Fellowship with the Lord

Perhaps a term too personal to be used with the Creator of all we have and with us personally. However, the past exposure of Christians to Jesus has been the very opposite, with us not bringing the Lord to our status as humans makes him less than God.

The very fact that even daring to call him by his name was a way of making him just like us. We must remember the Israelites dared not to call God by his name Yahweh because of too many factions that might have those who were ignorant of the true worship of God defacing or accidentally destroying anything in print from those who should not tamper with the name. So, they used terms that didn’t actually show his name: as in Gd instead of God, or Yhwh instead of Yahweh.

But Jesus promoted the use of calling on his Father God very freely. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be his name.” The first sentence of the Our Father; holy is his name; “to be holy is to be exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness.” (Webster).

When reading the gospel accounts of Jesus and his disciples, he always referred to them as friends by the way he treated them and never scolded them even when he needed to correct them.

Very often we heard protestants talking of developing a personal relationship with Jesus and now Catholics are beginning to pick up that same type of acknowledgment and calling on Christ in a manner of brotherhood in lieu of a deity that we can never speak with as a personal friend.

This is not to say or promote a wedge between man and God in fear of becoming a target from God like a bug to be crushed for disrespect.

Another past usage of fear in the wrong perspective of God is when someone says to a child when they do wrong; “God is going to punish you, for what you’ve done or said.” Planting fear of a revengeful God is as bad as being afraid to claim him as a friend, a brother to Jesus, or a son or daughter to his Father.

Certainly God is supreme and our creator. We can not accomplish much on our own and only God can forgive us. But when we do wrong, remember the Prodigal Son where the Father is the primary character in the story. Both of the two brothers did wrong, the younger by squandering his inheritance on prostitutes and other illicit living, and his older brother condemning the younger after he returns and receives the fathers blessing. Both were wrong, but the father showed love and mercy to both.

Oh, how easy it becomes to see the enduring compassion that our Father has for us and yet how quick we become fearful of the one who wants to treat us as a loving father. “Abba, Father!” “An Aramaic word for father, addressing God in a relationship of personal intimacy. It expresses affection, and confidence, and trust.” (a quote from Google).

Relationship, intimacy, trust, all parallel terms with fellowship which is what is needed with Jesus, his Father and their Holy Spirit.

Ralph B. Hathaway, Fellowship with Christ.