We Will Go Out with Joy: Christian Fellowship as a Means of Grace

0:09 And I've spoken several times in Canada and in New England here in the last few months. And it's good to be in Georgia. Thank you for having me here. Let me pray for us. And you can hear my heart for our moments together here tonight as I pray. So, Father in heaven, I want to pray for a culture here at First Prez that loves the things of the Spirit, loves spiritual conversation, loves to talk about the real things of life, not just the normal stuff, not the same conversations we'd have with any unbeliever on the street. I pray that you'd be pleased to cultivate a spiritual fellowship here that not only brings us the joys of day in and day out Christian life, but feeds us, shapes us, keeps us, helps us, grows us in the faith.

1:12 And would you bless our moments here together tonight over your word, and in particular, this text from Hebrews. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Many of you have been kind in mentioning the Habits of Grace book that I understand some are studying. I've even seen copies of it floating around. One of the things that was perhaps most surprising to some readers when I published that book, which is almost 10 years ago now, 2016, is they flipped through or saw the table of contents and said, there's a whole section on fellowship. What is that? That's not normal. Usually spiritual discipline is about read your Bible and pray. And that's very important. And one nice thing about reading your Bible and praying is you can just do that on your own time.

2:06 You just schedule it right in your calendar. Takes nobody else, no coordination with other people. Just read your Bible and pray. So in one sense, it's easy to talk about that. But fellowship. like you can't just make that happen you need the consent of others there's a mutual aspect to fellowship that makes it unusual and often people don't think about fellowship as a spiritual discipline or that the language i want to use here tonight is means of grace so to approach this idea and the importance of fellowship in the christian life i want to start with isaiah 55 you can go there if you want. It's not going to be our main text. I'll start and end with Isaiah 55 very briefly, but we'll begin there because I want to set the table for the angle of approach on this topic of fellowship. These are the first three verses of Isaiah 55. Come, everyone who thirsts,

3:58 So one of the reasons that Isaiah 55 sticks out and many of us love it so much, And even Isaiah 55 comes back at the very end of the Bible. Revelation chapter 22 quotes Isaiah 55 and all the thirsty coming to Jesus. Thirsty souls, hungry souls coming to Jesus for satisfaction. We love Isaiah 55 for this. And what's strange about it is God makes himself here like a street vendor.

4:32 I don't know if there's street vendors in Rome. Maybe you've been to Atlanta Braves game. And on the way to the Braves game, between your parking and between the stadium, you come across street vendors. And they're saying, you got a thirst? I got water. One dollar, bottle of water. They're calling out, calling out, come. It's remarkable in Isaiah 55 that the living God, through his prophet Isaiah, like a street vendor, saying, come, all who are thirsty. and all are thirsty. It's not that some are satisfied. Some may not know they're thirsty. All are thirsty. All are hungry. Come to me. I will satisfy you. I will nourish you. He says, come, buy. How do you buy without money? The answer is somebody else bought it for you.

5:27 This is not cheap, dirty water. This is not stale, moldy bread. this is rich fare that's costly and somebody bought it for you. That's how you can buy it without money, without price. There's a suffering servant who bought this for you and God means to satisfy the human soul. So you might ask, great, how do I drink God? How do I eat God? The answer, that's good, that's good. The answer is God gives us means. He's got means of his grace for us. Let me give you an example of a place where these means are functioning. We're skipping forward now from Isaiah 55, 700 years before Jesus, to Acts 2, verse 42.

6:26 So here's a picture of the early church. What is the early church doing when they're seeking to satisfy their souls, nourish their souls in Jesus? Here's Acts 2.42. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Four things there. That sounds really normal, right? Sometimes we talk about these as the ordinary means of grace. The apostles' teaching, that's word. I said word here. Word, the apostle's teaching. Fellowship, the breaking of bread, which I take to be as part of the fellowship. They're eating together like we've eaten together here tonight. That kind of normal breaking of bread, as well as the Lord's table as a special kind of breaking of bread to honor the Lord. And then the prayers, these four things here. These are the means of grace sounding so ordinary.

