to be with the people of God, going back to the temple, worshipping God together with the fellowship of believers. But he couldn't, David was on the run, he was being persecuted and the circumstances of life prevented him from doing so. Or we think of Paul writing in 1 Thessalonians 3.10, night and day we pray most earnestly to see you again. He was separated from the body of believers, from that particular church and he longed to be with them. A fallen world can sometimes lead to a breakdown in Christian fellowship and community. Not just the general effect of living in a fallen world, it can also be our own. As soon as Adam and Eve had lost their identity in God, what did they do? They began attacking each other, didn't they? Right from the start, people have been playing that blame game. You sin, you do something wrong, you blame the circumstances or you blame the other person. By blaming others, you hold others responsible for your behavior and you break fellowship. Fellowship can also be a result of divine punishment or discipline for specific sins in your life. What was the result of this Tower of Babel? It was scattering, wasn't it? Or, what was the result of Israel's sin? It was scattering. Part of it to Assyria, part of it to Babylonia, all over the world really. It was foretold already in the Torah, in Deuteronomy 28, verse 25, that Israel, if it did not hold to its covenant obligations, would be scattered into all the kingdoms. And how does the church discipline by removing from fellowship. It's a discipline, isn't it? By excommunicating. That's how the church disciplines. So fellowship can be removed as a result of divine punishment or as a result of church discipline for specific sins. And then lastly, the opposite may lead to a break in fellowship. Obedience, obedience to the gospel, voluntary service may lead to a lack of fellowship. Pioneer missionaries going to places where there's very little or no other Christian fellowship. We ourselves for years, three years, lived in a city in southern Turkey, just north of where Aleppo is today, and there was no other church there. There was just a few other believers, missionaries, once every two weeks, and for the rest you were on your own. Children had no other Christian friends. I remember our son, he was small back then, coming home one day and saying, Dad, how can we be right and everybody else be wrong? There was no other Christian fellowship around him, even for his age. And so the reality of pioneer missionary work often is, yes, little or no fellowship. In fact, it's interesting isn't it, the great commission, obedience to the great commission by the original disciples involved a scattering of that team. Matthew probably stayed where he was but Thomas is supposed to have gone all the way to India and Bartholomew to Anatolia and they all scattered in different directions. John ended up in Ephesus and it led to loneliness. That was a cohesive team. They had worked and lived and prayed and served together and then after that they were broken apart. We read Paul in 2nd Timothy when he was in And he writes Timothy in 2 Timothy 1.4, recalling your teaching, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy. And he was in that circumstance as a result of obedience to the gospel. And so there can be all kinds of reasons in the modern world why Christian fellowship breaks down. All these things prevent or obstruct real Christian fellowship from happening. Christian fellowship, Christian community, where it exists, is a gift of grace that can be taken away. One of the reasons that Christ died was, we read in John 11, 52, that he would gather together in one the children of God that were scattered In other words, in gathering his children together, he's beginning to undo the effects of the fall. But, ultimately, this too will not be fulfilled until he comes again. That's when it really happens. In Matthew 24, 31, Jesus says, and he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call. And what will they do? They will gather his elect from the four winds. all the body of believers throughout history will then gather together to welcome and worship our coming Savior. Thankfully, something of that future has invaded the present. In fact, real Christian fellowship, although it's imperfect where it exists, does reflect a fellowship which is radically different from what the world has to offer. Real Christian fellowship is one of our greatest testimonies as Christians. By this they will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. What then are some of the differences between Christian fellowship and normal human relationships? In the first place, normal human relationships are focused on other human beings, on other people. and typically on them meeting some kind of a need in us. Real Christian fellowship, on the other hand, is rooted in our oneness in Jesus Christ. That's why if you're not a Christian here, you're not going to relate to this. Because genuine Christian fellowship in the first place is the sense of being rooted and united in Jesus Christ. He is the head of this fellowship, of this body. And so on the mission field, people come to church with expectations that we, missionaries, with this little body, can meet their needs. And they're going to be disappointed. Ultimately, They must come to us with a wish and a desire for community and fellowship with God. If that isn't there, you and they will be disappointed. They'll become disillusioned because they come with demands and not as grateful recipients of God's grace. And so if you haven't tasted of God's grace in Jesus Christ, you'll be coming with your demands. and not with a heart of gratitude for what he has done for you in Jesus Christ. Fellowship of believers, we're bound together by faith and that faith flows from us being bound together in Jesus Christ. That forms the basis of genuine Christian communion and fellowship and that's why I had Pastor Bernard, read this section from Colossians. He starts off in the first three verses, he focuses in this letter to that church, since then you have been raised with Christ. Now the response is, set your hearts on things above where he is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. And he goes on like that. And then in verse 15 he goes on to say, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body. Now he begins to look around him. We are called together to peace. