For as long as I can remember the word ‘fellowship’ brought to mind coffee, donuts, maybe a potluck or two, and the presence of Christian friends or the church family.  Whatever the case, it involved food and people (when I moved to Virginia I fit right in with the Baptists).

In reading a pamphlet by Michael Pearl, The Protestant Confessional, I came to a new understanding of fellowship.  The pamphlet was on 1 John, specifically 1 John 1:9, which says:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

But prior to that pivotal verse John writes in verse 3:

…that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

He can’t mean we are having lunch with the Trinity, so what is the true definition of fellowship?  According to Michael Pearl, ‘fellowship’ means to have a share in something.  Historically, when two people bought a plot of land together, they each had a share, or a fellowship, in that land.  They were partial owners and therefore receivers of the harvest the land would yield.

Verse three takes on a different tone when we replace the word ‘fellowship’ with its original concept of shared partnership:

…that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you have a share with us, and indeed our partnership is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

Fellowship is not social interaction coupled with great food; it is much weightier.  Our fellowship with each other is not founded on the events we attend or the desserts we bring, but our ’share’ in Jesus Christ.  Adopted as sons of God upon salvation, we are fellow heirs in the inheritance of Christ:

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.  And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying “Abba! Father!”  So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.  (Gal. 4:4-7)

Our fellowship with Christ determines how we fellowship with others.  If we truly have a share in Christ, then as Paul wrote in Galatians, His Spirit dwells in us and will exude a Christ-like character that reflects the fellowship we have with Him.  No more gossip at the church potluck!

It’s a new perspective on what fellowship truly is.  It may change the way we throw the word around… it’s not something for Sunday afternoon.  It’s a way of life.

I remember clearly the day my Dad came home from the dentist and told me what the dentist told him.  There had been a young woman in the office a few days prior; a pretty girl, dressed well, with a nice car and a fairly nice life by all appearances.  She walked into the office with a Diet Pepsi in one hand and threw it away before brushing her teeth and going into the office.  When Dr. Andrews peeked into her mouth, he told my dad, he had never seen such terrible teeth in such a pretty face.  What he said then sticks in my mind:

“You can tell the quality of a woman by inside of her mouth and the inside of her car.”

That may sound very strange at first, and maybe that’s why I remember it so well.  But think about it!  If you don’t keep your teeth clean and healthy, what about the rest of your body?  If you don’t keep your car clean and running well, what about the organization of the rest of your life?

I remember another description of a quality woman.  This was from a lady I highly respect.  She said, “You can tell the character of a girl by the condition of her fingernails.”

Teeth, car, and fingernails.

I have made a goal for myself, for 2010, to become a “well-rounded woman”.  No, that doesn’t mean eating a lot of chocolate (that would be too easy).  My goal is to strive for excellence in every area of my life — from my spiritual life to my academic standards to my toenail polish and overall appearance.  It might sound like a tough theme to live up to — but I realized at the beginning of this year that the excellent life is the life God calls us to.  It is expected.

“5) For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,and virtue with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. ⁸ For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (1 Peter 1:5-8)

Peter is describing a Christian (we’ll assume she’s a woman for the sake of this post) who understands that her Christian effectiveness is vitally connected to her dedication to excellence. Everything in our lives is intertwined.  Take, for instance, the fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Each of these are dependent upon the others.  If you are full of God’s love, you will also be filled with his joy, and will have his peace, and so on.  Ultimately, all these attributes come from the source of God’s character.

For our own character to be complete, it must be excellent in all ways.  It must be well-rounded; no jagged corners or rough edges.  No, we will not be perfect!  However, we will have a heart attitude that God can work with.  It’s that insidious little idea that creeps into the back of my mind — and perhaps yours too — that I can slack off on this chore, or this subject, or this character issue.  God calls us to be diligent and not slack off on anything!

There was a time that I hated brushing my teeth.  Hated it. It may sound absurd, but it was true.  Because I tended to leave the house with the breath of a Great Dane, my dad had to teach me the hard way.  I will never forget the day I had to go to a 4-H meeting wearing my toothbrush on a string around my neck.  To be excellent (even up to par) in society, I needed to brush my teeth.

There was also a time I abhorred vacuuming the car.  It’s definitely a bus, and with six kids it gets dirty fast!  Once I had my own car, however, I wanted it clean.  I realized the necessity of keeping my car in good shape not only for my own interest, but to make the value of the vehicle stay as high as possible.  I wanted to get places without worry.  To do that, I had to have excellent (running) transportation.