7:22 But if you want to know what was the early church doing when the fire of the Spirit fell and God was adding to their number day by day? Like all night prayer revival, what was the spectacular thing they were doing? It was this, it was the ordinary, the word, prayer, fellowship. They were engaging in these means of grace. Let me read you this from J.C. Ryle over 100 years ago who talked about these means of grace. This is very important that God means for us to continue receiving His grace in the Christian life through His appointed means. Here's what Ryle says. The means of grace are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in church, wherein one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord's Supper.

8:22 So I don't know how you count those. three things, is that four things, is that five things? These are the means of grace, he's saying. Bible reading, private prayer, regularly worshiping God in church. You hear the word taught, you participate in the Lord's Supper. He says this, I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that, get this, no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification.

8:51 Christian growth. I can find no record of any respectable saint who ever neglected them. They are the appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul. Is there anybody in here who would like to have fresh supplies of grace? to your soul from the Holy Spirit.

9:21 Me? Me? I'm in. I want fresh supplies of grace. And he strengthens the work which he has begun in the inner man. Our God is a God who works by means. And he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without God's means. Let me give you my summary of the means of grace, and then let's spend the rest of our time on one of them. Here's my summary of God's means of grace. The three main places, the three main channels of His grace in the Christian life. First is hearing His voice in His Word. Number one's the Word. That's the first and foremost, the chief and soul, S-O-U-L, of the means of grace. Second, have his ear in prayer.

10:17 Hear his voice in his word, have his ear in prayer. And then third, this is the one that's often forgotten. This is the one that's often neglected. This is the one that's under assault in our society in general. We're talking about Christ and culture. This is mega relevant here to society today. The third is belong to his body in the covenant fellowship of the local church. So word, prayer, fellowship. And we often think of word and prayer as God's means of grace. But tonight, what I want to emphasize is that fellowship is not just nice in the Christian life. It's necessary. It's not icing on the cake. is part of the cake of God's means of grace for your life that you would survive as a Christian, that you would endure as a Christian, and that you would thrive, that you would have joy as a Christian.

11:20 God means for his people to be essential channels of his grace in the lives of his people. One quick word here before we say more fellowship, let me just say something about the end. Because some in here may be thinking, all right, a lot of talk about means. Means, means, means, means, means. If there's a means, what's the end? Because means are to an end, right? What's the end? Two texts that tell us about the end. John 17, 3. This is Jesus the night before he dies. He says in his prayer to his father, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. That's the end. Knowing the Father and his Son, that's the end of receiving his word, of praying to him, and of belonging to the body in the fellowship. Philippians 3, 7 and 8.

12:23 This is the Apostle Paul. Whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because, here it is, of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. That's the end, all right? So as I spend now these next few moments talking about this means of grace in fellowship, I want you to know the end. The end of it all is not that you have comfortable human relationships, the end of the relationships, being a means, the end is knowing Jesus. You will know Jesus, not just a little bit better. You will know Jesus far better in the context of committed, thick means of grace relationships in the context of the local church. J.F. Packer said that the more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to the end.

13:31 If you want to know and enjoy Jesus, which is what your soul is made for, that's why God made you most ultimately, to know and enjoy His Son and so glorify Him, then you will diligently engage in the means, including the forgotten means that's fellowship. So what is fellowship? So fellowship is based on one of those Greek words that preachers throw out sometimes. So if you grew up around church or you've been around church for a while, maybe you've heard this one Greek word, which just because you've heard a Greek word doesn't necessarily mean you understand it in context, but preachers love to say koinonia. It's a koinonia fellowship. What is that? That's just a Greek word for it. Nothing special except you find out in the context what it means. So there are two directions in particular in which that language is used in the New Testament.

14:28 Sometimes the fellowship, the sharing, another word for koinonia, koinos, relates to what's in common, what's shared. So if you talk about fellowship with the Father and with His Son and fellowship in the Holy Spirit, it's a kind of vertical fellowship. There's a sharing in God, which is stunning grace. And then there's some other passages talking about the fellowship that we have with each other. Because we together have a fellowship with the Father through his Son in the Spirit, we together also have this horizontal fellowship. We share in each other. We partner together. There's the commonality that we have in Jesus, in his blood, in the Holy Spirit, with each other, that we might share our energy, our attention, our life, our thoughts, our words with each other. Sometimes this word fellowship almost dies the death of overuse and cheap use.