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms and hymns and songs from the Spirit. singing to one another with gratitude in your hearts to God. You see, in other words, real Christian community consists of our joint identity in Christ, our being focused on Him, on God's grace as having been revealed and released to us in Him. That's where our common identity is. That's what makes us family, one head, God our Father, Jesus Christ our older brother. Christian community accepts other fellow believers for who they are in Jesus Christ. It recognizes that ultimately each one of us is a weak, fallen sinner, insufficient, whose identity must ultimately be in his relationship with our Lord. Human relationships have little regard for biblical truth. That's not what they're built on. Christian communities must serve in the clear light of biblical truth. The life and death of a Christian community is determined by whether it lives by the word and whether it is focused on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Romans, Paul states, therefore, receive one another. as Christ also received us to the glory of God. That's the basis of Christian community, being received by Christ, then receiving each other as forgiven sinners who seek to glorify God together. That's the first thing that is typical of genuine Christian fellowship, its focus on Jesus Christ. Secondly, human relationships find loving an enemy almost impossible. That's because it expects to certain of our own desires and needs to be gratified, to be fulfilled in them. And when those desires are not met, fellowship begins to break down, the relationship begins to break down. In fact, it can quickly turn to hatred and contempt and divorce, breakup, because my needs aren't being met. You see, within Christian fellowship, human love is not an end in itself. Christian love ultimately seeks to serve those who might formerly have been considered enemies in Jesus Christ. Now, Islam pays lip service to this as well. It seeks to create an ummah. An ummah is kind of, it's called, it's a word for nation. The word for nation, and Islam is a nation of people from every tribe and tongue and people you might say. But, there's a difference. The big difference between the Islamic concept of the ummah and Christian fellowship is this. In Islam, every Muslim is an abd, is a servant, is a slave to God. We Christians are not slaves. We Christians are brothers and sisters together in Jesus Christ. It's very counterintuitive that. That's why again in the Colossians passage we read about Greek and Roman and Scythian and barbarian and rich and poor, all not just called to worship together, not just called in a room to repeat a sepulchre, prayer together and then scatter again, but no, to share meals together, to share burdens together, to share our lives with each other, to become a new body, a genuine counterculture within the world in which we live. Somebody over lunch asked me about a missiology which seeks to keep people in their own culture. which really seeks to allow people to stay who they are, like Muslims kind of staying Muslim. Well, there's something fundamentally unchristian about that. You see, genuine Christians the world over eventually begin to look like each other. Eventually, as I told the individual, Christians eventually begin to sing Christianity is the only religion which sings communally. The Mormons do it too, the JWs do it too, but they were sects that came out of the Christian Western world. But the other major world religions, they don't sing communally. But we Christians do, because we're focused on a saving Lord. And the minute you begin singing together, and you pick up a hymn book or whatever, you already begin to become counter-cultural, different from your host culture. Christians begin looking like each other. I can walk into a church in Thailand or in Turkey or in the Arab world and I step in and it doesn't take long or you sense these are brothers and sisters in Christ. I have something in common with them. We're focused on the same Lord and Savior who died for me and lived for me. I'm sure you've all sensed that if you've ever traveled overseas or gone on holidays to another church, another solid evangelical church, you know it, you sense it. And it's cross-cultural, it's everywhere. Because we focus on something together, a savior who gave himself for us. That's why narrow nationalist churches or churches which only draw from a particular culture or subculture, there's something sub-Christian about them. We're called to be a people from every tribe and town and people and nation together. Now, how can a church grow in that? How can a church move forward in this? So, here with a couple of practical steps towards developing real Christian community. The first step is very simple. That's just to give thanks, to be grateful. Again, if you look at our passage, Colossians 3, verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace, and be thankful. or verse 17, and whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Growth in Christian community begins just by being thankful for one another. I confess, it's been six years since we came here. I hope it will never have such a long break again. I just so thoroughly enjoyed and was thankful for being together with some of the brothers over lunch, praying with some of the brothers before, your intercessions for us, this immediate sense of being one in Christ. And I'm grateful, we're thankful for this. Growth in Christian community just begins with being thankful for one another. One community. which shares one hope, one faith, one baptism, as the word puts it. So what little blessings has the Lord blessed you with through another brother or sister in Christ? Who can you phone and say, when can we meet for a cup of coffee or a bagel and a bowl of soup? And