Chapter 13 - Fellowship

Sometimes, just the offering of our humanity pleases Him. He loved the disciples’ presence, but there was failure on their part on the Mount of Transfiguration. They also failed in the Garden, because of their limited spiritual comprehension. Matthew 26:43, “And He came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.” The actual translation here is: “For sheer sorrow they slept . . .”

Degrees of Fellowship

He will give according to the capacity that is opened to Him. There is such a thing as putting that capacity, that receptivity in the hands of God, in the Spirit, so that He can take its potential, and open it until it comes to the fullness of all that God expects. He doesn’t expect me to be Peter or Paul. He wants me to be just the creature that I am. He wants you to be just exactly who you are—not trying to strain, or be discouraged because you can’t offer to Him what these magnificent saints have been able to offer. Don’t be disturbed over that, but be very sure, dead sure, that what opening there is; what capacity you have; that’s surrendered to the Lord all the time. Keep it open all the time to the Spirit; exposed to Him, so that as you read, as you come and as you go, as you speak, preach, sing, or pray, whatever you do, you are exposed there to receive whatever God has to offer. Then He will build up our fellowship. He will strengthen it; He will enlarge it until, when He fills that capacity, you will be just as blessed, and happy, and just as satisfying and pleasing to God as the one who has the capacity of Paul. You can give to God all that He expects of the pleasure and satisfaction from you. So can I. So could Paul. So I call this degrees of fellowship.

We talk about “the fall of man”, but the, word “fall” is not mentioned in the Bible—“death” is. . . .“In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17) Do you think death was in the heart of God when He created Adam? No. When God came, after Adam had sinned, He still had access to him; He still had communion with him. All of his wreckage does not hinder God coming and bringing him out of his wreckage into a glorious new creature—a thing that has never lived on the earth before.

The first picture of a brokenhearted God is here in Genesis when He says, “Oh, Adam, where art thou?” He did not come to rebuke him, but He came to salvage him, and to bring him through. He didn’t come down as a Judge, but as LORD God, Who would bring redemption to this whole chaotic being; the whole world. That was the lovely, marvelous Son of God! I want you to love Him.

I only can feel a pathos in God’s voice. “Adam, where art thou?” Adam had been made to bring to God a peculiar pleasure that no other thing in the universe could bring. No angels could bring it; no created thing could bring it; but man, in his response, because he is created in the image and likeness of God, could offer back to God that which the heart of God had always hungered for.

He cares about a fellowship with you, more than anything on God’s earth. He cares more about the fellowship of your heart than He does anything in the world, because it is something that only YOU can give. —People can do so many things. He wants you to become something. There is a process in becoming. Even in the next age I expect to grow. It’s merely the releasing of the little seed plot here; the little potential. It took years to get it in shape to be released, and projected to the eternal ages as a media for the glory of God, and to give His heart pleasure. That’s what life is about. That’s what I want people to see.

After a meeting, I was walking down a lane alone, thanking the Lord, and loving Him. How many ever just love the Lord?