I love painting my nails, but my nails are long and they chip very quickly washing dishes and riding horses.  The smell of nail polish remover isn’t pleasant either, so my motivation to get rid of old nail polish isn’t always keen.  However, a true lady keeps up her appearance, and no one wants to look at chipped, dirty, ugly nails.  Looking nice is not for our own sake.  Rather, it is for the ease of those we see throughout the day.  We look nice so that we are pleasant to behold!

Being an excellent woman is demanding, but it is at the same time a goal that is rewarding in all ways.  Consider your own life — what do you need to change to be well-rounded?

The fingers on this keypad are in need of attention.  I better go grab that nail polish remover…

I was fascinated when I heard the book came out, a few months before I arrived on LU’s campus.  I spied it in Liberty’s bookstore but was too cheap to buy it then, although I was still undeniably curious about what this non-Christian had to say about the school I was attending.  Having finally read it, I am thoroughly impressed with Roose’s writing and even with his fair technique in presenting the university to the public.  I am glad that he found Liberty not to be the legalistic, wound-too-tight representation of Christianity that he expected.  But oddly enough, I came away from the book less disturbed by a self-confessed liberal’s expose’ than by the actual people he was writing about.

I have been a ’sponge’ this last semester at one of the best Christian universities in the country.  I have tried to absorb what people say and do, observe the cultural atmosphere of the campus, and refrain from a complete judgment until my year is complete.  In the spectrum of cultural and philosophical background, I come from the polar opposite of Mr. Roose.  Yet his observations about evangelical Christian youth — or rather, young adults — ring unnervingly true with my own.  Perhaps mine, coming from one immersed in Christian culture from birth, are even more harsh.  It’s not Liberty itself that I criticize:  it is my generation of professing Christians.

This is a generation, I must say, I was not completely familiar with before I attended school.  Certainly, my high school friends are mostly the same age as me, but they were raised with similar ideals… similar standards.  Unless my parents subjected me to a lifestyle few outside of Shaker-dom have beheld, it was my impression that what I grew up with was the typical standard of living for a teenager.  We had rules about makeup  and clothes; we had chores every morning; we had to do our school every day and we were expected to have As.  We didn’t have cable television, and we didn’t get cell phones until we were in our late teens.  Somehow, I didn’t think I was missing out.  Now I am all the more convinced of that fact.

This generation of Christian college students is one of the most narcissistic and self-indulgent that has yet been born.  I call them Christian because that is what they profess — via mouth or Facebook profile  – but the label they take may be nothing more than the trappings of their childhood environment.  Many students who come to schools like Liberty are raised in the church and attended a Christian school.  Many more come from public schools.  In a general scan of Liberty University Facebook pages, I find little different from my non-believing coworkers at home except for a few Bible verses in the ‘Quotes’ section and the occasional status praising God that exams have reached conclusion.

Granted, an entire campus of 12,000 students can not be summed up by a few hundred Facebook statuses.  There is a fair fraction of students that are sincere in their faith, many of whom are my close friends.  My initial shock was with the rarity of these sincere students.  I had assumed, I suppose, that the Liberty campus would be a veritable smorgasboard of stalwart Christian men and women who I could stop on the street for an analysis of Ephesians at will.  Not so.  There are some who cannot find Ephesians, much less talk about it.  What is this generation of Christians?  Are they really Christians, or is this just the label they take per the legacy of their parents?

I suppose to Kevin Roose I would be a ‘likely disciple’ on Liberty’s campus.  I would be the typical evangelical on a Christian campus.  I am doing a lot of thinking, however.  What am I bringing to this generation?  What are you bringing?  At Liberty, we are supposed to be ‘Champions for Christ’.  This generation of Christians could better be christened ‘Champions for Compromise’.  I’ve decided to hold to a higher standard.  Will you?

With every desire comes the need to reconcile personal urgency and God’s timing.  It’s human nature to ‘want what I want and want it NOW’.  How often do we feel that if we don’t have our hearts’ desire fulfilled ASAP that it will never come to fruition at all?  I know I have felt that way.  I often picture God at these times with a patient smile on his face, watching my own face contort with anxiety as I worry over when, where, and how:  “My Child, where is your faith?”

Today in my ladies’ bible study, Discerning the Voice of God (by Priscilla Shirer), Priscilla talked about the desires of our hearts.  She quoted the life verse of my high school years, a verse I still treasure very much:

Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.   (Psalm 37:4)

When I was young I thought that this meant if I spent as much time as possible with the Lord, and truly made him my joy, then he would give me the things I wanted out of life.  This is partially true.  Yet there is a greater concept hidden in this verse, one that Priscilla brought to light:  as we seek God, making him our utmost priority, he changes the desires of our hearts to fit his will for our lives.