share and have a meaningful discussion about some of the issues of life, some of our struggles, some of our hopes, some of our aspirations. and walk away from that with the certainty that that individual will take it through the Lord in prayer. Are we thankful for that? And then secondly, the second thing we can do, also very simple, this isn't rocket science, is don't be critical. In verse 12 we read, Therefore as chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Basically just learning to hold our tongues. James in chapter 4, James 4.11 says, brothers, so he's addressing the body of believers, don't slander each other. Ephesians 4.29, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs. You'll discover, I'm in the process of discovering this, that when the discipline of the tongue is practiced, you make this great discovery about yourself. You'll start becoming less judgmental of other people. You can learn to exist, let other people exist as the people that God is in the process of making them. In fact, you may even begin to see something of the richness of God's recreative glory in them. You see, God is not interested in creating people in my image. That's just not what he's about. He's interested in taking people where they're at and beginning to recreate them in Christ's image. And everybody starts from very different starting points, culturally, emotionally, their background baggage, everybody starts from different backgrounds and they begin that journey. And sometimes it's very hard for us to appreciate. My wife Anna once had, there was somebody in her life that she had real difficulties with, just great difficulty appreciating that individual. She had to work with him on a regular basis. Instead of griping and saying, oh lord, take that cross out of my side, she began to have a different approach. She just began looking for something positive in that person every day. Sometimes she had to look really hard. But some little thing in this, look at the way he treated his child, really spent time with them. Or he had a kind word for a co-worker. And as you begin looking, the person begins to change. In the end, she could thank God for that individual. Thirdly, we must learn to appreciate diversity. In chapter 3 verse 11, here there is no gentile, no Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all. You think there is racism today. There was even more or just as much if not more racism in the first century. First of all women were not perceived as even having a soul in the Roman way of thinking. The barbarians to the Greek wind were totally soulless as well. In fact the word barbarian comes from barbara which is just like saying blah blah blah to a Greek. Their language was substandard as far as they were concerned. Scythians were barbarians from the north of the Black Sea there. These people were just nobodies, just worthy to be enslaved and sold. And here Paul is saying, no, there's no difference. Christ is all and is in all. A church glorying in its diversity. We're not allowed to exclude people because they're different, because they're odd, because they're weak, because they're insignificant, because they seem useless to us. If they love Christ, they can be strong, they can be weak, they can be wise, they can be foolish, they can be gifted, maybe they're only uni-gifted, one gift, right? But they are a gift to the body of believers. Actually excluding them means excluding something of the grace that God has granted to the body of believers. One of the great distinctive of the Christian Church in the Roman era, and to a degree still today, is that it is made up of people of every social category, every ethnic group. People who would never sit together, who would never cross paths in ordinary life, are found around the same table within the church community, addressing each other as brother, as sister. This is very, very counter-cultural in many situations. Where we lived in the Middle East, the idea of starting a home church in difficult countries where there's persecution, etc. They often tell you, you know, start a home church, meet with believers in people's homes and kind of go from one home to the next. It doesn't seem to work in the Middle East. There's a very simple reason for that because Middle Easterners typically don't want people of a very different social class or of a very different ethnic class to come to their homes. I say you're an engineer and you're well-educated and you're living in a nice apartment You don't want the doorman or the doorman's wife to be coming into your house at all. Because if you do, the neighbours won't stop coming to your house. Because it's an honour-shame society and because there's a sharp social stratification there. So the home church society or the home church phenomena, where you invite people to each other's homes, doesn't work. In other words, what these churches then do, they rent. They rent a small little storefront. Sometimes it's very poor, it's not much, it looks terrible. Our church in Turkey was hardly anything. It was just not nice because there wasn't much money around. But that became the home. of the church family and within that neutral context we did have people from every social strata sitting next to each other and enjoying fellowship and a meal together. That became the home of the new church family. And it's this reason why so many marginalized people are drawn towards the church, both in the first century and in much of the Middle East today. It was an amazing phenomenon in the early church. It was part of the secret of their success. I think that's why Paul rages against the Corinthians when there were inequalities in their shared meals. The rich people were having these big feasts, these big baskets they were taking off to the church picnic and eating it all themselves. Some poor Scythian, a slave maybe, he had one little piece of pita bread and a bit of hummus and that was it, leaving hungry. And Paul, you can't do that, that's not what we're about. Or James condemning the church for showing favoritism to the wealthy. No, to appreciate and accept diversity and nurture that within the body of believers. And then fourthly, were to bear each other's burdens. Colossians 3.13. