3. Fellowship With God

God wants you to have fellowship with Him in His Kingdom. But, what does that mean?

Fellowship means partnership – a common commitment to a common purpose. True fellowship has four elements, which we can remember by using an acronym:

CRAB – Commitment, Responsibility, Authority, Benefit.

Commitment:

If any partnership is to endure, there must be commitment to its purpose, and commitment to the other person, or other people, in the partnership from all those involved. Marriage is an excellent example of a partnership that is founded on a formal commitment that is enshrined in law.

What other types of relationship involve a formal commitment?

Responsibility:

We must be held to account by someone for the decisions that we make and the actions that we take. If this were not so, people would literally get away with murder. Employees have to report to their line managers and receive either correction or reward for what they have done. People expect us to admit to our mistakes and “take it on the chin”.

What other examples of responsibility in relationships can you think of?

Authority:

Everyone needs to have some freedom to make decisions and do things according to their own wisdom, style, and ability. If there is no freedom to do so, the person is no more than a slave. But authority is delegated, not abdicated. For example, a parent allows their child to choose from a set of options that the parent has decided are appropriate. In this way the parent maintains control, but encourages the child to make decisions.

What other types of relationship involve delegated authority?

Benefit:

There must be some kind of benefit from being involved in the relationship. In the work-place, the employee gets paid and the employer gets the use of the employee’s skills. In a marriage, the two spouses find love, acceptance, security, and pleasure. The parent finds fulfilment in seeing their child grow strong, wise, and happy; and the child grows strong, wise, and happy under the parent’s loving care.

What other examples of benefit from being in relationship can you think of?

In the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32 – please read this now in your own Bible if you are not familiar with the story) we see an example of fellowship, where a father and his two sons are engaged in the family business. Unfortunately, this is an example of a dysfunctional relationship where fellowship is sadly lacking:

• As far as the father is concerned, both sons are partners in the family firm – having authority, responsibility, and benefit. But they must decide for themselves whether or not they are personally committed to that.
• The older son sees himself as the father’s servant – he is fully committed, driven by duty, with a strong sense of responsibility, but no understanding of the benefits that are his, and no recognition of his place of authority.
• The younger son does not see himself as part of the team – there is no commitment, no sense of responsibility, no interest in exercising authority. He is only interested in the benefit.

Because there is no commitment in the boy’s heart, authority and responsibility are irrelevant to him. He grabs his inheritance, and off he goes to squander it in an irresponsible manner. He then finds himself in a position of servitude where, through dire personal need, he is committed to and responsible for carrying out a menial task, but with no authority at all, and hardly any benefit.

When he comes to himself, he begins to think about the type of man that his father is, and he recognises four things:

• a) I may not have been committed to my father, but he was committed to me, and probably will be still;

• b) My father will feel a sense of responsibility towards me, because I am his son, so there is a good chance that he will be willing to help me out;

• c) I have no right to ask to be taken back as a son, but my father has the authority to take me on as a servant, and nobody can say a word against him for it;

• d) There won’t be much benefit in it for me, but at least I’ll be better off than I am here in this pig sty.

The prodigal son knew his father well, but he did not fully understand his heart. When the boy arrives and begins to plead for mercy from his father, the father responds by doing the one thing that the boy did not expect, and had no right to expect:

The father immediately restores his son’s AUTHORITY before even listening to what the boy’s request of him might be. This father does not want his son to be his servant. He wants his son to be in full fellowship with him, and that means that he must have the authority of a son, as well as the commitment, the responsibility, and the benefit.

The older son does not understand his father either, as he demonstrates in verse 29:

This young man sees himself as his father’s servant, not as his partner. He feels that he has to ask permission to have a party and to take anything out of the kitty. His father says to him, “What are you talking about? You can have a party any time you want, and take as much out of the kitty as you want. You don’t have to ask me for anything. It’s all yours already!”

The reason that Jesus told this parable was that neither the religious people on the one hand nor the tax collectors and sinners on the other hand understood the heart of God towards them – that, like the father in the parable, God wants to restore true fellowship between Himself and those who have been made in His image.

Remember that when God created Adam and Eve He gave them a commission:

That commission has not changed. It is still God’s purpose that His sons and daughters should have authority over this world, not Satan the usurper. God wants YOU to be in fellowship with HIM in His kingdom on the earth.

So let’s look at how commitment, responsibility, authority, and benefit apply to us in relation to the Kingdom of God.

Commitment

God wants you to commit yourself to following Jesus and being obedient to His voice; to being a fully paid-up member of His church and a citizen of His Kingdom.

