More Than A Friend

”We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
1 John 1:3 (NIV)

Right now, almost half of all American adults report feeling genuinely lonely.

The U.S. Surgeon General called it a public health crisis. And the strangest part is that most of those people are not isolated. They have contacts in their phones, friends on social media, and colleagues who sit ten feet away. They may not be alone, but they are lonely. What they are missing is not more friends, but fellowship.

Those two words are not the same thing. Friendship can stay comfortable on the surface. Fellowship means you get to the heart of what’s going on within. It shares what you want to celebrate and what you cannot get through alone, and it requires a commitment that outlasts a good season.

The apostle John writes, "our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3, NIV), and follows it immediately with, "so that you also may have fellowship with us" (1 John 1:3, NIV). Both sentences belong together. Your vertical connection with God and your horizontal connection with other believers are designed to hold each other up.

If your relationship with God has produced no desire for community with other believers, something in that relationship needs a closer look. Real faith produces real fellowship.

Nobody is too spiritual, too mature, or too put-together to need fellowship. You need other believers and they need you. Don’t bring what you think they want. Show up with what is actually going on. That is where real joy lives.

Prayer: Father, thank You for drawing me into relationship with You. Show me what it actually means to share my life with other believers. Lead me to the people You designed to carry this with me, and give me the courage to actually let them in. In Jesus' Name, Amen.