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Are we aware of how much the Lord has forgiven us? Remember that parable of the Lord about the guy who was forgiven loads of stuff? Galatians 6.2, carry each other's burdens in this way and you will fulfill the law of Christ. And of course the law of Christ is love your neighbor as yourself, God above all. Ephesians 4.2, be patient, bearing with each other in love, to bear, to carry. How do we bear one another? Well sometimes it just means putting up with the other person, just to endure the other person. And you know sometimes it's only when the other person is a burden to me, that he or she becomes a brother or sister in Christ, as opposed to someone whom I can use for my own ends. You see, God bore the burden of humankind in the Lord Jesus Christ. He bore them as a mother carries her child. He bore them as a shepherd carries a lamb. He took up our infirmities and our sorrows. And we too, sometimes we just have to bear, to carry. Bearing each other at the very least means that we have to let that other person be who they are as Christians. Their nature, their individuality, their weaknesses, their oddities, their cultural background, things which may test our patience, things which may produce friction. We have to work through these issues together. It means learning to accept each other, learning to affirm them in Christ, thinking the best of others when in doubt. Bearing each other also means listening, I believe. Genuinely really listening, not just the kind of listening with half an ear which presumes we already know what the person is going to say. That's that impatient, inattentive kind of listening which ultimately just despises the other person. To seriously listen. Listen with the ears of God. God is a great listener. We cannot really pray for another brother or sister until we've really listened to them. So learning to listen, something I've really had to grow into. I've had to learn to become a good listener. I'm still working on that. And in that sense, community also becomes a means of grace that God has given us to help us grow in holiness and sanctification. It's in that body of believers that God threw together, pulled together, that I begin to grow in grace, and in graciousness, and in gentleness, and in gentleness, and all those fruits of the Spirit. Another thing that I think a genuine Christian community church body does is to learn to give everyone a task. We're members of a body. Every member of the body is called to play a role within that body. If not, the body is the poorer for it. Every member must have a definite task to play within the community, for the community's sake, but also for their own sake, so that in the time of doubt, in the time of question, they'll know that they're not useless and unusable. We're members of a body, right? 1 Corinthians 12. Every member serves that body. You, whoever you are, if you consider yourself a member of this body, you're serving it for good or for ill. You cannot not have an influence. You cannot not have an impact. It'll be for good or it'll be for ill. You're making an impact on this body of believers by your very presence. What kind of an influence is it? I think one of the jobs of elders of a church is to help people discover their spiritual gift and help them begin to exercise that a bit within the framework of the church. This is risky business. We've discovered that on the mission field. You work with someone and you begin training them and you discover something of their gift and then they go off the rails. Oh no, I've got so many hopes in that person. Off the rails they go. and you help nurture them back on track, and you grow yourself in that process, you grow in patience. It's a sloppy business, but it's a sanctifying business. Sometimes, new people bring aspects from other cultures and ways of doing things which make the rest of us really uncomfortable. But you know, there's nothing unbiblical about it, it may even be enriching in some way, and the rest of us may need to be stretched or matured in particular areas. Just a simple illustration, I'm from a Dutch background, and from a conservative Dutch background. I can raise my hands above my shoulders, but I cannot do it in church. I've got this, I just can't do it. But on the mission field, where some of these cultures are much more just total physical response in terms of their worship of God, there's just an emotional aspect to their worship, which is very rich, actually. And I've just had to enter into that a little bit more. This is stretched culturally out of my comfort zone in that. I can't impose my narrow, limiting Dutch way on them. That wouldn't be right. So, giving people a task and allowing ourselves to be stretched as well, if need be. Then all of us will grow up and mature in the faith. Next, we are to gently seek to teach and admonish each other. In Colossians 3, verse 16, we read, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. to teach and to admonish. Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, I am. And there's a very sobering verse in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 3, verse 18, where God says, when I say to the wicked man, you will surely die, and you, Ezekiel, do not warn him and speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life. That wicked man will die for his sin, but I will hold you accountable for his blood. We are our brothers' and our sisters' keepers. We're responsible for each other. In the first place, this is done through the faithful ministry of the Word. That's why good teaching is so important. Good teaching means that the important things of life, of the Christian life, are not left unspoken between brothers and sisters in Christ. The more we allow other people also to speak God's Word into our life, the healthier we become. I think one of the foolproof tests of genuine spirituality is how we deal with reproof, how we reprove and how we deal with being reproved. It's unavoidable in a healthy church. Discipline and gentle reproof is one of the marks of a healthy church. It's a ministry of mercy. It's the ultimate offer of real fellowship when we allow nothing but God's word to stand between us to judge us. And of course the corollary, the other side of the coin of that is confession. In James 5.16 it says, confess your faults to one another. In confession comes the real breakthrough to Christian fellowship and community. Strange isn't it that so often we find it easier to confess our sins to God than to a brother or sister. And yet it's God who is holy. God who is sinless. God is a judge of evil. He's an enemy of disobedience. While my brother, he's just as sinful as I am. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Sin wants to remain unknown. It wants to remain hidden behind lock and gates. Proverbs 28.13 says, He that covers his sin shall not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will receive mercy. And so it's in confession that the light of the gospel can break into darkness. It must be brought to light. It's a tremendous mercy when there's some truly trustworthy, mature brother or sister that you can go to and be held accountable to. That is a tremendous blessing. The root of sin is pride. And in confessing our sin to a trustworthy brother, whom you know it'll be safe there, the last stronghold of pride and self-justification is abandoned. You surrender. You're giving up your evil. And you're no longer standing alone with your evil because you've confessed it to a fellow brother. with whom you now stand in an even deeper relationship of fellowship. It's in confessing that we begin to forsake our sin. This is when the old dominion of sin begins to be broken down. This is where there's a break with the past. A break that will lead to certainty. To whom should we confess? Well, as I mentioned, to people who are mature believers. Don't confess your darkest sins to some new believer. It'll shake them to the core because they're maybe looking to you as a role model. Someone who has experienced the cross in their own life. You have a friend who lives in the shadow of the cross, whose identity is in Christ, that's the person. To psychiatrists, I'm just a sick person. with a fellow brother like that, I can dare to be a fellow sinner. Back when we were living in the Netherlands, I used to meet every Sunday evening with a couple of brothers and sisters from our church to pray. Every Sunday evening, we would start our prayer sessions with confession. We would just spend our time on some passage of scripture that dealt with confession and we would pray, we would confess our sins to one another. It never left that room. And then we would go on to worship and finally to intercession. That leads me to my last point. The Christian community, the Christian fellowship, prays for each other. The most direct way to others is to pray for them. Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another. If that doesn't happen, it will collapse in the end. And it must be concrete, not kind of vague, you know, oh Lord, bless the church and bless the pastor kind of stuff. personal, specific, praying for definite people and definite situations and definite difficulties so that you'll have specific and concrete answers. Anne and I, we have a little photo album, and in that photo album are all the people we pray for on a regular basis, the missionaries and family members and churches in our life. You guys are regularly prayed for as well, for that matter, and people that we pray for specifically. And then over the years you begin to see God's grace in their life and you begin to see them moving forward and it's a joy to have been in some infinitesimally small but real part in their spiritual growth even though they may be totally unaware of it. The more definite our intercession, the more specific the answers, the greater our joy will be in God our Savior. that Christian fellowship is most appreciated after a spiritual battle. It's after we have fought the good fight at work or in school that Christian fellowship becomes meaningful. That's after we struggle and fought and maybe failed or won a victory, and then when we meet together with other brothers and sisters in Christ, and we meet for teaching and fellowship, that's when we reap the benefits. If you're not fighting the devil and the flesh and the world, if you're not seeking to advance the kingdom in some way, you won't truly appreciate fellowship with brothers and sisters fighting in this great common cause. Now remember, Christian community, at the best of times in the Church's history, was her greatest testimony. It's what made the early church so powerful. In the church's early centuries, people, all these marginal people from within their society, they were looking in at the windows, beating down the doors in some cases, trying to become part of this amazing new community of thankful, loving, diverse people, focused on one Savior, where everyone had a little role to play, where there was loving reproof, where there was faithful teaching, where people prayed for each other, where they sought to carry each other's burdens. That's what Christian community is. That's what I long for, for you in increasing measure. That's what I long for, for the churches of which we've been a part in the Middle East. Our merciful God and Heavenly Father, we come before you and once again we recognize how far short we fall. Oh Lord, we just don't have it within us. Lord, what can we do but to confess that to you, to acknowledge that, to hold this standard once again before us and to say, oh Lord, help us to move a little bit more in that direction of genuine Christian fellowship and community. Oh Lord, in this world in which we live, this fractured, fragmented world, oh Lord, that by your grace we may be a community that is welcoming to anyone, Lord, who loves you and worships you in spirit and in truth, and where others can look in and see that this is real. O Lord, we pray, bless for your honor and your glory, and indeed, Lord, for our spiritual growth and well-being. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.