The key statement here is in verse 34 (For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also). The Kingdom of Heaven is all about selfless service to God and other people. The self-serving person cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

You cannot separate righteousness from the Kingdom of God. The unrighteous cannot enter God’s Kingdom (Matthew 5:20; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 – quoted in lesson 1 in the section “the Lordship of Christ, the King”).

There must be a commitment to living in accordance with the will of God.

Responsibility

God wants you not only to be able to assume responsibility within your family, place of work, and wider society, but also within His church. More importantly, He wants you to accept full responsibility for your own life – and that means making no excuses for either your attitudes or your actions, no matter what has happened to you or been done to you throughout your life.

In the Wholeness Programme from which this study is taken we use the following slogan:

I am not a victim, I am not a survivor, I am more than a conqueror through Christ.

God does not see you through the lens of your past or present experiences, and neither should you. God sees you through the lens of His eternal destiny for you, and so should you.

Now, let’s look at two verses of scripture which, at first sight, have no obvious connection to each other:

These two passages from Matthew’s gospel are each followed by a promise to the people involved that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19; 18:18). The keys of the Kingdom are being entrusted to those who assume the responsibility to:

• a) recognise that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and live according to that truth;
• b) deal with sin in their personal life and also in the corporate life of the church.

So the authority of binding and loosing, and the benefits that derive from it, are entrusted only to those who have committed themselves to taking responsibility for their lives and their actions.

Authority

God wants you to be able to exercise His authority over your own affairs, and to be able to deal authoritatively with your circumstances, both natural and spiritual, so that He can then entrust to you the authority to minister to others both within and without His Kingdom.

We learn an important lesson from a pagan centurion:

Authority is delegated. Whoever is under authority is able to exercise that same authority. The centurion exercised the authority of Caesar within the sphere that had been delegated to him. He recognized the same principle at work in and through Jesus, so he knew that the sickness had to obey Christ’s command.

God wants us to know the authority and power of His Kingdom and be able to live in the good of it, but just as the centurion had to do the will of Caesar in order to exercise the authority of Rome, so we must do the will of our Father if we are to exercise the authority of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Faith is the key to exercising the delegated authority of God:

The level of Kingdom authority that we exercise is dependent upon the depth of our faith in God.

Faith is more than just “believing”. It is relying upon, trusting in, having confidence in, and being dependent upon God for life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). Faith is the key to everything relating to the Kingdom of God, and the surest evidence of the existence of that faith is a life of regular prayer. We pray because we know that if God does not provide, we will have nothing. When Jesus talks about “the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3) he is referring to those who recognise their total dependence upon God and who seek His hand for everything that they need.

Benefit

God wants you to “prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers” (3 John 1:2); to sow generously and reap generously (2 Corinthians 9:6; Luke 6:38); and to experience the fullness of His blessing in every area of your life.

The greatest manifestation of God’s power was not the splitting of the Red Sea, nor was it stopping the sun in its tracks for a full day while Joshua routed the Amorites (Joshua 10:12-14). The greatest manifestation of God’s power was, in fact, raising Christ Jesus from the dead and restoring Him to His rightful place on the throne of Heaven, because in doing so He defeated death, He defeated hell, and He defeated Satan once and for all.

However, Paul makes it clear to us that that same power is now at work in those of us who have put our faith in Christ, and that we also have been raised up, together with Christ, and are now seated with Him, and in Him, on that same heavenly throne.

Summary

God, our heavenly Father, has called us into fellowship with Him, both now and throughout eternity.

Whoever sits on the throne exercises the authority of the kingdom. Seated as we are in Christ, we are able to exercise the authority of His kingdom in His name – i.e. on His behalf, or with His authorisation – so long as we are living under His authority, fully committed to His will, bearing our share of responsibility for ourselves, for those whom He has set before us, and for the tasks that He has assigned to us.

And we are able to say to our souls, along with king David, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits …” (Psalm 103:2).

How do you see yourself?

• How do you see yourself in relation to God and His Kingdom?
• How do you think God sees you?

Do you agree or disagree with these statements?	Agree	Not Sure	Disagree
God is my Heavenly Father, and He loves me.
I am precious in God’s sight.
I have an important place in God’s Kingdom.
I belong in God’s family.
God is committed to me and I am committed to Him.
God has given me authority and responsibility in His Kingdom.
God wants me to benefit from serving Him, and to enjoy His blessings.

If you have any “Not Sures” or “Disagrees”, bring these before God in your private time with Him.