Fellowship with the Father

Coral Ridge Ministries

Fellowship with the Father

1 John 1:3

September 20, 2023

“That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.”
— 1 John 1:3

Do you realize how much God wants to have fellowship with you? It’s difficult to imagine, but it’s true. He loves you and wants to be with you far more than you could ever dream.

What can we do to meet Him halfway, to play our part in developing fellowship with God? A story by the English evangelist Charles Spurgeon may hold the answer.

Suppose a great plague comes to London. People are dying everywhere. Those who are still alive feel such terror that they’ve boarded themselves up in their homes. Suppose an English nobleman has a son who is a great physician. Together they determine to help as many people as they can. The son searches for the sick and brings them to the house he and his father share. The father smiles approvingly at the son’s compassion. The son goes out again and again, searching for victims.

Suppose one day the son finds you lying hopelessly on a street corner. He picks you up tenderly in his arms and takes you to his home. As you recover, you begin to realize that nothing in the world compares to the work happening in that house. So you enter into a sympathetic understanding of the father and son’s mission. Yet if you want to actually enter into fellowship with that great man and his son, you must go further. You must come to the place where you ask them how you can help. When you do, they give you the task of carrying basins and bringing towels. You now have some part in their fellowship, yet you cannot understand it fully until the day you say, “Sir, I see that what you are doing is the only thing in life that really matters. I want to give my whole self over to it. I want to go out and join your son in bringing in the sick.” At that point, my friend, you begin to enter into and understand the deep mystery of fellowship with the father and his son.

If you’d like to enter into a deeper fellowship with the Father and His Son, ask God to show you the first step you should take. Ask Him to send someone into your life whom you can bring to Him.

QUOTE:
“With heart toward God and hand toward man.”
— Slogan Of The Salvation Army

The Quest for Life

September 30, 2023

“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” — Mark 8:35 When, at the end of your life on earth, you look back over your life, what do you hope to have accomplished or experienced? I think we would all like to “go for the gusto,” pursuing life with a capital “L”. But many pursue this goal in the wrong way. Sadly, even many Christians seek life with a capital “L” in a way that will prevent them from ever attaining it. People miss out on abundant life because it is a paradox. The way we truly gain life runs 180 degrees counter to the way we think we gain life. Jesus tells us, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” Yet most people frantically do all within their power to save their lives by heaping upon themselves all manner of comforts, pleasures, delights, and securities, not realizing that everything they do destroys the very thing they want to save. As they attempt to gain life, they lose it. Jesus’ words are difficult. Many people read them, shrug them off, and go on their way, hoping that somehow those words don’t apply to them. For many, those words seem beyond understanding. But let me make it clear: If we focus all our attention and energies upon our material well-being, upon our lives in this world, then we shall lose that higher, greater, and more abundant life that we can have in Christ. Only when we release our lives to Christ, allowing Him to do whatever He wishes through us, do we gain life and gain it abundantly. Live for Jesus every day, including today, and you’ll experience life with a capital “L”. QUOTE: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in;’ aim at earth and you will get neither.” — C. S. Lewis

Possibilities Unlimited

September 29, 2023

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. —Philippians 4:13 What would you try if you knew you could not fail? Would you climb a mountain? learn to fly an airplane? share the gospel with your family? The Scripture promises us that we can do “all things.” Have you claimed that promise? A person who professes to believe he or she “can do all things through Christ” and does not exercise that belief is like a miser who has a hundred million dollars in the bank but goes hungry day after day. For many of us, our belief is more like this: “I can do a few things through Christ, who gives me a little help.” Why do we sometimes believe that we can do only “a few things”? We believe this because we listen to the lies Satan speaks through his voice of discouragement. We believe this because we allow persecution to stop the Lord’s work. But if we want God to use us, we have to bank on that verse. Those who have turned the world upside down—Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, and William Carey—believed God could do mighty things through them. They made this verse their life verse, and it transformed them. And even though the apostle Paul was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and left for dead, he attempted great things for God because he expected great things from God. He lived by the verse he had penned—“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” If you let the truth of this verse permeate your thinking, it can transform your life! We achieve only a fraction of what we could because we don’t take God at His Word. Are your expectations too low? Do you dream big dreams but never act on them? Then ask God to plant this promise deep in your soul and help you live in His power! QUOTE: Man, with God’s help and personal dedication, is capable of anything he can dream. —CONRAD HILTON

John Milton

September 28, 2023

“… to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever …” — Revelation 1:6 How blessed we’d be if we could give ourselves over, body and soul, to the glorification of our Savior Jesus Christ. John Milton, England’s most profound poet, did precisely this. He was a man molded by the Scriptures, and many consider Milton one of the highest examples of Puritanism. Though he lived much of his life in blindness, God granted him the vision to see things in the vast universe that lie beyond what the rest of humanity can see. John Milton saw the power of sin that, left unchecked, brings death. He saw the reality of Jesus Christ, the Second Adam. His masterpieces, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, involve two principal characters: the first Adam, by whose disobedience all of humankind plunged into sin; and the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, the beginning of the new creation. Milton’s epic poems describe the tremendous power and deception of sin that had come into this world, wreaking havoc and misery upon the earth. They also contain another reality—Jesus Christ, who gave thirty-three years of perfect obedience to God’s commands, who regained the kingdom for those of us who trust in Him. Milton was a poet of the invisible. He splashed on a vast canvas the history of the world from eternity to eternity, painting with his pen the greatest panorama of all time. He saw things that no one had ever seen before. And he has shared that vision with others, opening the eyes of millions. Milton believed that humankind has a high calling—to glorify the living Christ—and he fulfilled this calling in all he wrote. May we all have that same vision to be a blessing to God, to open the eyes of others by glorifying Jesus Christ in all we do. QUOTE: “Beyond compare the Son of God was seen, Most glorious; in him all his Father shone, Substantially expressed, and in his face, Divine compassion visibly appeared, Love without end, and without measure grace.” — John Milton