Today people are enamored with personal experiences. The New Age movement is all about experiencing super-human spirit forces that can give meaning to life. The basic hedonist is all about experiencing pleasure and fulfillment from the joys offered by the creation. The bias of the “Me” generation (which is really every person still dead in transgressions and sins) is like a black hole that pulls everything in life into the vortex of self. But this self-centered perspective on life is not peculiar to unbelievers. It can infect Christians, too. We can be so involved with the “me-my-and-mine” in this world that our time, energies and resources are exhausted by “just living.” Yet, at the end of the day we have to confess that what we have been occupied with isn’t really “living” at all, but only maintaining our existence. For the Christian, life is not defined by personal experiences, but by fellowship with God. Personal experiences are just that, personal, and therefore different for everyone. Fellowship with God is the constant of Christianity – basically the same for every child of God.
If we are to avoid that selfish pre-occupation with the things of the present life, one thing we will have to do is make sure we have “God” time whether we have our own personal “me” time or not. In other words, the face of God comes before Facebook.
John says, “we are writing these things (about Christ and about fellowship with God) to you so that your joy may be completely filled up.” In verse 3 John says his purpose in declaring these things to us was our having fellowship with God. However, John has not only “declared” these things to us, he has written them down as well. In fact, the testimony of John and the other apostles was very carefully written down in the Gospels and Epistles. These books were written, Jesus said, “for those who will believe in Me through their word” (Jn.17:20), that is, in the New Testament. The apostolic testimony declares, explains and applies the Person and work of Christ in redeeming us. God gave us that revelation so that we might have fellowship with Him – that we might know Him through Christ, be accepted by Him, love Him, trust Him, follow Him and enjoy Him.
At the end of the day, fellowship with God is an experience, one that will last forever. But it is entered into and enjoyed only as we read, study, meditate on, believe and follow His revealed Word in the Bible. The measure of your joyful fellowship with God’s Book will be the measure of your joyful fellowship with God.
More to come, God willing…
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