This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions and our study together of the letter of 1st John. This is day three of our look together through chapter one. We're going to look at verses three and four today. In fact, I'd like to begin by reading those verses, 1st John, chapter one, verses three and four. "We proclaim to you," John writes, "what we have seen and heard, so that you might have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. " John says, "My purpose in proclaiming is fellowship. " Now remember, in the Gospel of John, he said, "My purpose in proclaiming is belief," but here he's writing to people who are already believers. And he's saying, "I'm proclaiming to you, my very purpose in writing this letter is your fellowship. I want the real truth about who God is that we looked at yesterday to result in real fellowship, genuine fellowship in your life. " Because this was the need of that church, the church at that time. Intimacy in their relationship with Christ had been replaced by what Lloyd John Ogilvie calls bland intellectualism. The false teachers had led people down a bad path. So instead of fellowship, they had discussions and disagreements and arguments. The questions that they had had begun to define their faith instead of their faith answering and even defining their questions. They began to be overwhelmed by questions like, "How could it be that God's Spirit brought about the birth of Jesus? How could a perfect God come and touch this earth? " Now John's going to have some answers to those kinds of questions for them, but he reminds them that starting with those questions, instead of starting with their love for God and their love for others, is leading them down a wrong road, a bad path. That path where all they are doing is thinking about the faith rather than living out the faith. And in order to help them to get into a new place in life, John focuses on their fellowship. He says, "Look, if faith is real, if your relationship with Jesus Christ is real, you ought to see it in your relationship with one another. Are you seeing it? Are you seeing it in the way you relate to other believers? " He says, "You see it through this word called fellowship. " Now, the literal meaning of the word fellowship is to have in common. We have a lot of weird ideas about fellowship. In fact, we even have buildings named after fellowship in churches today, the Fellowship Hall. And it's given us some bad ideas. Fellowship is this little place you go after church with a linoleum floor and you sit on metal chairs and you drink out of little Styrofoam cups and you say a word or two to each other and then you all leave and get to go home. And that was fellowship. Well, that's not fellowship. That's what happened in a room that we call the Fellowship Hall. Fellowship is what we have in common. It means that you build in your life on what we have in common. There's a lot that you don't have in common with other people. There's a lot that you don't have in common with even other believers. You may not have in common with them age or where you grew up or even political opinions or job or interests, a lot of things that you don't have in common. But the most important things about you, you do have in common with every other believer on this planet. And this is why, the power of fellowship, this is why I can go to almost any country in the world and meet a bunch of believers in a church. And even though we may not speak the same language, and I'm teaching them, and there's a translator so I'm not even speaking the same language, I can see in their eyes and I can experience in our hugs after the meeting, I can see in their faces that we have things in common. We have love for Christ in common. We have desire to live in him and for him in common. And there is a depth of fellowship there. In these couple of verses, John talks about the source of fellowship and the result of fellowship. The source of fellowship, we proclaim to you what we've seen and heard, that you might have fellowship with us and our fellowship, here's the source, is with the father and with his son. The source of our fellowship is our relationship with God. When you get any two people together who are focused on their relationship with God, they're going to be brought together in fellowship. They're going to be brought together in him. Whenever I try to build fellowship on my plan for a church, and we're going to accomplish this plan together, you'll never get fellowship there. Oh, you might accomplish the goal, but you'll never have fellowship. Whenever I try to build fellowship on my plans for my life, here's what I want to do and why don't you come and join me in my plans. And I think if you can help me accomplish my goals, that's how I'm going to get fellowship with you. You might accomplish the goals, but that's not where fellowship comes from. Fellowship does not come from shared goals. Fellowship comes from a shared relationship, and it's our relationship with God that enables us to share goals with fellowship and with joy and with love. The source of fellowship is our relationship with God. John also talks here about the result of fellowship. Notice he says in verse 4, "We write this to make our joy complete. " The result of true fellowship is that our joy is made complete. Now that picture, true fellowship, a kind of fellowship where my joy is made complete, that is very far from the linoleum room where I'm drinking out of a styrofoam cup. There's something different going on here, and I want this. I want this kind of fellowship. Many of us don't realize how deeply our joy is tied to our relationships with other believers. Not just your relationship with God, but also your relationship with other believers. Our relationship with fellow believers, John says here in this letter, it is the determining factor in making our joy