Faith, Fire and Fellowship – Faith

Faith, Fire and Fellowship – Faith

Faith the Fire of Fellowship

Faith, Fire and Fellowship are essential elements of the Christian experience. All these things are rooted in the faith of Christ moving and pressing us into the communion of saints.

The wonders of Christ are beyond human understanding. His glory and being can only be explored through the medium of Faith. His grace reaches to the lowest places of the human experience. His glory extends to heights unspeakable. The Holy, Holy, Holy God is untouchable, incomprehensible, and yet within reach of every individual.

Paul, caught up in the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, prayed earnestly for the people of God that they, through the faculty of faith, would be able…”to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;..” (Ephesians 3:18). Having thus prayed for them to grow in these vast dimensions of God’s being he could not stop without emphasizing the final capstone of it all:

“And to know the love of Christ…”
Ephesians 3:19

There is something incomplete in our knowledge of God if it leaves us bereft of the “love of Christ”. Human love, even in its best endeavors, will leave the soul withered, devoid of the spark and fire of the Life of God. Religion can only present a caricature of the real; a dull and lifeless facade of human concepts, reasoning and seeming logic. Yet in the end it will utterly fail to touch even the hem of the garments of His glory, power and LIFE.

Faith: the faculty of touching Him

While the religious crowd thronged about Jesus, touching, and jostling Him in their curiosity, there was one, in desperation and necessity, who touched Him in faith saying within herself… “if I but touch His garment, I shall be whole”.

“And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind Him, and touched the hem of His garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole.”
Matthew 9:20-21

The language of Faith is “if I may but touch” the living Christ “I shall be whole”. Faith is not content in hearing about Him. It cannot rest in the teachings and doctrines of the learned. Christ Himself is the center and object of its holy desire. Nothing but Jesus. Within the sphere of this living faith there is an intensity of purpose, a tenacity of conviction, that perseveres through the testings, trials, and failures of our human experience. It holds His Own to the pinnacle of His call. It does not allow the religious culture of the day to deter its pursuit of the “upward call” of God in Christ.

The atmosphere and fragrance of Him invigorates and presses the heart through the mundane offerings of the day and keeps the soul alive and desperate for Him. The heart aflame for Him fears apathy and contentment more than the hatred of the world. To be alive in Him is to feel in some measure the pangs of the new creation life reaching unto Him to be garmented in the life and the fulness of God Himself (Ephesians 3:19).

“And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”
Romans 8:23

Faith is the means by which we receive “the firstfruits of the Spirit” and the consequential “groaning” and hungering after the fullness of the redemption promised to those who partake of His life. It is in this Spirit that we fellowship to encourage and admonish one another to keep the flame of His Spirit burning within. It is a fellowship borne of His Spirit, sustained by the grace of Him moving in each of His own to keep ourselves “in the love of God”.

“But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life”
Jude 1:20-21

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“We need a quickening of faith; faith in the power of the God of Pentecost to convict and convert three thousand in a day. Faith, not in a process of culture by which we hope to train children into a state of salvation, but faith in the mighty God who can quicken a dead soul into life in a moment; faith in moral and spiritual revolution rather than evolution”
– A.C. Dixon

Other Posts of this three part series:

Faith, Fire and Fellowship – Fire

Faith, Fire and Fellowship – Fellowship

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See Related Post: The Fellowship of the Saints

Brian Troxel