15:35 as if, well, if you go to a Super Bowl party with people from work, that's just a party. But if it's Christians, that's fellowship. Even though there was no Bible, no spiritual conversation, no prayer, nothing distinctively Christian. It's happening to Christians in the same room. And magically, it's fellowship. Well, that's a pretty poor definition of fellowship. Fellowship in the New Testament is far more like the team on the field, in the huddle. Fellowship has a common goal. Anybody here who is a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle Earth and The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, that's a good use of fellowship. Tolkien knew what he was doing.

16:28 They're not sitting around watching games on TV and having some Coca-Cola in Rivendell. They got a ring to get to Mount Mordor, and they are partnering together, risking their own lives in the commonality of the mission. And that's what fellowship means in the New Testament. Now, one thing we have working against us, talk about Christ in culture. One thing we have working against us today is the social assumptions in the 21st century are very different than they were in the 1st century. There are implicit realities of how people relate to each other in the church and outside the church in the 1st century that are far thicker than we have today. So we'll see, there are some texts that explicitly talk about fellowship in the Christian life, and yet a lot of those realities can be assumed.

17:26 People tended to know better 2,000 years ago how much they needed each other, whether just in normal life or in the spiritual life. They didn't have the same access to technologies where they could pretend to be on their own. There weren't the same trends in society. Sometimes we talk about this as expressive individualism that is so rampant in our society today that works against the very trend of community life, deep, thick social life. I remember being a political science student at Furman University 25 years ago, and the big reality, this new book was out, and all the social scientists were talking about this a big book called Bowling Alone. I think it was published in the year 2000. I'm sure some of you may have heard of Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam 25 years ago. And he was talking about, oh, the alarming trends, about how Americans used to be joiners.

18:24 Americans used to be so social. And something started happening in the 1950s. And the social connections, the community aspects were falling apart. And especially for men, men had so few friends. And it was just plummeting. 25 years ago, before the iPhone, before all of the streaming services. So we are moving against the grain of our society in 2025 when we're talking about making our community, our Christian life, thicker rather than the cultural trend, which is thinner, thinner, thinner, all getting our spaces with our technology apart from each other. So this is really important to talk about. I want to do this with one text and to talk through four aspects of these two verses. We're going to go to what I think is the text on fellowship.

19:22 I say that carefully. I've been thinking about this for some years. I used to talk about the twin texts of fellowship. I think there is a main one. Maybe some of you know where I'm going to go. It's Hebrews 10, verses 24 and 25. And as we look at this text, I want to think about four calls to us as Christians. First prayer, here in Rome, these are four calls to you in the Christian faith. Older adults, younger adults. It's cut right across the generational lines. four aspects of the call to fellowship from Hebrews 10. Let me start at verse 23. I'm going to read 23 to 25.

20:12 Hebrews 10, 23. Let us hold fast the confidence of our hope without wavering. That's the Christian faith. Hold fast to Jesus. Hold fast to the faith. All right, so I read verse 23 there because there's some context and there's some footing. The context is Hebrews is exhorting his readers, hold fast to Jesus. Apparently there were some in the community and they were drifting away. They were cooling on Jesus.

21:05 Their Jewish family were putting pressure on them. Just drop the Jesus piece. We can all get along if you get rid of this Jesus piece. You don't have to be the Messiah. We agree on everything else. Get rid of the Jesus part. and Hebrews is telling his readers, hold fast, don't let go of Jesus. Don't drift, don't waver, don't fall away. Then the footing is God is faithful. He's gonna do this. He's gonna hold you up through the challenges, through the insults. And how's he gonna do it? This is means. He's got his appointed means. He's gonna do it through his people, through the fellowship. So verses 24 and 25 are God's appointed means for how he is going to be faithful to his promise to keep you in the Christian faith.

22:05 So how does God hold us? He holds us to reach other. So here's a first aspect, a first call to you in light of Hebrews 10, verse 24 and 25. Number one, get to know each other. This is step one. This lays the foundation for our relationships in the Christian life, in the local church, to be means of God's grace, life-giving necessities, not just niceness. Get to know each other. This is the first part of verse 24. He says, let us consider one another. Now, if you got your translation there in front of you, you may see a how. Let us consider how to stir one another up. The how is not actually there.