complete. So with that in mind, how do I do this? Here's the daily question when it comes to fellowship. What is the nature of fellowship? The source of fellowship is our relationship with God. The result of fellowship is that our joy is made complete. But what's the nature of fellowship? What does it look like? How do I do this? Well to find that out, you go where a lot of people have gone. You go to the one another's, put that in quote, "The one another's of the New Testament. " Throughout the New Testament, there are things that we are called on to do for one another because we have faith in Jesus Christ. And that's what fellowship looks like. Let me just give you a quick list. John 13, 34 says, "We love one another. " We're going to see that several times in this letter of John. Romans 12, 10 says, "Be devoted to one another. " Romans 12, 16 says, "Live in harmony with one another. " I'll go back to some of these. Romans 15, 7 says, "Accept one another. " Galatians 5, 13 says, "Serve one another in love. " Ephesians 4, 2 says, "Put up with one another. " That's one of my favorites. You have to put up with other people because you're fellowship. Ephesians 4, 32 says, "Be kind and compassionate to one another. " Ephesians 5, 19 says, "Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to encourage. " Colossians 3, 16 says, "Teach and admonish one another. " Hebrews 3, 13 says, "Encourage one another daily. " 1 Peter 4, 9 says, "Offer hospitality to one another. " How do I do fellowship? It's love. And that love, Romans 12, 10 told us, it's in devotion. There's no way to fellowship with another person except that I commit my life to that other person. That takes my time. That takes my energy. And if you're like me, you're selfish a lot of the time. You don't want to give another person your time and your energy, so you try to build life on the foundation of yourself and getting your goals done, your things done. You're never going to find joy there. You're never going to find joy there. Joy comes, John tells us, joy comes from our relationship with God and our relationship with other believers. Be devoted. Give your life to that because that's where the life that God has for you is. What does fellowship look like? It looks like living in harmony with one another. That's Romans 12, 16. And maybe you need to make a choice about that. Now harmony does not mean that we're all singing the same exact notes. Harmony means that although we might be singing different notes, we are different. We're not all exactly the same, but we are also harmonizing. There's beauty in how we sound together. Whenever there's dissonance in a relationship that you have with another believer, maybe you're working in a ministry together, maybe you've had a disagreement in a conversation, maybe you don't like the way they're acting in a church. Whenever there's dissonance, my job as a believer is to work for harmony, work for unity. It is a work. It's hard, difficult sometimes, but it is a work that shows the world what Jesus Christ is really like. Now the truth of harmony, the truth of unity, the truth of living together is that it's not always easy. That's why Ephesians 4, 2 says you have to put up with one another. I have to put up with the irritation of the fact that people aren't like me or that people are selfish like I'm selfish. I have to put up with the fact that people don't do the things the way that I would do them or that they need to grow just like I need to grow. You see, that's what real fellowship is all about. And maybe there's someone you need to put up with right now. Maybe there's someone Ephesians 4, 32 says you need to be kind and compassionate towards right now. Maybe there's someone Hebrews 3, 13 that you need to encourage right now. Maybe there's someone 1 Peter 4, 9 you need to offer hospitality to right now. That's how fellowship works. And it works. It is hard work sometimes, but it is the work of God and he will give you strength and energy to do this. Let's go back to the source. The source of fellowship is our relationship with God. If I'm trying, if you're trying to build this kind of love in your life towards other people based on your own effort and energy, I'm dead in the water from the very beginning. The source is my relationship with God. You want to love other people like Jesus loves other people? First recognize how Jesus loves you. Lean on your relationship with God. In fact, as we close today's study, I'd like to take a few moments in prayer to lean on our relationship with God and lean toward our relationship with others today. Let's pray together. Our Father, you love us. You love us with a love that came to this earth and you gave yourself Jesus on a cross. You resurrected for us. You love us clearly. And in your love for us, we pray that you would give us strength to love those who are around us today, beginning with our brothers and sisters in Christ, those who are closest to us in the faith. Lord, help us today to do the hard work of fellowship. But help me, help us today not to do that work on our own energy. Instead, help us to look to you in your love for us. Do something new. Do something fresh in our lives today. Lord, I know that oftentimes when I make the choice to love someone, even though I don't feel like I have the energy or I don't feel like I have the desire, at the beginning, it doesn't feel like joy. At the beginning, it feels like that's something I don't want to do. But I also know that when I make that choice at the end, the joy flows. And I pray specifically for some who need to make that choice right now. Give them the choice to make a difficult choice to love and then give them the joy that flows out of that choice. Pray this Jesus together in your name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to talk together about light and darkness as we look at verses 5-7.