I Was Just Thinking … About Having Fellowship With God

The psalmist said, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). He was a shepherd, who had often seen deer panting for a satisfying drink from a stream’s pure waters. This was the best illustration he could think of to describe the intense longing that he had, as a person made in the image of the living God, to have fellowship with him.

Everyone has this intense thirst, but relatively few understand that it can be satisfied only by fellowship with God. The list of other ways in which people try to satisfy this thirst is endless. Many items on this list are pursuits which have a certain goodness to them in that they sometimes fill society’s many needs. The single-minded devotion of the physician to achieve the highest possible skill in his specialty of medicine; the concern of a business executive to manage her company wisely so it can produce the best line of goods or services and gain the highest possible earnings for its owners; the solicitude with which farmers wait for just the right weather conditions to till and plant so they will harvest a bountiful crop in the fall—all these are good, and they become evil only when people foolishly make them idols by thinking that success in a vocation will satisfy the cravings of their hearts.

The first step in satisfying our heart’s yearning, then, is to understand that it is fellowship with God for which we thirst. When we become convinced of this, we will naturally seek, wholeheartedly, to find out how to attain fellowship with God. Jeremiah 29:13 gives a most encouraging word to such people: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

The second step in achieving this goal is to own up to those attitudes and actions that we know are displeasing to God. These are the things which we would be ashamed to have others know about, or the things in our lives which we criticize when we see them in the lives of others. Taking this step means letting God, through his Word, tell us plainly the basic motives behind our sinful attitudes and actions. We might do well to follow the practice of the great revivalist, George Whitefield (1714–70), who would read his Bible on his knees because this helped him to achieve a frame of mind to listen to what God had to say to him. It is the Bible, God’s Word, which is “discerning (of) the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). And since the Word of God is “the sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17), it is through this Word that the Holy Spirit carries out his work of convicting people of their sins.

When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, he emphasizes that the fundamental characteristic of all sin is the failure to be loyal to Christ. It is helpful to reflect on how every specific sin is a manifestation of unbelief, a vote of “no confidence” in what God has promised us in Christ. To cite just one of the many examples: the cherishing of an unforgiving, vengeful feeling toward someone who has wronged us is to deny God’s promise, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Romans 12:19).

So the third step toward having fellowship with God is to face up squarely to ways in which we, through our sins, have been registering votes of “no confidence” in God. It is perfectly plain that we could never presume to have fellowship with God while declaring him to be untrustworthy. If saying this is the most insulting thing we could ever do to another person, then surely there can be no fellowship with the infinitely high and glorious God if we insult his integrity by declaring him to be a liar and thus unreliable.

But we have all done this to God innumerable times. Since it is virtually impossible to restore relations with another person whose integrity we have publicly questioned, then surely there is no hope of thinking we could enjoy God’s fellowship. But it is precisely at this point that the message of the Bible becomes understood as the most surprisingly good news. Although we have all aroused God’s anger to white-hot fury with our disloyal record of “no confidence” votes in him, yet he craves fellowship with us renegades so badly that he sent Jesus Christ, his beloved Son, to earth to suffer unspeakably and to die. According to Romans 3:24, God sent Jesus, who through shedding his blood assuaged the wrath of God which we aroused by our many insults.

This confidence in the forgiveness of sins, made possible through Jesus’ death and resurrection, is the fourth step toward having fellowship with God. First John 1:9 declares that “if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

It is no wonder, then, that Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift [of sending Christ to pay the price for our sins]!” Paul also argued in Romans 8:32 that since God went to the extent of sending his beloved Son, therefore he will surely give us every other blessing.

So the fifth step in having fellowship with God is to be thankful to him. Psalm 100:4 instructs us: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, and bless his name!” It is obvious that God, who is so disposed to bless people, will not fellowship with those who murmur against him.

The sixth step is to petition God for everything and anything that causes us to be anxious. “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made knows to God” (Philippians 4:6). God eagerly desires the joy he will experience by answering our prayers. (If he does not give us just what we want when we want it, he will gives us something even better at a better time. There is nothing else that Matthew 7:7–11 can mean.) So it is clear that we cannot expect to have fellowship with God were we to deprive him, by not praying, of the joy of granting our petitions.

Finally, in order to enjoy fellowship with God, we must engage in intercessory prayer for others, and especially for those who occupy key positions for carrying out Christ’s great commission to preach the gospel to every culture. God loves the world, so he cannot have fellowship with someone whose concern extends no farther than his own needs. In intercessory prayer we have a remarkable experience of the presence of God.

May each of us, then, seek fellowship with God “as a deer longs for flowing streams.”

Daniel Fuller
November, 1979