22:58 It's translators trying to avoid some really awkward English construction. Because it literally is in the Greek, it's let us consider one another unto the stirring up of love and good deeds. And you're like, that doesn't even make sense. Like, that's very odd English. And so they kind of had to work it a little bit, and that's about the best you can do. But this is what's great about teaching. In teaching, you could say, here's what actually is going on. He's saying, he's not saying consider hows. Let's consider how. Like, let's think about all the different ways that humanity in general can be motivated to love and good deeds. No, he's not saying consider hows. The object of the considering is people. It's one another. Consider one another, which means you got to know them. Not just consider them as general humanity, how you might motivate them to love and good deeds, but rather, do you know Bob?

23:59 Do you know Cindy? Their strengths, their weaknesses, how you might speak a word into their lives that would motivate them to love and good deeds, not because they're just general humanity, but because you know them. You know their situation. You might, in the context of relationship, speak a timely word that would be the grace of God to their soul and help them in an essential way in the Christian faith. So you get to know them. You consider them, contemplate them, ponder them. on a Sunday morning or on a Wednesday night, see a new face, say, hi, my name's David. What's your name? Your face is new to me. I've seen you around here before, but I don't think we've swapped names before. And you might get curious.

24:52 You might say, what do you do for work? Where do you live? Are you married? Got kids? You begin to find out about them. Just cultivate a little curiosity. Get to know people. That doesn't mean that everybody is friends in the same way with everybody in the local church. The Puritans would talk about private friendships and public friendships. There's the kind of public friendship that is appropriate in the church where I want to know as many people as I can. That there could be context for mutually beneficial life-giving relationships. And we're humans. We're finite. There are certain people we're going to know better, click better with, that are going to be friends. But in the context of the local church, it's worth getting curious beyond just your immediate friendships.

25:46 Cultivate these relationships. Learn people's strengths, their weaknesses, their abilities. So this first one is a call to seek relationships in a way that is not natural in our society. This is countercultural. Christians should learn. I don't know whether somebody's told you you're an introvert or extrovert or not. That's not a biblical category. This is a place where it's worth us being countercultural as Christians. I know it's easier for some people. It's harder for others. It's worth all of us hearing this call to get to know each other in the local church better.

26:31 In 1 Timothy 5, verses 1 and 2, he talks about the familial nature of the church. He says, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father. Think about that. Older men in the church, they're fathers.

26:51 Younger men as brothers. Older women as mothers. Younger women as sisters in all purity. Just as you would have father, mother, brother, sister relationships in your family of origin, in your home life.

27:12 If you share the blood of Jesus, it's all the more a brother, a father, a mother, a sister. There's even greater sharing in common with those in the church who share the blood of Jesus than those in the home who may share the same blood biologically.

27:34 A word for the teens and others. You might ask, how does this relate to our season of life? So easy for you marriage. Husband's got a wife and wife's got a husband. It's so strange for us unmarrieds. Like how are we supposed to relate to each other?

27:55 The awkwardness of dating, like husband and wife, that's clear. Not married, that's clear. This in-between space is so confusing and strange. I think 1 Timothy 5 is a beautiful category to add that we are brothers and sisters in the faith. And if you're looking for what's appropriate in a relationship with someone who's not your wife or husband, brother or sister is a very good category to bring to it. It brings a lot of clarity to the otherwise confusing and awkward space of dating in the church if we continue to think about the reality of brother and sister in the faith. In the life of the local church, one of the powerful things of our life together is the power of example. You get to see others live out the Christian faith in a way that you don't just out there in the world.

28:54 And when you see others live out the faith, you see echoes of their heart in their actions, in their face, in their words. and when you see their heart for Jesus, you naturally as a human being made in God's image to imitate other people's desires, want to imitate those desires. If you spend a lot of time with people who thumb their nose at Jesus and at his church, your heart is gonna wanna grow in that direction. And if you spend time with those who love Jesus, Your heart is going to want to desire him as you see them desiring him.

29:39 So number one, get to know each other. Number two, learn to push each other. I know push is a strong word. It may sound like you're shoving people. There's a difference between a very gentle push of what you pray for somebody in a certain context. You didn't rebuke them. Y'all talked together. Brother, you expressed a hopeful heart before God, and it was a kind of indirect counsel as you prayed for them, and they heard you pray for them. They're gentle pushes, and they're strong pushes. Brother, you are in sin. You need to repent. There's gentle pushes, strong pushes. But verse 24 would have us push each other. So verse 24, stir up one another to love and good works. That's stir up language. That's strong. You could translate this provoke or poke.

