The path to God is not through isolation

In my last article I wrote about the first of five purposes for our lives. In the book The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren ask the question, "What on earth am I here for?" The first purpose is to worship God. We were planned for God's pleasure. God is pleased with true worship. Loving God is our first and foremost purpose.

Our second purpose in life is fellowship. As our number one purpose is to love God, our next purpose is to love God's family.

I John 4:21: "And this is the commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also."

There are four levels of fellowship:

n Level 1: Membership: Choosing to belong

Rom 12:5: "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another."

The idea of being alone as a Christian in not a biblical concept at all. As a matter of fact it is completely contrary to the teachings of the Bible. You can't love people if you don't know people, you can't know people if you don't spend time with them.

n Level 2: Friendship: Learning to share

What do we share? Our experiences, our homes, our problems.

Heb 10:25: "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."

n Level 3: Partnership: Doing my part

Eph 4:16: "From whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Everyone has something to add to the church and everyone has something to receive from the church."

n Level 4: Kinship: Loving believers like family

I John 3:16: "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

When we were born again we were adopted into the family of God. To say that we have fellowship with God and have no relationship with the rest of the family is not biblical. It doesn't make sense to say we love God and want nothing to do with His body. Fellowship is what makes us and others grow. Without it we will become dry and lifeless.

n Pastor Leo Kruger is a member of the Carson Valley Ministers' Association.