Good morning, brothers and sisters, may the grace and peace of our Lord be with you!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Fellowship with God must precede fellowship with believers.\u00a0 Every believer in Christ has restored his fellowship with God, and it is with this foundation that believers can have fellowship with each other.\u00a0 This is known as\u00a0koinonia<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship (koinonia<\/em>) with us.\u00a0 And our fellowship (koinonia<\/em>) is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make your joy complete. (1 Jn 1:3-4)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Before you can have fellowship with someone, you must first be sure that you yourself and the other person has fellowship with God.\u00a0 John and his coworkers had \u201cfellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ\u201d, and they bore testimony to \u201cthat which was from the beginning, which is the Word of Life\u201d (1 Jn 1:1-2), proclaiming what they have seen and heard (preaching the gospel), bringing others to trust in Christ, so that they may have fellowship together.\u00a0\u00a0Koinonia<\/em>\u00a0is not merely a group of people studying the Bible together, but\u00a0koinonia<\/em>\u00a0only happens if every member of the group has believed in Christ and has fellowship with God.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The beginning of fellowship with God is baptism into Christ, in obedience to Jesus\u2019 command for an outward display of your inner faith.\u00a0 After Jesus was raised from the dead, he told his disciples, \u201cTherefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.\u201d (Mt 28:19)\u00a0 On the day of Pentecost, Peter, by the power of the Holy Spirit, preached a message testifying to what God had done through Christ, and the result was \u201cthose who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day\u201d (Acts 2:41)\u00a0 Please take note of the testimony of the Bible:\u00a0 \u201cBaptism\u201d and \u201cdiscipleship\u201d are always connected.\u00a0 The life of discipleship commences immediately after baptism: \u201cThey devoted themselves to the apostles\u2019 teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.\u201d (Acts 2:42)\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Fellowship with God is akin to human relationships.\u00a0 Besides having a starting point, it also requires a continuous practice of drawing near to God in order to maintain this fellowship.\u00a0 The purpose of drawing near to God is not to increase spiritual knowledge or attain some sort of spiritual perfection, but to constantly look to God and align ourselves with his will, so that our thoughts and actions become increasingly pleasing to God.\u00a0 There are four practical ways to do this:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n In the book of Acts, there are two very clear examples that illustrate the importance of teaching.\u00a0 There were two churches which placed utmost importance on teaching:\u00a0 the church in Jerusalem, which was the first church in history, and the church in Antioch, which was the first church comprised of Gentiles.<\/p>\r\n The church in Jerusalem: The church in Antioch: 1 Timothy is a pastoral letter, in which Paul instructs Timothy on how to pastor a church, with a special emphasis on teaching: In fact, no one placed greater importance on teaching than Jesus himself. In the familiar Sermon on the Mount, there are three entire chapters dedicated to the teachings of Jesus, recorded in Matthew chapters five through seven. Additionally, the four gospels are filled with the teachings of Jesus. Take the miracle of the five loaves and two fish, for example. Jesus was teaching the people late in the day and they had no food to eat, which was why he performed the miracle to feed the hungry crowd. Brothers and sisters, we need the word of God! There is a need for faith-filled, clear, and powerful teaching in the church. Sadly, the teaching of God\u2019s word is slowly dying out in many churches. From the podium, we hear \u201cchicken soup for the soul\u201d self-help inspirational stories, health and wealth prosperity gospel, and trivial personal sharing. Excerpts taken from devotional books, allegorical stories, and even testimonies of famous people are elevated to the same status as God\u2019s word, and used in the church as instruction for God\u2019s people. Not only is the teaching of God\u2019s word few and far between from the podium, the Sunday school classrooms are also gradually becoming deserted and slowly disappearing. Gone are the systematic and sequential Sunday school classes, and even the Southern Baptist\u2019s Lifeway Christian Resources, once the largest publisher and a flourishing source of Sunday school material in the United States, is facing rapid decline without a promising future. When churches try to start some Bible classes, there is either a lack of teachers, or there is a lack of interest from the congregation. Fellowships and small groups meet mainly for social activities, with the occasional Bible study, but even these are superficial, lacking in depth, and sometimes causing more harm than good with misinterpretations and erroneous applications.<\/p>\r\n If you belong to a church that teaches God\u2019s word, this is a blessing from God that you must cherish and make the most of. May the Lord raise up more disciples to teach and obey his word among the churches, so that it may be as described in the book of Acts:<\/p>\r\n In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. (Acts 19:20)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good morning, brothers and sisters, may the grace and peace of our Lord be with you! The beginning of fellowship with God:\u00a0 Be baptized into Christ Fellowship with God must…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,57,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotionals","category-koinonia","category-pastor-warren-wang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1955,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbcwla.org\/home\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The practice of fellowship with God:\u00a0 Draw near to God<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles\u2019 teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (Acts 2:41-42)<\/em><\/p>\r\n
Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. (Acts 11:25-26)<\/em><\/p>\r\n
Command and teach these things. Don\u2019t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. (1 Tim 4:11-13)<\/em><\/p>\r\n
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them. (Mt 5:1-2)<\/em><\/p>\r\n
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. \u201cThis is a remote place,\u201d they said, \u201cand it\u2019s already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.\u201d (Mk 6:34-36)<\/em><\/p>\r\n