30:35 You hear the language of poke the bear? Better watch out. Poke the bear with each other. Provoke each other. Now, the language of provoke can be negative. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. You can provoke someone in a negative way. But Hebrews takes the risk here. He's going to talk about provoking someone in a positive way, to love and good deeds, and he's going to use a strong language, stir them up, shake them, give some input that they might love, that they might do good for others, as Jesus called us to. John 13, a new commandment I give you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you also are to love one another. By this will all people know you're my disciples, if you have love for one another. So in the church, there are two ways in which fellowship relates to our love.

31:36 One is in love for a brother or sister. You, having got to know them, you wanna provoke them, stir them up to love and good deeds. Out of love in your heart for them, You want the best for them. And so you want to be an agent in their life of provoking them to love and good deeds. And then when they do that, what's the provoking to? It's to love and good deeds. So the church, the fellowship of the local church has this amazing way it cultivates love. From love, we provoke others that they would love. The church benefits from the love, and the church instigates the love through the relationships between brothers and sisters. Number two, that was number two, learn to push each other. Number three, major on the magic of words.

32:33 This might be the most important thing to say. This might be the most unusual thing to say. This relates how Christian society, Christian community, the Christian church is a word-centered Community, it's the first part of verse 25. Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging each other. So not this, neglecting to meet together, but this. on not neglecting.

33:13 Just showing up is half the battle sometimes. In a society where there's so many options, so many seemingly legitimate excuses, sometimes you're just not feeling it. And this is where the power of habit is helpful in the Christian life. Just say, you know what? I'm not going to rethink this every Sunday morning. I'm not going to rethink this every Wednesday night. I'm not going to rethink whether I'm going to meet with this brother or sister to study the Bible or to pray.

33:49 I want to cultivate the habit. I'm going to be in life with these people who love Jesus. I'm going to cultivate the habit. I'm not going to neglect our assembling together. And then he doesn't just say, don't neglect, but just show up. He then says, encouraging. This is a remarkable thing of all the things that could be said right here. Like we get to this point of, I want to help others in the Christian faith. I want fellowship to be a means of grace. What do you do? And he says, encouraging one another. Now, that's another word, like fellowship, that could die the death of over and cheap use. So let me put it this way. Speak into each other's lives with helping words. Words that help.

34:49 Spiritually helpful words. The place I'm getting that is from Hebrews 10. That lines up with Hebrews 3 where he says that. This is Hebrews 3, 12 to 13. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort. That's the same word as encouraging in Hebrews 10. Here it is translated exhort. Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. All right, so note, eternity is at stake here. He says you might fall away from the living God if other believers are in your life to speak a helping word that would give grace to your soul and keep you from falling away. And then he talks about regular vigilance daily, every day, as long as it's called today. But the main thing here I want you to see is the power of words.

35:51 I mean, as humans, we're communicative, and we traffic so much in words that we don't realize or forget about the magic that words are. It's an amazing thing. You know one of the strangest things about you? You have holes in the side of your head. You see that? The hole there. What is the hole there for?

36:26 You know, you say let noises in, let sounds in. True, that's true. You know what's mainly there for? For words. God made us for words. John chapter 1 calls the eternal son the Word, capital W. This is how God reveals himself to us. He speaks a word named Jesus. And he gives us a book of words called Scripture. And amazingly, he keeps us in the faith through the words of his people who would say something, who put a word in this ear when you're down, when you're depressed, when you're weak, when you need help, when you don't have the energy to pull yourself out of it. You don't have the energy to read my Bible and get anything from it.

37:21 But you know what? A brother or sister might come in and give this amazing grace of putting a word into the air that would go into your ear, that would go into your heart, that would feed your soul and help your faith. This is the main way that fellowship is a means of grace in the Christian life. The use of our words to put grace in each other's souls through this hole in the sides of our head. which one thing that means is that on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights, this time where we're just lingering and before the service, be out in the hallway there, could even begin in the parking lot, this little time where we're holding a cup of coffee, talking to each other, Brothers and sisters, that is golden time.