No matter what our desires are, if we refuse to relinquish them to God this indicates the same effect on our character:  worship of the desire, rather than of Christ.  We cling to our hopes and dreams because we are afraid that if we give them up God will never give them back. This is not true.  Not all of our desires need be changed.  But it is not for us to decide which need changing and which remain the same; our duty is to seek the Lord with all our heart, mind and strength, allowing him to do with our dreams as he will.

So many people long to know ‘the will of God’; yet I wonder how many actually yield their hearts’ desires up to him for his purposes.  I know I refused him many times.  We think we know what we want and that submitting our longings to God will result in never seeing them come to fruition.  This is fear.  God cannot work with fear, but he can work with faith!

This is the truth:  God has a will for each of us.  If we intend to follow his will we have to seek him, know him, hear him, and obey him.  By doing this we draw so close to God that our heart is united to his, and our desires naturally change to fit his plan for our life.  It isn’t painful and sudden; it is a gradual transformation of our heart’s atmosphere.  The painful part can be the initial decision to surrender.

If anyone would come after me, let her deny herself and take up her cross and follow me.  For whoever would save her life will lose it, but whoever loses her life for my sake will find it. (Matt. 16:24-25)

In order to have ‘that which is truly life’ (1 Tim. 6:19) we have to give up that which we think is life.  Faith believes that God’s will for us is better than anything we can manufacture ourselves.  Faith makes the desires of the heart come true.

After the Bike Ride

Even bloggers make mistakes, in case you thought we impersonal, electronic, opinion-sharers didn’t mess up once in a while. I of all people am prone to “messing up”, and I did — ironically the same day I read my next paragraph in Philippians.

“Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud I did not run in vain or labor in vain.”  (Phil. 2:14-16)

It was a progression of several events, really.  Saturday was my day off so I spent the afternoon in town (this would be the day my beach plans were foiled).  When I got home, I discovered that I would be required to wash my dad’s truck that evening while my parents took my car out for a date.  I had been planning on doing — well, nothing, that evening, and although ‘nothing’ leaves plenty of room for assignments to intervene, I wasn’t pleased to find out I was going to get wet and dirty.  So I grumbled and slumped and stomped around, made dinner as quickly as possible and then slouched out to wash the truck. 

The next day was church — and Father’s Day.  It wasn’t till I was midway through my truck-washing that I realized the next day was Father’s Day, as well as a bike ride we were taking with a family of good friends.  I began to regret my grumbling, first because of my dad, and secondly, because of the privilege of the bike ride.  The guilt set it in.  Then the embarrassment.  I apologized to my parents when they got home, but grumbling doesn’t give up easily.

After church the next day, we set off on the 15-mile bike ride.  It was a gorgeous day and I started out strong.  Somehow our two families — us with six kids and the other with five — managed to get spread out into three divisions over a length of five miles.  I was in the middle with my brother and the oldest boy of the other family… and it wasn’t long before the hot sun and long road and the knowledge that I could drive this distance in twenty minutes began to wear on me.  “Let’s stop here!” I panted, gazing longingly at a bench overlooking the bay.  “No, come on Phy, we can go a little further.” said Spence, looking completely unruffled by our circumstances.  “No!  I want to stop here!”  I wailed, watching the benches slowly pass me by.  “Come on, you’ll live!” said my brother Tony, looking equally as energetic as Spencer.  So I carried on, but not without a good measure of whining. 

It was strange, as I was walking my bike (yes, walking it, I couldn’t pedal any further) that across my eyes there played that verse from Philippians in all its guilt-tripping glory.  And once again, I was embarrassed.  Why was grumbling coming so easy?

Paul implies in verse fourteen that to be “blameless and innocent” we need to cease grumbling and questioning.  I believe this is because when we grumble, we show ungratefulness, and when we question, we reveal a lack of faith.  In order to be a light in this “crooked and twisted generation” we have to sacrifice those things that are generally accepted as “petty sins”.  Everyone grumbles.  But does that make it okay?

Paul says in verse sixteen that we “hold fast to the word of life”, and I think that this is key in overcoming the desire to complain.  Remembering our ultimate purpose, duty, and mission here on earth gives a perspective on our circumstances that reveals the silliness of complaint.  Often we grumble over the most ridiculous things — like trucks and bike rides.  Seeking him can change that.

To Think About

• Do you have a propensity to grumble?
• What things usually push you to complain?  How can you change your perspective on these events?
• How can you adjust your reaction to these circumstances?