Cultivating True Christian Fellowship
How many times at church do you find yourself discussing non-spiritual things? I love to talk about the Lord with others, but He doesn’t always come as naturally as I think He should into a conversation. As believers, our relationships with others in the body of Christ are unlike anything non-believers will ever experience. It is such a joy when you come across another Christian that you haven’t met before and because of the common bond of Christ, it is if you have known them forever.
“that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”
1 John 1:3
There is a favorite book of mine that gets used quite often by Donald S. Whitney called Simplify Your Spiritual Life. In the section, Simplifying our Spiritual Life with Others he guides us in being intentional on driving the conversations into the spiritual. Wouldn’t we all as believers like our conversations with other believers to be directed towards things related to knowing God, Bible reading, and application, theology, evangelism and prayer to just name a few.
Sometimes I find myself hesitant to direct the conversation to the spiritual by injecting my thoughts into their minds, so I talk myself out of asking questions or redirecting the discussion to the spiritual. Questions like, Will they think I’m just trying to be spiritual? Do they really care that I evangelized to my neighbor? They don’t want to talk about God right now? The reality is that they are hoping to talk about things of the Lord, and would be delighted themselves to share what He has been doing in their lives.
Mr. Whitney shares some questions that are a natural help in directing your conversations with your brothers and sisters in the faith to the spiritual. This is a handy list to keep in your Bible, planner or purse.
- How is your (teaching, hospitality, outreach, or whatever) ministry going? What do you enjoy most about it?
- Where have you seen the Lord at work lately?
- What’s the Lord been teaching you recently?
- Have you had any evangelistic opportunities lately?
- Have you had any obvious answers to prayer recently?
- What have you been reading? How has it impressed you?
- Where in the Bible have you been reading lately? What impact has it had on you?
- How can I pray for you?
- What’s the growth point in your life right now?
- What are you passionate about right now?
What are some questions you can add to the list? May you experience the blessings of true Christian fellowship because of the work Jesus Christ did for us on the Cross.
Related Links:
Preparing Our Families for Sunday Morning Worship
Simplify Your Spiritual Life by Donald S. Whitney
I thank you for sharing this list. I’ve copied and pasted it into the ‘notes’ section on my phone so it is handy to review before I meet with other believers or can open a Precept Bible study class with one of these to keep us all responding to the Word we study, considering how we will live out what we learn. Bless you!
Thank you for this article Marci (and for the book recommendation)! It’s very encouraging! After hearing a sermon taught on Hebrews 3:12-14, I realized the significance of genuine Christian fellowship as part of God’s plan. He uses each member of the body of believers as instruments to exhort each other daily, to build up His church and keep us persevering to the end. I’m paraphrasing here, but exhorting one another does matter. “Through the instrumentality of the exhortations of other Christians you and I are prevented from becoming hard, unbelieving, and deceived. And we hold fast our first confidence in Christ. It’s the instrumentality God uses to keep Christians from falling away.” He also quotes James 5:19-20, My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
So, be encouraged!
Trisha thank you for sharing this – so encouraging and such good reminders of the importance of fellowship in the church body. I’d love the sermon link when you get a moment. Thank you xo
Marci, once again, you’ve written a post that is full of rich wisdom and helpful information and counsel, and much good food for thought. I so look forward to your posts and podcasts. Thank you for sharing such good and godly stuff!
This is so helpful! I will be using these ideas, especially on the Lord’s Day as we strive to keep His day centered on Him.
Wonderful questions! I will have to look into getting this book! Thanks for sharing and linking up! 🙂
Love this! Thank you so much for putting this up. I can’t wait to check out this book. For some reason it is hard to talk about God, even with the people in our lives we know are strong Christians. Even though as Christians we know what we should be doing, we sometimes need guidelines on how to actually do them. Thanks again!
Great questions! Sounds like a good book to read. 🙂
Sounds like an interesting and helpful book. It is good to talk about the Lord and encourage one another in Him. I am sure there is a verse which speaks about God recording our conversations about Him (I can’t think where it is found but I’m almost certain there is something in the Bible about such). Perhaps another sister can shed some light on this…
I like this idea too and hope to order the book sometime in the future. Thanks for sharing, Marci!!
I like the idea of striving the make our conversations spiritual. 🙂 Great post Marci!