38:32 That is amazing time. Don't throw it away. It's not only about the call of worship to the benediction, which is super important, and it's the most important single hour in the week of the church, but our engagement with each other, our conversation, is it just about the falcons? or would we have spiritual conversation? Might we have helping words for each other that would not just be nice in the Christian life, but would be necessary, necessary for someone's faith, for their growth, for their joy, for their thriving in the Christian faith because you talked after the service about how the sermon landed on you that morning. it's an amazing thing to ask a brother or sister not just did you see the georgia game but how can i pray for you what's has god been teaching you anything in particular this week or even before asking the question guess what god's been teaching me this week how did the sermon land on your heart did you make any spiritual resolutions in the new year How do you see God at work in our church right now?

39:55 What if we push past the small talk to soul talk, spiritual talk, to seeing how our words might be means of grace to other souls? Last one here, number four. Hold even faster as you mature.

40:15 This is the last part of verse 25. Hold even faster as you mature. He says, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. You see that all the more? All the more. That means increasing, not decreasing. So as the end draws near, which is closer today than it was yesterday and last week. all the more. As you age, all the more. There's no all the less in the Christian life. It's all the more. And you know what? This gets harder as you get older. Teenagers, college students, make the most of this right now for cultivating friendships. This is the easiest time of life to make friendships. It gets harder as you get older. There's some talk about the friendship dip. Once you're out of college, it's the friendship dip. It is difficult to make friends.

41:22 It is far easier to lose people that you have shared life with than to gain those new relationships. I just want to encourage you. I'm 44. I'm feeling this. I have felt it for the last 10 years. I have lost friend after friend through various circumstances. It's not easy to replace friends that you've known for years. You can't do it like that. And you might wake up someday and go, I barely have any friends.

41:52 So I would encourage you, it's worth the extra effort. It's worth saying hi. It's worth getting names. It's worth being curious. It's worth cultivating relationships and seeing if some, God might be pleased to make particular friends, deeper friends, that would sustain you in the Christian life, that we would hold even faster as we mature and not let our guard down on it. I wanted to read your EPC Essentials number five. Rob mentioned this to me in our correspondence about the EPC Essentials. And I signed off on them that I would not teach anything in contradiction to the EPC Essentials. In fact, I liked one of them so much on our topic, I thought, I want to read that to end our time. So this is EPC Essential number five. And it's very fitting on this topic of fellowship.

42:50 The true church is composed of all persons who through saving faith in Jesus and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit are united together in the body of Christ. The church finds her visible yet imperfect expression in local congregations where the Word of God is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered in their integrity, Where scriptural discipline is practiced, here we go, and where loving fellowship is maintained.

43:24 Maintained. That's not automatic. That takes energy. It takes initiative. It takes effort. And the last statement here, for her perfecting, she awaits the return of her Lord. I love that. There's a perfecting that's coming. The relationships now, the church now, it's not gonna be perfect. I promise you it's worth it. It is worth getting to know people, speaking into their lives, making the mistake of offending someone. It's worth it. Not perfect yet, but the perfect's coming. This is the end of Isaiah 55, talking about that day as you see the day approaching here's that day in Isaiah 55 in that day you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace the mountains and hills seven hills before you shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands instead of the thorn that's the curse shall come up the cypress evergreen instead of the briars shall come up with the myrtle. And it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. So brothers and sisters, fellowship as a means of God's grace is a means of joy in the Christian life. And that joy is a means to our glorifying our God, our making a name for him, which is his very purpose in creating and redeeming us. So let's pray.

45:08 Father in heaven, I pray that you would be pleased to continue in whatever form and birth afresh in whatever form here at First Pres, a culture of fellowship, of relationships that are significant, that count for the health of our souls. I pray that it would become a natural thing, be a natural thing to talk about spiritual things, to talk about your work in our lives, in the church, to talk about the power of your spirit, to talk about fresh revelations of who you are, seen in your word, to talk about nearness, experience to you through prayer. I pray that we wouldn't just talk like the world can talk downtown. But I pray that there would be a spiritual fellowship that would feed, strengthen, and give your grace to our souls in this local church.

46:07 In Jesus' name we pray.